As we move toward another winter season, I’m reminded that in the communities I love, there are two separate worlds unfolding. In one, people are looking forward to a season of connection where holiday gatherings, parties, and travel abound. In the other world, people are having difficult conversations about risk tolerance, taking stock of safety measures needed for travel or gatherings, or abstaining from these activities altogether. 

Over the last few years, I have witnessed the incredible dissonance between these two worlds within the Buddhist communities I practice and teach in. This spring, when the US ended the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, I saw practitioners who were thrilled that meditation centers were dropping mask mandates and couldn’t wait to get back to a “normal” retreat. I also spoke with, sat with, and cried with others who knew that for them, this change meant something close to exile from the dharma communities they cherished. Overwhelmingly, that second group of people were chronically ill, immunocompromised, or disabled.

I feel acutely aware of this in part because I currently live with a chronic, invisible illness that places me at greater risk of long-term suffering and disability were I to contract COVID. Retreat practice and sangha have always been a deep refuge for me, so I was heartbroken as meditation centers that had once been my spiritual home became increasingly risky to access. Even as rates of the virus surged, I have found it difficult, and at times quite unwelcome, to out myself as vulnerable and ask for accommodations. As a result, I have lost the unfettered access to once beloved communities, practice opportunities, and aspects of my livelihood.

For many in the US, the rationale for dropping protections, like masking and free access to testing, has been deceptively simple: today, only members of vulnerable groups or the elderly are likely to die from COVID. Take a moment and really read that carefully. Allow the unspoken part of the sentence to grow louder. Place yourself in the shoes of someone who is chronically ill, disabled, or elderly and is receiving the message from our government and institutions that their life is acceptable collateral damage to neighbors who are eager to get back to normal at all costs. Ableism like this is baked into every aspect of the culture, and our meditation centers are certainly not exempt from it.

It may be helpful to remember that COVID-19 is still among the top leading causes of death in the United States. This year, Long COVID will also induct millions of new people into the ranks of the sick and disabled. Depending on which study you review, Long COVID affects anywhere from 7.5 to 40 percent of people who contract the virus and has more than 200 possible symptoms. It can last for months or indefinitely, and there is no cure or standard effective treatment. Long COVID can negatively impact a person’s quality of life, leave them bedridden, unable to work to support themselves, and more. Unfortunately, as a culture, we seem eager to forget this reality. Our yearning to return to “normal” is incongruent with the fact that vulnerable people must continue to live, work, and practice in a world that often feels like it would rather pretend they don’t exist than adapt in a compassionate way. In the Buddhist community, how do we face this truth, rather than turn toward delusion?

Ableism like this is baked into every aspect of the culture, and our meditation centers are certainly not exempt from it.

This delusion is consistently fortified by the invisibility of sick and disabled people in public spaces. Whether these spaces are physically inaccessible, or a person feels too unwell or unsafe to join them, the end result is a disappearance from the public eye. I often think about this in relation to dharma communities throughout the country. Which sangha members are now absent from your local sitting group? Who are the longtime community pillars that have quietly absented themselves from our meditation centers? Did they just stop practicing, or do they no longer feel safe in the communities that used to be a refuge? 

I’m not alone in longing for a spiritual community that holds on to an ethos of care at a time when masking and other precautions are unpopular. Monica Magtoto, a movement teacher who supports many meditation retreats, shared her concerns about dharma centers dropping mask requirements in a recent conversation:

“As someone who has experienced the life-changing impact of retreat, knowing that that experience is now not an option, or is now a dangerous option, for so many people is disheartening to say the least. It’s a huge reminder that many dharma spaces are only created with the most privileged and able-bodied in mind. Are we living the precepts if we choose to exclude or do active harm to so many? Are we living the eightfold path?”

Today, meditation centers have a wide range of approaches to COVID, and while some protocols are inclusive, many reinforce the message that our sick, elderly, and disabled sangha members are acceptable collateral damage. For drop-in groups and daylong retreats, a vast majority of centers have eliminated previous precautions such as masking and onsite testing. Some communities offer suggested recommendations like vaccination, testing negative with an at-home test, or not attending when sick. Other centers have kept mitigations like air purifiers and CO₂ monitors, and a few even hold occasional outdoor events. For most residential retreats, precautions have typically dropped to a testing requirement on the first day of the retreat. A very small number of retreat centers do offer retreats with a focus on practice outdoors, and some retreat centers have brought back masking for specific retreats this fall as COVID cases see a seasonal increase.

One notable outlier, the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California, still has a wide range of COVID precautions in place, including masking, clear descriptions of the air filtration systems present in their space, and priority seating next to windows and air filters for the elderly and disabled. On their website, they share:

“When we commit to justice movement building and mindfulness, this means that we commit to self-care as collective care, and we also dedicate ourselves to supporting the health of our communities. This is not achieved through policing. It comes about through building relationships of trust that express themselves in our saying to one another, ‘I’ve got your back. Your health and your family’s health and the health of the people with whom you come in physical contact with are important to me.’”

