Raam Dev

Hello, future.

Slowing Down for Suffering

Photo: Death Valley, California

His frail body was draped in a black coat, hung from bones that outlined his figure. He stepped off the grass and onto the pavement, blocking my path and turning to look at me with recessed eyes that spoke of suffering, desperation, and loneliness. As the car rolled forward, he turned and began limping down the road, still blocking my path but glancing back every time he tripped on his leash.

What could I do? Should I stop and give him some company, perhaps remove his leash so he wouldn't struggle so much? No, that would be risky; he might be sick. Should I call animal control so they can take him away and give him food and a place to sleep? No, he'll probably just end up on a table being put to sleep permanently.

I waited for him to step back onto the grass and then watched as he limped down a hill. As I drove away he lapped water from a soggy patch of grass in the rearview mirror. Then he looked up and stood motionless, holding his head high as if confident that he'd somehow find a way to survive.

What should I have done? Was I being cruel and cold-hearted by leaving him there? Did I make the right choice by doing nothing? He was an animal, but I still felt pity for him; why didn't I do anything? Why did I let him suffer?

Those thoughts reminded me of the suffering I witnessed while traveling through India last year, the endless dichotomy of slums and skyscrapers side by side. It made me think of the wealth and prosperity of the country I'm currently living in and how a handful of the worlds population hoards what others need for basic survival.

Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the sight of oncoming cars stopped in the road. Sitting at the curb and facing the traffic was an old lady in a motorized scooter trying to get across.

The cars in front of me whizzed by one by one, ignoring her situation and leaving the 'problem' for someone else to deal with. Just as I did for the dog a few moments earlier, I slowed down. I held the traffic behind me and watched as she smiled, waved, and crossed to the other side.

That's when I realized something: If we don't slow down, we risk contributing to suffering.

It's easy to witness suffering and avert our eyes. It's easy to see a problem and leave it for someone else to deal with. It's even easy to allow ourselves to suffer, to let the busyness of life numb the pain inside while we redirect our discomfort into the outside world.

Life moves fast. It's easy to let things get pulled forward by momentum. But slowing down requires deliberate action. Slowing down requires recognizing that there is something worth slowing down for, something worth making a conscious effort to notice and then attempt to change.

If we do nothing in the face of suffering -- if we don't even slow down -- then what happens to us? We build skyscrapers next to slums, we let the homeless sleep on the street, and we stuff our faces while children around the world die of hunger.

If we don't slow down, we even risk torturing ourselves, suffocating our passions and caging our dreams. Instead of being an inspiration to others, we spread our suffering around, pushing the brunt of our irresponsible decisions onto those around us.

Slowing down for the old lady took nothing out of my day, but it gave her so much. Slowing down for the dog took nothing out of my day, but it gave me insights that I'm now sharing with you (and perhaps my brief but empathic interaction even gave him a little confidence to move forward).

Slowing down to face my own suffering over the past few years has continuously improved my focus and direction. I'm here today sharing these thoughts with you because I made the conscious decision to slow down and address the internal pains that were preventing me from growing and evolving.

We need to stop deferring action to the passage of time. Suffering, whether our own or that of someone else, isn't necessary. We are not apathetic machines designed to live without emotion. We are conscious beings capable of making our own choices, capable of spontaneous evolution, selflessness, and empathy. Use your humanity. Slow down.

Embrace Your Essence

What signifies your existence? What does it mean for you to be alive? When you think about You, what comes to mind? The shape of your smile, the color of your eyes, or the curves of your body? Perhaps your name or the knowledge that you exist in the minds of others?

Who are you? Are you your thoughts or emotions, your history, your successes or failures, or the people you've met along the way? Are you the things that you create? Are those really you?

Breathe. Right now, take a deep breath. Is that you breathing? Look down at your skin. Feel it. Is that your flesh? Put a hand over your heart. Feel your heartbeat. Does that vibration signify you?

If you release all false identity, you'll recognize something that goes much deeper, something more substantial, more concrete.

It's in your smile. It's in the color of your eyes and the curves of your body. It's in your thoughts and emotions, and your successes and failures. It's in every breath, every heartbeat, and every cell of your body. It's in all the people you meet and every thing you create.

Close your eyes. Let go. Allow your essence to emerge. You can sense its presence, the way it saturates everything. You've always felt it, perhaps somewhere in the background hidden behind all that stuff: all the labels added to life, the ideas, the expectations, the subtle judgements.

