Audio Transcript
How do we respond spiritually to a world on fire? And we are watching the world fall apart in almost real time. We see the world burning on our live feeds while we are sitting in our comfortable chair, in our house, scrolling for the next video. And this is pretty new.
Humanity has known suffering forever, but because of the digital age, we know everyone else’s suffering simultaneously and also continuously as we keep scrolling through news and notifications and feeds and reels. And sometimes I think we are the first generation who is required to hold the grief of 8 billion people while also making our dinner.
And this pain, this suffering, this global catastrophe are very real. And we keep seeing them in real time. Wars—you know how many wars are happening around the globe right now? How many wars are, or how many countries are on the verge of going to war? Polarization, racism, hatred. And then this nervous system of ours, this brain—it was not built for this global catastrophe that we view in HD every day. Of course, all videos have to be in high definition; no one watches SD anymore. So the grief and the suffering is also in high definition.
If you see our ancestors, they feared things which were pretty immediate, like a wolf outside the cave. But our generation has to carry the fear of, you know, everything: melting ice caps, wars, collapsing ecosystems, cultural dissidence, loneliness. And I think this scale is unnatural. And no wonder this present generation that we are living in is a very anxious and a depressed generation. Of course, if you’re constantly exposed to the suffering of billions of people all the time, there are only two things which can happen. There are more than two things, but mostly either you will really go numb or it will break you.
And spirituality over the years generally has offered us—and here I’m talking about popular spirituality—has given us two answers to this. And I think both are pretty inadequate on their own. So the first answer is, you know, “detach, observe from a distance.” Second is, “the world is an illusion; you are not it. And both are incomplete. And it’s somewhere in between where genuine spiritual life actually lives.
And with all this suffering that we see every day, of course, there is grief. The world is grieving right now. You know, the grief of climate change, wars, watching species vanish in real time. And our modern culture fears grief because grief on some level interrupts the fantasy that everything is fine. But we grieve because we care and we love. A mother grieves for a child because she loved that child.
And spiritual people are very, very empathetic. They’re compassionate. And so this suffering, this global pain has a huge impact. Some feel guilty that, you know, they are happily safe and secure while humanity is suffering. Some feel outrage—anger at the unfairness and injustice in the world. Others might feel some other emotions as they see this unfold every day.
And the deepest teachers, the wise teachers, the ones who actually lived from that unity consciousness—they didn’t stop weeping at this suffering. Ramana cried at times when he saw humanity suffering. And they were the ones who could weep completely and still remain whole. They could hold someone else’s grief and the grief of this world and not drown in it. And that is one of the methods, ways that we need to learn as we walk the spiritual path: learning to hold this, to be moved without being swept; to feel this injustice and pain, but not being consumed by it.
And that can happen when we are fully present to the suffering, to the what is. And if you notice the world that we live in, it never waits for our response. It moves without our permission. Wars continue while we keep scrolling on our feeds. Forests burn while we eat. And somewhere beneath all that suffering and pain and noise and catastrophe, there is a person—you—trying to hold together a life, your life, your life that feels increasingly difficult to manage, very stressful and anxious.
And this is what I’m just talking about—the external circumstances. Of course, another layer on top of this is your internal, everyday circumstances: your financial pressures, pressures of relationship, taxation, and a whole lot of other personal issues. So the question here we are talking today is not how to feel better, but the question is: what does genuine spiritual life actually look like when the world is not cooperating with your peace, the world is not cooperating with your stillness, and it’s burning.
And one of the things which is the easiest thing to do, which the ego loves, is escape. The temptation to escape is strong, and escapes can be going to the mountains, going to a retreat, drinks, drugs, medication, prescription—like people take so much of opioids, etc., to deal with it. And there is an opioid crisis in so many countries. So the ego wants safety, and it wants to just run away from all of these. And we know escape, though it gives us relief in the short term, it’s not the long-term answer.
And then there was once a seeker who came to me and he was very, very upset and very angry with the injustice around him. And he said, “This idea of just accepting this injustice without acting on it—it feels like I’m betraying the values of compassion and love.” And I think this outrage at injustice is a sign that the heart is awake to the suffering of others. Many teachers would just discount these emotions and say, “No, you know, why do you feel this way? You should not feel this way.” I would like to rather investigate these emotions. Why does a person feel outraged at injustice? Is it because they have love for the other person? Of course, there is some sort of love, compassion and care, which says what is happening here is not right.
But then the actual spiritual question is: what do you do with that outrage? So outrage, anger, despair, depression, anxiety are just emotions which come up when we see the situation. But then spirituality asks us, how do we deal with all this gamut of emotions? Because another way of dealing with this is becoming numb and you feel nothing. Again, is that better? Is that what seekers and humanity wants to become—becoming numb to everything and not feeling anything?
So it’s okay if you’re feeling outraged, but then what do you do with it? What I have seen with outrage and anger is they’re like lightning. They’re very sudden, uncontrolled, and they often damage the very thing they’re trying to protect. But when you can sit with this outrage, with this anger, with this injustice, something shifts; the heat cools and clarity emerges. And from that clarity arises a steadfast commitment which can create change in the world and in change in yourself.
And this shift, this transformation, this commitment does not burn out in six months. So outrage is pretty short-lived. And what we are seeing is we are moving from outrage to outrage. And that’s how the social media and the entire cycle of views is structured. It makes us move from one to another to the next, to the next, to the next. But these are very short-lived outrages. What you need to do is to sit with this outrage, to sit with this anger, and let that heat, let that energy turn into a healing force.
And this is a difficult part. How do you act without feeling hatred, without feeling righteous, without feeling that this particular action or this particular thought which I am doing in response to this injustice is not ego-driven? Because, again, we need to be careful with how the ego can mask or can create a mask of holiness, of being righteous. And we have seen in the past, there have been many righteous and holy wars which have been fought. But again, in the end, they were just egos which were wrapped up in spirituality.
So, spiritual response begins with honesty—sitting with that sorrow, staying with it, taking a deep breath. But you will say, “Rajeev, breathing will not end wars, breathing will not end hunger.” I agree. But without a calm inner space, won’t your actions be reactive and fragmented? And we touched upon this in the last satsang as well. If you are doing a particular action and the space inside me is full of outrage and anger and hurt and conflict and confusion, the action will reflect the inner turmoil.
So first, you need to breathe, you need to sit, you need to understand. You also need to deal with the inner fire to meet the outer fire with wisdom. Because when you’re rooted in presence, your actions will flow from a higher intelligence rather than just reaction and outrage. And this intelligence means seeing the interconnectedness of all things. And you may speak against injustice, you may vote, you can organize, protest, create alternatives. But if your actions are rooted in presence, they’ll have a different quality. They won’t be fueled by hatred, by revenge, by vengeance. They won’t be entangled in this personal identity.
And also, there should be times when you need to step out of this stream of information. As I said in the beginning, our nervous system has not evolved to constantly be exposed to the suffering of 8 billion people all the time. So it gets overloaded. Constant exposure to crisis fragments our attention. We get exhausted. So to reconnect with ourselves, to reconnect with the presence, it’s good to step out of that scrolling and constant feeds of catastrophe and pain and suffering, and ground ourselves.
And out of that ground, love can arise. And this love is not selective. It does not say, “I care only for those who agree with me,” or “I only care for those who I think are right.” This love sees the madness and this dysfunction of humanity and it does not withdraw, does not go to a cave or to a mountain. It acts firmly when needed. But in that action, there is no internal violence anymore. There is no hatred. There is only compassion.