While we may have seen public declarations like this in 2020 and 2021, such an explicit statement committing to collective care today is relatively uncommon. To those living with chronic illness and disability, however, such sentiments can offer tremendous refuge and allow us to better plan where we sit or go on retreat. This refuge is especially needed as meditation centers resume prepandemic levels of programming with fewer safety precautions. In the past year, I have watched the meditation centers I work with make sweeping changes to their COVID policies, often with little to no leadership or input opportunities for vulnerable groups. One colleague who works at a retreat center, and asked to remain anonymous, shared her thoughts about how dharma communities are showing up for the sick and disabled, and her own experience with Long COVID: 

“It feels hypocritical that we wouldn’t ask our sangha, who are dedicated to awakening and freedom from suffering, to put on a mask to alleviate someone else’s suffering. It feels deeply contrary to our mission. How is it that we are not open to being even slightly uncomfortable when it could mean someone else’s life? The stakes are too high and long-term effects are still not even fully known. When I share this view, people often respond, ‘Well, that’s because you have Long COVID.’ Well, yes… that’s precisely the point.”

This is not the first time a dharma community has faced this type of devaluation of sick people. In fact, it goes all the way back to the time of the Buddha, in the Kucchivikara-vatthu Sutta. In this sutta, a monk was incredibly ill with what was likely dysentery. He couldn’t care for himself and, due to his illness, also couldn’t do anything to support his fellow monks. Because of this, the monks stopped caring for him. As you might imagine, the Buddha had some things to say about this. He said to the monks:

“Monks, you have no mother, you have no father, who might tend to you. If you don’t tend to one another, who then will tend to you? Whoever would tend to me, should tend to the sick.” 

This is not far off from what we face today. Without a public safety net that demonstrates true care for us, if we don’t take care of one another, who will? The Buddha is clear that if we would care for him, then that grace should also be extended to others. This is at the heart of our dharma practice: not just to meditate and receive the teachings, but to truly live them. It’s said that the Buddha once shared with his attendant Ananda that sangha, with its admirable friendship and camaraderie, is the whole of the holy life. So many of us know this in our bones: the friendships we’ve made and the support we’ve both given and received within our dharma communities are jewels of immeasurable value. But how are we living this teaching today, if we cannot extend this sacred friendship to our sick and disabled sangha members? 

As we explore this question, perhaps even more questions will reveal themselves, opening up deeper teachings around sangha, sila (right conduct), and our own mortality. We may ask ourselves: What delusions are we clinging to, particularly in terms of how we devalue the sick, elderly, or disabled? Are we denying the inevitable reality that, in time, we too will become sick, disabled, and pass away? Are our decisions truly aligned with our commitment to nonharming? As we sit with these questions, it is likely we will also ask how we might do better. Fortunately, there is a simple place to begin: actively listening to those who are sick, immunocompromised, and disabled and taking their needs for inclusion and safety in our communities seriously.

The post Sangha in the Age of Long COVID appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Larry Brilliant, doctor, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and ex-hippie, was a crucial player in the global effort to eradicate smallpox in 1973, but his path there was unusual. He was ensconced in an ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas when his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, told him to go to Delhi immediately to help eradicate smallpox in India, one of the world’s last strongholds of the virus. The end of smallpox, Neem Karoli Baba said, would be “God’s gift to humanity.”

Brilliant went to Delhi and worked for the World Health Organization. He later became a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, co-founded The Well, one of the world’s first online communities, with Stewart Brand, and was vice president of Google and executive director of Google.org, the charitable foundation of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. He has advised several American presidents—but not Donald Trump. Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. At present, he is the founder and CEO of Pandefense, a company advising enterprises in fighting pandemics. For decades Brilliant has warned of pandemics and accurately predicted the coronavirus crisis.

I meet Brilliant in Mill Valley’s town square, then we take refuge from the piercing California midday sun in a shady restaurant. We order sandwiches, water, and coffee. “Let’s start,” says Brilliant, putting his small blue cap on the table. “What do you want to know?”

–Bernhard Poerksen

As early as 2006 in a TED Talk in Monterey, California, you warned about a respiratory virus originating in Asia that would jump from animal to humans. At the time, you described in great detail that a virus would spread super quickly, bring air and freight traffic to a halt, push some countries’ health care systems to the brink of collapse, and cause many deaths. But one did not have to be prophetically gifted to make such a prediction—for the threat of a pandemic had been apparent to many epidemiologists for a long time. We fly around the world, we colonize the last wildernesses on the planet, we burn down forests, we eat wild animals—given the conditions of globalization and this enforced proximity and encounter between humans and animals, it is hardly surprising to see a whole variety of viruses jump to humans and to see the spread of novel diseases.

