"There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people.”
-Jean-Paul Sartre. There is no individual Peace.
I am in shock that I am using that heading!
Honestly I used to feel this way almost daily; reacting strongly to every perceived slight, mistaken opinion (at least from my point of view) and basically any insensitive or just plain wrong thing anyone said. A corollary to this is that there were a few, very few, friends who weren’t hell and we had to stick together against those other hell people.
In the Forest Dweller years I am finally settling in to being much more at peace with what is happening for people around me.
BUT lately I have been getting unsolicited messages and feelings that until everyone is settled, I will be not be settled either. I’m not very happy about this!
Because just about all the work I have done (or more accurately has been done on me) has shown me that I cannot change or really help people all that much. Peace for anybody is not in my control- even my own peace.
I have always liked this story. I cannot remember where I heard it.
Once there were three people crawling through the dessert. They had been crawling, sunburnt and thirsty, for untold days and despaired of ever making it out. Finally, they spotted a wall on the horizon. When they reached the wall, they slowly crawled up and looked over.
They saw a green paradise, full of lakes and streams and trees bursting with fruit. Two of the wanderers dropped right into this beautiful land. But one started to crawl back down the wall and go back into the desert. ‘Where are you going?” his companions called out. “Back to get the others,” he replied.
I know there are some who live their lives based on the Buddhist concept of bodhisattva. Bodhisattva refers to anyone with a spontaneous wish to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all sentient beings.
The word “spontaneous” in this definition of bodhisattva means a lot. Ideally, this impulse is not based on trying to be a wonderful person or making yourself feel special; it would happen on its own! Can you make yourself into a Saint? Anybody, anybody? I know I have failed many times trying to be an apparent ideal of what a perfect person would be.
For me this idea of doing good for others turned out to look more like this quote from Nisargadatta “I know from personal experience that if anybody thinks they have or are something special, it is sheer ignorance.”
So how to hold this growing feeling of there is no individual Peace? The Peace we are talking about here is not able to be understood by an individual. I can hope as I have the courage to do my own work, others will have the courage to do theirs. Maybe as I go through my day I will see openings in the moment to support someone. I have never gone wrong feeding someone a good meal.
However, for me, this is a bigger conversation than what do I need to do right now. I am curious as to where this insight might pull me!
What do you see for yourself around this? I so appreciate the dialogues that happen here.
As always, thank you for reading and sharing this post!
I am a 'changemaker' in recovery, meaning that I understood that is very arrogant of me to think that I know who people should become or what the world needs to look like. Today, I am of the belief that the trick is to keep myself evolving and healing on one side, and on the other side- keep deepening my understanding of the wiorld and keep engaging with the world without expectations, judgement, blame or fear. Somehow, when I manage to show up and connect open-minded and open-hearted, the world and people in fact seem different. So, I would say hell is perceiving other people without engaging with them. I used to say that if I spend quality time with even the worst person, I will find their humanity and explanation for their actions (explanation, not agreement ).
Heidi, I love this post and all of your writings and reflections. And the Sartre quote is one of my favorites, tho I don't repeat it much either!
I might add this:
There IS an Unconditional Peace available to us, That which we are. It's not necessarily "peaceful" or comfortable in the body-mind experience, but seated in the Self is the resting point of Stillness.
I believe what you are pointing to is mental or physical or emotional comfort or bliss, so to speak, no? That definitely comes and goes!
Here, the joke is that there is no individual desire to help or live as a bodhisattva. Yet, the work happens, the helping happens, and - I'm quite sure - the hell happens, too.
The joke's always on the "me"!