And Still, Everything is Possible
Embracing all things, facing reality no matter what.
I’ve had a meditation practice that I’ve now kept for over ten years. At the end of each session, I conclude my practice with this offering:
Living beings are numberless, I vow to serve them. Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them. Dharma gates are numberless, I vow to enter them. The way of the Buddha is unattainable, I vow to become it.
Because these verses use Buddhist language, allow me to rephrase them in more general terms:
The opportunities to be of benefit to others are without limit. I commit to these opportunities. It is easy to be caught in confusion and ignorance, causing harm to myself and others. I commit to avoiding harm, and creating conditions that harm others. Reality offers limitless chances to grow in compassion and wisdom. I commit to recognizing life in this way. Living fully in reality is difficult. I commit to doing so.
What you might notice right away is the ‘infinite’ language used in the original verse. Numberless, inexhaustible, unattainable. As far as making commitments go, these may seem like contradictory statements. How are these things achievable, if it’s impossible to reach a certain goal?
For me, these vows are more than just reminding myself of my personal obligations as a practitioner of Buddhism. It’s recalling the daily paradox of being human: that we are capable of everything, even in a finite space. It doesn’t matter what the situation is: there’s still something to be discovered. There is much that can be accomplished, even amidst countless obstacles.
It’s not a matter of setting the bar impossibly high, or setting personal expectations that can never be met. It’s about cultivating an attitude that gives life more space: acknowledging that nothing that happens is the final word, that possibility is a natural function of life and always will be.
How we act within this paradox is what ultimately matters. It’s not enough to know something is possible; we have to give that possibility shape. For me, discovering how my pursuit of these commitments out in the world is where I can make my life count. It’s not about acquiring certainty about how life works, but challenging myself to be curious and see if I’m willing to let my commitments change me.
As a human being, it is highly unlikely (in my opinion), that I will be of benefit to everyone. I don’t think I’ll be able to release all confusion within myself, or become a Buddha. It is more likely that I will try to do my best, while making plenty of mistakes along the way and feeling all kinds of resistance.
If I cannot accomplish these goals in their entirety, then noticing what happens when I point myself in their direction becomes an interesting situation. What I appreciate about these verses is their energetic quality: This is hard. Keep going. The odds are long. Try anyway. It’s an impossible task. Find out if that’s true. Orienting myself towards something beyond skepticism or doubt takes me outside of a comfort zone. It gives me the chance to see more of my nature, how genuine I can be in the world.
Of course, none of this easy. What has been particularly challenging for me can be found in the third verse: Reality offers limitless chances to grow in compassion and wisdom. I commit to recognizing life in this way. I’ve struggled with this, especially lately. Accepting this invitation to practice and grow into a more loving human frequently feels like a tall task.
As I explore this commitment, the city I grew up in remains under ICE occupation. People are dying, families are being torn apart, detained and disappeared without any respect toward their rights or humanity. All over the world, we are reckoning with cruelty and inhumanity of the highest order. At times, it feels like the worst of what humans can do is being encouraged instead of challenged. Indifferent brutality of all kinds is not only persistent, but protected.
It might sound crazy, but my vows tell me that these are the ideal conditions to lean into. The pressure of the moment is the opportunity to wake up: stepping into the humanity that I own and the humanity I share with everyone around me. Instead of falling into despair and hopelessness, I’m called to walk through fear and towards a bigger version of who I can be.
In practice, I’ve learned that everything in life is something to connect with. There’s nothing to run away from, no experience to be rejected (even if I don’t agree with it). Whatever happens is something to lean into, an opportunity to become more of a human being.
It takes effort to make that kind of choice, to say nothing of turning it into a lifelong practice. How can I have compassion for the masked agent who kidnaps a child, the politician who gleefully celebrates bombing a city, the openly racist president who mocks peoples’ pain and suffering? Where can wisdom be found in a world that feels like it’s lost its sanity?
The point of my vows are to find out. I don’t have the answers to these questions, not even in this moment of writing. There are days where I don’t want to do any of these things. I don’t want to recognize wisdom or compassion. I’m in the process of discovering where my resistance is, asking myself to stay attentive to where I open and when I close. It’s challenging, but it feels more potent than zoning out and shutting down. Ignorance is not bliss; it’s more suffering, particularly for those who are more vulnerable than I am. Staying close, refusing to lose my empathy, connecting to my sense of being human: this is the work. I don’t fully know what I’ll discover in pursuit of these commitments, but I sense that practicing what they symbolize is important.
