01.12.2024 Help When Your Heart Breaks On New Year’s Day, I awoke to well wishes from family and friends at home in Japan filling my inbox. New Year’s Day, or “Oshōgatsu,” is a significant holiday in Japan, celebrated with many traditions and rituals on the day. But these happy messages were soon followed by the unexpected news of another big earthquake in my home country. I turned on the news, trying to get caught up on what was unfolding at home. The cameras panned across the dramatic aftermath of flattened homes with New Year’s decorations still hanging beautifully over their crushed front doors. Warnings of damaging aftershock effects flashed across the screen.   Although I’m aware of the danger of consuming too much information, I was already hooked by the news, my mind spinning with anxious thoughts. With war and conflict happening around the world, it’s been hard to process these heartbreaking events from afar. It’s easy to feel helpless. In her article “‘Natural’ Disasters, Suffering, and Joy,” Jill S. Schneiderman explores Rebecca Solnit’s insights on human behavior post-disaster. She emphasizes how such events evoke humanity’s “best responses,” such as “spontaneous caring, rational generosity, courage under duress, brave altruism.”    “In the aftermath of disaster,” she writes, “people wake up to the reality that suffering is inevitable and also recognize that the way we respond to the suffering in our communities dictates whether that suffering will be alleviated or exacerbated.”    When it comes to confronting suffering, be it in our own lives or the lives of others, caring, generosity, courage, and altruism are all meaningful places to start. As Kyo Maclear writes in her response to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake in Japan, so too is cultivating softness, drawing on Pema Chödrön’s wisdom to “stay with the soft spot — the bodhicitta — and not harden over it.”    “We cultivate softness because it is a fragile world,” Maclear writes, “made all the more so by our efforts to suppress this awareness in the name of growth and progress. This softness is about leaving ourselves open, so that we do not harden with purpose, so that we allow ourselves the space to mourn what can’t be brought back.”   While waiting for government aids to arrive, many kitchen bodhisattvas in Japan have taken on the task of preparing meals at evacuation centers for fellow evacuees from food they found in the debris of their own homes. Others have volunteered to clean toilets and disinfect dishes. Firefighters from all over the country are working with local rescuers and delivering essentials. Bodhisattvas like these can always be found in the midst of devastation, alleviating suffering when and where they can. In the face of the world’s suffering, the three teachings below remind me to extend my compassion and courage. Let’s keep our hearts open and soft, doing what we can to help. —Megumi Yoshida, Art Director, Lion’s Roar magazine In Times of Crisis, Draw Upon the Strength of Peace When we are called upon to help in a crisis, says Kaira Jewel Lingo, we must respond. But the way we do is crucial. There is so much that needs to be done, so much suffering to respond to as humanity heads ever faster toward peril and destruction. If we are to help bring about peace and relieve this suffering, we must act and live in ways that create peace now, in each moment. Seeing with the eye of wisdom in our palm, we can act without expectation while nourishing our connection and joy. We must not forget to take care of ourselves and each other so that we don’t burn out. Sometimes, rather than letting urgency rule the day, that may mean pausing to go to the beach. We can deeply attend to our breath and our steps, knowing this will only strengthen us for the significant work ahead. ADVERTISEMENT How to Help When Your Heart Breaks   Caring for people who are suffering is a loving, even heroic calling, but it takes a toll. Roshi Joan Halifax teaches this five-step program to care for yourself while caring for others.   Catching myself in a distressing and fragile situation as I watched the young Nepali girl in pain, I shifted my attention to the simple sensation of my feet on the floor. I took an in-breath and allowed myself to get grounded. I then recalled briefly that I was there to serve, as were all those who were working on the child. I kept my awareness on my situation and stayed grounded. When my heart rate slowed and my head cleared, I lent my attention again to the child. All this occurred in a matter of a few seconds. I recognized that though this was a very hard thing for this child to go through (and for the clinicians as well), the doctors and nurses and aides were saving the child’s life. As soon as I had this thought, I was flooded with warmth and a deep sense of gratitude that the man had brought his daughter to the clinic and that our team, including these compassionate Nepali nurses, were there to keep this little girl alive. I took in the whole room and sent love and strength to all who were there, including the child.   We Need Action and Reflection Kyo Maclear discusses how we might find relief and perspective when such a crisis seems to take over the news, and, for many of us, our minds.   There is an alternative approach to recovery. Pema Chödrön calls it remaining with the soft spot: “Any experiences you have, particularly very strong emotions, are doorways to bodhichitta (the mind of enlightenment). The trick is to stay with the soft spot — the bodhichitta — and not harden over it. That’s the basic bodhichitta instruction: stay with the soft spot.” We cultivate softness because it is a fragile world, made all the more so by our efforts to suppress this awareness in the name of growth and progress. This softness is not a matter of clinging to sorrow, nor is it a melancholic acceptance of things as they are, but rather about leaving ourselves open, so that we do not harden with purpose, so that we allow ourselves the space to mourn what can’t be brought back.