Your essence is You. It's here, always present, always offering comfort and confidence. It comes from that place where beauty, peace, and love emanate, where dreams originate, where intuition paints a landscape of impossibility with colors of hope.

Your essence has no doubt. It doesn't question itself or feel inadequate. It knows right from wrong and intuitively senses what needs to be done. It rides the line between thinking and feeling, between dreams and reality, between the past and the future.

When you feel your essence, hold it tenderly, embrace it with unconditional love. Stop resisting it. Stop fighting it. Stop judging it. Let go of self-pity and free yourself from the expectation that you are somehow incomplete, lost, or unhappy.

You are complete. You know the answers. You are abundantly enough.

Release your essence. Give it the respect it deserves. Stop trying to change it. Stop regulating its unquenchable thirst for freedom. Stop holding You captive in a cage of reason. Remove the leash, unlock the door, and open your arms. Embrace You.

Accepting Responsibility

You're sitting at a cafe in one of two armchairs; a coffee table separates you and the stranger in the adjoining seat. A few minutes pass and the stranger leaves, forgetting to take his empty cup from the table.

After some time, another stranger sits down. He's holding several books and a hot cup of coffee. The empty cup on the table is in his way, but with no knowledge of who the cup belongs to, he doesn't want to touch it; he probably assumes it's yours.

Whose responsibility is the empty cup?

It's easy to ignore responsibility when we can pass it off to someone else (especially if that person isn't around), but if we can alleviate suffering or provide assistance -- no matter how little -- we automatically inherit the responsibility to do so.

(This applies even if the suffering is directed at the same person who failed to be responsible: if we see a wallet or purse left behind, we feel responsibile to provide assistance by turning it in.)

The motivation to act comes easily when we witness suffering firsthand: the innate human elements of empathy and compassion allow us to sense when we are, without doubt, responsible to act.

But when things are a little less clear -- when our lack of responsibility can go unnoticed -- it's easy to conclude that "it's not my problem" and move on. This can happen even if we are able to solve the problem or be part of the solution.

We ignore dirty dishes in the sink, trash on the sidewalk, and the shy person at the party. We convince ourselves that we deserve to suffer, that we're incapable of changing, or that we're just not lucky. We push aside thoughts of poverty in India, inequality in Africa, or starvation the world over because “it’s too big; someone else will fix it; it’s not my problem.”

Except it is our problem, because we can do something to change it.

Together

A whisper, “look!” In the flow, we go; traversing the land, not separate, but in sync, in silence. Step. Thought. Step. No thought. We exist, woven by time into the fabric of now. In fields of gold we lie, on a plateau, greeted by acrobats of the sky. An oasis, an adventure, a walk beside the mountain. In the breeze, between the trees, in the green valley caressed by the sea, we sit.

A whisper, “there!” Time frozen. Beauty, an earthly embrace shared not by two, but three! On a hair of grass, in the wind, motionless, a hummingbird floats. A heartbeat, its wings move like magic and we smile. In the moment, in the beauty of the present, there is no ‘other’, no separation, no tomorrow, only now, only ‘one’. Together.

Sensory Minimalism

Everything is noise until we understand it. To put meaning to the meaningless, our senses process noise and help us find direction. But when our senses are constantly being overwhelmed by noise -- the noise in our head; the noise in our lives; the noise of the status quo -- their sensitivity decreases and they become unreliable instruments.

Practicing sensory minimalism, that is stepping back and observing the noise instead of trying to process it, increases our ability to focus on what matters and awards us with a better sense of direction.

The skill of observing noise is best learned through frequent changes in our perspective: When experiencing something new and unusual, we have no choice but to release ourselves from the noise and take a step back.

Change your perspective and you will expand your consciousness. Escape the patterns and you will minimize the background noise. Place yourself in new and unfamiliar situations and you will have no choice but to reflect, observe, and regain awareness of where you stand in relation to what matters most in your life.

Finding Sufficiency

When we're poor, sufficiency appears one step away. When we're rich, sufficiency still appears one step away. No matter what we do, sufficiency remains elusive, always appearing one step ahead.

But that's an illusion. Sufficiency doesn't move, we do. If we're chasing sufficiency, then we don't understand what we need; we don't understand our 'enough'.

What really matters to you? What would it take for you to wake up every morning eager to start the day, content and happy just to be alive? To find sufficiency, you don't need to do anything. To find sufficiency, you just need to ask yourself, with all honesty, "What is enough?"