As I write, I’m reminded of something that a professor of mine once shared with me. I can’t remember if I’ve written about it here, but it’s worth mentioning once more.
It was an Introduction to Justice and Peace Studies class. I was tacking on a minor in this field at the end of my college studies, during my senior year. The professor in question was a practitioner as much as a scholar: he had spent his entire life in circles of activism, organizing, and political practice. I was eager to take his course and learn more about what it’s like to practice justice work in real time.
Standing up in front of the class, preparing to teach a section on successful resistance movements, he uttered something that made everyone pause. “The first step in justice work is acknowledging that you will live and die in an unjust world.”
You probably could have heard a pin drop after he said that. I recall a few incredulous glances being exchanged between my peers. That’s what we’re starting with? What is that supposed to mean? For a group of 18-21 year olds, it’s not necessarily the most encouraging thing to hear.
The point my professor was making is the same paradox present in my vows. That is, it’s important to acknowledge the challenge of the task. It is unlikely that we’ll ever see the fruit of how we act in our present lives. Human beings have made this world a profoundly difficult place to live in for one another, and the work of making it more bearable is longer than one lifetime.
But that’s only one side of the story. Recognizing that something is hard doesn’t make it impossible, or not worth doing. Even in this lifetime (as my professor went on to demonstrate), we can witness profound change. Empires fall, hearts soften, humanity finds a different way to live. Everything we believe to be so immovable today, may come apart tomorrow.
If what we hope for doesn’t happen in the present, we may give life to something in the future. For example, if these resistance movements in different parts of the world hadn’t happened, if ordinary people hadn’t found their courage and come together to struggle for something better, then there would’ve been nothing for my professor to teach. No class, no inspiration, no wisdom or knowledge of how things can be different. Because of their belief in possibility, I’m writing about it now.
Whether we have vows or not, whether our work is out in the world or in the fullness of our individual lives, I think this point of view is tremendously valuable to have in this particular moment. We need to have an orientation of life that points us towards a horizon, that can ride the waves of apathy and despair. Within ourselves and alongside each other, we must gather enough space to hold what is dying and what is being born.
It’s easy to succumb to the sense that nothing we do matters, or that the suffering in our world is too much to overcome. In fact, the struggle to resist that temptation is the great struggle of our time: a fight to retain the core of our humanity, to believe in the love and compassion that is inherent in each of us. Power, and the hunger for it, has grown so large that those who hold it are trying to snuff out any feeling of hope for something better. We are being told that innocent people deserve to die, that we should be afraid of each other, that we should give up and let those with power determine our fate. Living in quiet submission, insensitive to our conscience, simply trying to survive on our own, is what allows that influence to grow.
The journey ahead is long, and the way is often dark. There’s no getting around how difficult this time is, or how many more will continue to suffer. The work is inexhaustible, the needs are numberless. We can commit to doing the work anyway.
As we do so, it’s important to have motivations that serve us beyond fear and worry. This work is not necessarily a bitter striving towards a harsh conclusion. The work is nurturing, flowering, opening, enlightening. It’s poetry, music, celebration, and rest. It’s writing, reading, searching for things that your heart wants to discover. It’s cultivating a life that encourages you to grow, instead of numbing you into a standstill.
When we commit to our wholeness, no matter what or how that looks like, we invest in something more personal, more authentic. It is spacious enough to respect who we are, and show something meaningful to the world around us. In that space, we can hold the vulnerability and grief of our present, and the enduring belief in our future.
Personally, I’ve never subscribed to the idea of impossibility. Anyone who says something is impossible has never bothered to find that out for themselves. Especially in my work, at the bedside and in those liminal spaces of illness and dying, I’ve seen things that simply cannot account for the idea of the impossible. There’s more at work in this world, currents of life that are much deeper than pain and suffering.
For the sake of our wellbeing and the wellbeing of all, it is our profound responsibility to discover what’s possible. It will only work when we show up and take part in it. The sorrows and difficulties of this world are not going away, but neither is our humanity. Let us suspend all doubt and see what it’s like to enter, to serve, and to become.