On my way out of the hotel today I mentally paged through my experiences with poverty, searching for a tiny morsel to expand into a post for blog action day. The most abject poverty I’ve ever witnessed was when living in Morocco - mothers, shoeless and hungry, nestling children in the inner folds of rags covered in dust and worse. I thought about a cold Christmas in Japan when I took a plate of warm food out to where all the “unseen” people without homes live…a few steps away from the warm apartment complex where I lived.

Then I snapped back into the present when I saw a man sitting, leaning up against a building, not twenty feet from the hotel. Eating noodles out of a Chinese takeout box. His hands were covered in grime. He looked and appeared famished, but like anything, it’s not safe to assume where he slept last night or whether or not he lives on the streets.

Not Knowing

For this post, I’d like to make it clear that I know nothing more about poverty than you do if you’ve never lived on the streets. Having never spent a single night alone on the streets, I can’t know what suffering that is. And it’s impossible to know anything without first experiencing for yourself.

An influential teacher and friend, Fleet Maull, organizes something called Street Retreats as part of the Peacemaker Trainings he helps lead (listen to an audio interview I did with Fleet on Plunge Experiences). The retreats are controversial in the world of Buddhist academics, but here’s how it goes, in brief: You spend a few days out on the street with only enough money to take a bus home…no credit cards, no ID, nada. I contemplated attending a retreat (it’s called a Plunge Experience) but then life presented its own Plunge Experience: my house burned down.

You spend a week on the streets with an experienced teacher. I could go into the details but it’s better if you read about it for yourself.

Anyway, this morning. I’m walking to one of my favorite cafes. A latte at this cafe costs three and a half dollars. The label “yuppie” could be applied to most of the clientele - lump me in there if that’s helpful to you. Last week as I sat inside the air-conditioned building I witnessed a woman (with all the markers of poverty we recognize) walk through the alley while uncapping a needle. It was the first time I’ve seen a needle uncapped in an alley and I admit I was taken aback.

One purpose of the work Fleet and others like him do is to teach us to bear witness to suffering. To really see it as it is without turning away (as I did, mentally, watching the woman uncap the needle). This is one of the tenets of peacemaking work. Another piece, and I’m working on this daily, is to get to know ourselves.

Bearing Witness

I was in Sharon Salzberg’s hotel room in Raleigh, North Carolina. Sharon is a renowned teacher and she’s done a lot of work in helping Buddhism get more “mainstream” attention. We were preparing for an interview when the subject of suffering came up. Sharon laughed in her characteristic way. She told me suffering can’t be compared. Suffering is like a gas; it fills whatever container it’s in.

This rang true for me.

I can think of many times in my life when someone expressed sadness about the circumstances of my childhood. In the past, I would explain it away or attempt to make the empathizer feel better.

Now, I let the uncomfortable moment unfold. Then, I explain that suffering can’t be compared. Losing a tooth or a pet might be as catastrophic to a child as the death of a parent. Sure, the psychological implications might be different, but the intensity of the suffering may be the same. It’s up to us to help alleviate suffering where we can, but first, we must recognize the suffering within our own neighborhood, our own home, our own bodies.

Loving Action

Once we’re in touch with that, we’re better able to connect with the suffering of others. Every single one of us, without exception, suffers. How can we live in such a way that we alleviate suffering and promote happiness?

For me, the answer isn’t in hypothesizing and theorizing about living. It’s about engaging, it’s about living (and yes, making mistakes is part of the deal). The engaged practice is the thing. Sitting with ourselves and then taking what we’re learning out of a place of practice and into the real world, that’s where transformation can occur. We practice and get to know ourselves.

That we may better see.
That we may better engage.
That we may better help eliminate suffering within ourselves, within others.

“Peace in oneself, peace in the world.” - Thich Nhat Hanh