From apartheid to awakening

What made speaking with Choden particularly insightful was how much he was able to step back and survey his own journey and thoughts. He brought critical insight into the changes he had undergone and, where he perceived any, limitations in what he had been taught. This made our discussion feel really open and alive - an experience we hope we can bring to all the spaces we create. 

Trauma

Trauma was critical to Choden’s journey into Buddhism. It was both the impetus - one man’s search for answers as they grew up in a violent society - and clearly one of the most important lessons he learned from his early practice. Through the stillness and universal perspective he learned in Buddhism he was able to see that, as a child in apartheid South Africa, he had grown up in a traumatised society. 

This is a theme that has resurfaced time and again in our conversations - how we need to widen our understanding of trauma from the clinical definition (that focuses on an individual and one - albeit sometimes chronic - experience) to one that encompasses whole societies and cultures of people (both as the experiencers and perpetrators of trauma). 

Choden’s example of the police officer who suspected him of being a Communist simply for carrying prayer beads was particularly instructive - a powerful reminder of how trauma creates a sensitivity to fear and threat. It also showed how trauma can distance us from ourselves and others. Choden referred a number of times to how “divided” South Africa was. In one sense, that seems obvious - apartheid institutionalised racial divides. But it also seemed to be about something deeper - about how the message of apartheid created divisions within people and established a void between them as well. That police officer could not see Choden, only a threat. But equally Choden himself felt confused and torn about his own identity - as a white man, he had privilege but he also felt traumatised by what he had seen. This is about a search for roots. The question becomes for us: how do we invite people into seeing that pain in a way that feels safe enough to experience and allow healing? And how do we help people reconnect with their own human-ness and the human-ness of others?

The inner critic

When we moved on to talking about the establishment of the Mindfulness Association, Choden reflected that one of his biggest revelations was the sheer pervasiveness of self-criticism across the world. For this reason, he found that the message of self-compassion was often revelatory to people. Asked about the major themes that seem to come up for people when they talk about their self-critic, Choden said that it often stems from people’s upbringing and the messages they receive from parents. 

This is a curiosity to us. Because it’s undoubtedly true that parents are often the carriers of these messages but it seems that it would be a mistake to stop at that - parents are essentially mirroring the main themes of society. And, in some senses, there might be a good rational reason to do that - better to prepare your child for a society based on individual self-reliance, for example, than have them go out expecting support and care only to be harshly let down. In other words, if parents repeat messages which lead to self-criticism (and other psychological experiences) we need to ask why and why, too, that is being exacerbated rather than challenged by people’s experiences in society. (Here we might speculate that Mark Fisher’s notion of ‘the big other’ - the imagined person or machine that we unconsciously believe is in control of society, dictating norms - could be very instructive). 

Spiritual bypassing

This brought us to some interweaving themes centred loosely around the idea of spiritual bypassing. Choden shared that, through his teaching and practice, he tries to guard against the risk that mindfulness or attention to self-compassion could simply resource someone to ‘fit’ in a damaged society - rather than being given the tools and impetus to change it. Relatedly, we are asking ourselves: how do we create spaces and interventions that give people the care and attention they need as individuals while also building collective strength and agency?

These remain early days in our exploration but it seems likely that the answers will lie in combining approaches, not sidelining one or other. If self-compassion teaches us we are worthy, we should be supporting people to see the ways in which society undermines that message individually and collectively - including for people we don’t easily identify or agree with.

It’s also possible - maybe even probable - that a likely ingredient in someone’s self-compassion journey will involve them resourcing themselves and building a life that speaks to their needs. The process of doing that will model social change and will, where possible, involve engaging with others. One of the key lessons of self-compassion is that we are not alone and cannot shoulder the burden of life in isolation. With messages such as these, self compassion and exploration can be a route, concomitantly, to more social connection. 

And, as the need for self-compassion demonstrates, in doing this work we need to create an environment of care and mutual support. This will resource people to do transformative work. 

Equally, it is important to recognise that people will engage in this work in different ways and to different extents. For some, getting to a point of recognising their worth might take as much courage and capacity as they are able to offer right now - others may find that they come to a place of engaging in community or social action. Popularising the message that we are all worthy and society can reflect that is what matters. 

Community

All of this will make Choden’s final point - that the rebuilding of community will be a key step in societal transformation - unsurprising. Choden drew a link between the importance of community to the Buddhist notion of sangha and to the idea of communities not only being places of connection but places where values are identified, created, and embedded. This proactive component of community life increasingly seems to us like one of the central outcomes that we hope this work can produce - the shifting of people’s perspective to see themselves as active contributors to society and agents of change. It’s also becoming clear to us that this sangha can be created anywhere. It’s not just about forming community within geographic localities but community in work, across sectors, within households. It’s about taking the ethos of community - sleeps rolled up, resources shared - and seeing it flourish throughout society.