Faith in Humanity?

Coming into the experience of our recent Nepal pilgrimage & trek, there were a few who mentioned that they were hoping that the trip would restore their faith in humanity. Further, that maybe their faith was in question because of the chaos of the world today, the terrible things happening all around us all the time, and the seemingly callous attitude many folks have toward it all.

I thought about that quite a bit over the course of the trip. Some even mentioned that their faith in humanity was, on some level, restored by the various things that we encountered, experiences that we had. It can feel easy to to receive in Nepal where people who have so much less than us (in the West) materially seem to be much more at peace and content with their lives.

When I'm in Nepal I find it quite easy to reside in a space of peacefulness, happiness and openness. I'm even more outgoing than I am back here in Nashville. There’s something about Nepal — its people, the energy there, the ancient roots in practice — that cultivates this openness for us and and helps us connect with our Buddha nature — our innate qualities of love and compassion that serve as the core of who we really are.

Then, inevitably, we have to leave and on the way the feeling of stepping out of that space and away from those people can be quite jarring. First by going to the airport where you start to encounter more hostility, more nervous energy, more aggression, and so forth. And then as you progress away from Nepal to places like Doha and eventually the United States it can feel like those qualities that question our faith in humanity start to rear their ugly heads.

I noticed this happening and I took it as an opportunity to really try and put my practice to work. When someone cut in front of me in line or behaved aggressively in the airports, as they do, I would remind myself of the fact that they too are a sentient being with innate qualities of love and compassion — no matter how hidden those qualities were in that moment, they’re there and I just continued to remind myself of this. I did this again and again whenever I found that I was slipping back into modes of judgment or frustration or hostility to the actions that I was experiencing. 

I thought of all of you, and especially those that came on this trip to Nepal, as I worked to cultivate and maintain this faith in humanity that our experience together had helped to restore. And I want you to know, that it's a very important faith to cultivate. It's a faith that will help maintain our commitment to the powers of yoga and Buddhism (or whatever other path you may have be choosing in your life to be your true self) and connect with our true nature on the moment to moment, day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis for the rest of our lives. And through these attempts to cultivate that faith in humanity, we’re doing the work of the path. Because the way we can do it is to continually remind ourselves that no matter how negative our emotions get, in particular toward others, and vice-versa — ALL of us — have an innate essence that is Buddha nature. The potential for goodness is there.