Why am I sitting here? The asphalt hard against my knees, my hands cupped in my lap, the growl of passing cars in my ears. Through half-lidded eyes, I’m aware of the seven people sitting silently next to me. Meditating outside makes me feel vulnerable under the best of experiences; sitting here in the middle of downtown is surreal. I feel the presence of the cloudy expanse of sky above the buildings that hem in the square. Despite the clatter of heels on pavement, the noise of the traffic, and screech of buses, an underwater white noise settles in my ears.

Since September 11, a group of us Buddhists have been sitting weekly in Copley Square in Boston, our goal to be an island of mindfulness in an ocean of hate, anger, and war-mongering. I’ve joined in this “Sit for Peace” a dozen times in the past two years, each time with mixed emotions of faith and trepidation. I wonder what good we’re doing those who pass, never mind the citizens of Baghdad. I cringe at the insults hurled by pedestrians. I imagine the cell phone parade of passersby sneering at our audacity, to think that just sitting on our butts could change anything. I, I, I... I bring my attention back to my breath, and leave my self-regard behind. In, absorb the sufferings of the world. Out, offer it relief from pain. That’s all I have to do. So easy and impossible--but it’s not my place to judge my success. On the flyers we printed up are words from the Buddha: “Hate never dispels hate; only love dispels hate, that is the universal law.” Simple words and true, and yet by any rational standard, maddeningly inadequate for our time.

Last November, as the dogs of war strained at their leashes, I marched along with thousands of others through the streets of our city. The hate felt good then. “Fuck Bush!” read the signs, and “Bush Is A Motherfucker!” We raised our voices in unison against the coming tide. Walking with other Buddhists, I felt solidarity with the marchers, at the same time I tried to hold onto the kernel of nonviolence that separated us from the reactionary forces pursuing war. Then in March the bombs started falling, and my stomach churned, like millions of other people around the world, to see the mushroom clouds on the TV screen that represented hundreds of lives snuffed out. How could I practice non-violence when I wanted to smash the monkey face of a president who vacuously trips over the words that brings such destruction? How could I practice equanimity when my mind reels with helpless fury to watch the tracer fire on CNN, accompanied by the jingoistic commentary of the broadcasters?

Sitting is a release from those emotions--not because I am blocking them out, but because I allow myself to feel them in their heartbreaking entirety. I breathe in the suffering of an Iraqi child who sits in a squalid village, parentless because of American bombs. For once, I restrain my own feelings of guilt that I was born here, or that I’m not doing enough to curb my country’s destructive actions. No matter how well-intentioned, I know that those feelings only get in the way of feeling compassion for another human being. Instead, I try to feel as nearly as possible what she feels, the fear, the pain, and the powerlessness. Then, I breathe out relief, in whatever form it’s needed, trusting to the karmic laws of the universe that somehow the world will change in her favor, no matter how much I doubt that inside.

Sitting beneath the safety of an overcast sky, I also allow myself to breathe in the suffering of the perpetrators of violence. George W. Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld. My heart tightens with anger at the mention of their names. I let it go, and do my best to see them as real people, overwhelmed by the immensity of the world, clinging to simple truths at the expense of hard realities. Instead of objects of hate, I actually feel pity for them. That’s not good enough--I know. A true boddhisattva would go further, offering them forgiveness, even understanding. But my heart is not yet big enough.

Even so, as I sit here, a spaciousness opens, and I realize how much my own fear and self-regard has gotten in the way of viewing the world as it is. The pedestrians I thought disapproved of us look up from their cell phones in wonder, some even nodding their support. Car honks become cries of solidarity. My chest opens up as I breathe in, and I find myself able to absorb more suffering than I thought. And along with it, comes hope. Maybe this space will give courage to the many people who pass to join us, and eight hundred people will change the world where eight can’t. Or maybe it will at least linger the next time I talk to someone who is pro-war, so I can speak to their fears and change their mind instead of closing it.

I hold onto the sensation of spaciousness as much as I can for the half hour we sit still in the square, and hold onto the memory of it for as long as I can after sitting. It lasts until I read the next newspaper--two more soldiers killed, more evidence of presidential lies, no WMDs anywhere in sight--and my soul tightens again inside me. There is it again.

Hate is never dispelled by hate. Breathe in. Breathe out.

This article was originally published in the 2003 edition of The Provider (www.burn-productions.com), a literary magazine distributed every year during Labor Day weekend at the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock City, Nevada.

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