In your TED talk, you used a computer simulation to illustrate the spread of a virus. Your conclusion: Outbreaks are inevitable, pandemics are optional. In order to prevent an outbreak from turning into a pandemic, it takes—“early detection, early response.” This is the key formula for fighting a pandemic, and it still holds true today.

Soon after your talk, you became a consultant to Steven Soderbergh, director of the Hollywood movie Contagion. This film, a streaming blockbuster of the last two years, today feels like a hyperrealistic report of the COVID pandemic. In the movie, the virus that jumps from bats and pigs to humans is much deadlier, but other than that, you once again got a lot of things right. Yes, based on what we know from history, I assumed that such a pandemic would come to us from China or Southeast Asia; I assumed that the virus would be transmitted via touch or air and would spread enormously fast. And in the movie, like in the COVID-19 pandemic reality, we have amazing, altruistic doctors and nurses, but we also have panic buying, the scramble for scarce vaccines, and lots of ignorance, disinformation, and bizarre conspiracy theories.

The bullshitters and self-appointed seers and healers in Contagion do not peddle hydroxychloroquine but instead propagate a quack remedy from forsythia flowers. You found the mistake! We missed the part about the hydroxychloroquine. One hundred points! [Laughs.] But once again: much more revealing than misplaced pride in correct or actually not-quite-so-correct prophesies of doom is the question of what I myself and other scientists who predicted similar things did not see and understand, despite everything we know.

Where did you go wrong? My fundamental mistake was that I, like Magister Ludi Joseph Knecht, the hero in Hermann Hesse’s novel The Glass Bead Game, assumed a completely rational world, as though we lived in Hesse’s fictional province of Castalia, a place of enlightened and judicious decision-making. Instead, we have been seeing divisions and hatred, silo thinking, the politicization of mask-wearing and vaccination, the return of nationalism and populism on the world political stage. All of these are centrifugal forces pulling us apart at a moment in history when nothing would be more important than consensus, cooperation, and collective strategizing.

But you are also saying: There is no reason to give up. Why?  I can only give you my personal reasons. In 1967, WHO developed a comprehensive global program to eradicate smallpox, an extremely cruel disease that killed more than half a billion people in the last century alone. In some cases, you cannot touch a single spot on a victim’s body without causing bloody sores. Other forms of smallpox are inevitably deadly. Some attack pregnant women in particular. In 1967, there were still forty-three countries affected by smallpox. In 1972, the year I joined the program, the number of countries with smallpox was down to five. In the fall of 1975, I was part of a team that was sent to Bangladesh because it looked like they might have found what turned out to be the last case of Variola major, the killer variant of smallpox.

You discovered the last patient infected with “killer smallpox.”  Yes. In October 1975, we found 3-year-old Rahima Banu in the village of Kuralia. It was obvious from her scarred face that she was ill with smallpox. She had become infected with Variola major. We searched ten miles around that case, we double-visited every household and vaccinated everybody who had been in contact with her. And we offered a reward of 1,000 dollars for the detection of further cases.

Which was a small fortune at the time. It was. So it was not surprising that we quickly received thousands of reports. We followed up on them meticulously, but all cases turned out to be chickenpox. That is why we were finally convinced that this little girl was the last living human being infected with the deadly variant of smallpox.

Can you describe what the encounter looked like? There we were, standing in this small, impoverished village, looking at each other. First, Rahima Banu hid behind her mother; she was crying and terrified by this white-skinned man. At some point, I gave her a balloon that said, “Smallpox can be stopped.” I had had them made in San Francisco and carried them around with me for years. And I took a picture.

What was your personal reaction? I cried. For I realized that after thousands of years, millions of dead, and a madly exhausting fight against a terrible disease, the chain of infection and suffering would be interrupted right here and now. Sometimes I would think to myself that I had seen the last deadly smallpox viruses dying in the sun when this little girl started coughing, picking the scabs off her skin and throwing them to the floor. In any case, this image of Rahima Banu, who survived the disease, continues to be a key inspiration for my life to this day. And now I ask you: Having experienced something like this, how can I not be optimistic?

For you, the eradication of smallpox is a success story that proves global cooperation in fighting a pandemic is possible and can work.  Exactly. I was then working in India, where smallpox outbreaks exploded once again in 1974, a country with more than twenty different languages, with a population of then 600 million people, twenty million of which were constantly on the road, thus able to potentially spread the virus. Again, if it is possible to eradicate smallpox under conditions such as these, why not believe that other miracles can happen too?

How big was the group of people fighting smallpox? There were some 150,000 people in India alone: doctors, nurses, vaccination experts, people with local knowledge and language skills who went from place to place, from village to village, knocking on every door to find people infected with smallpox. They came from fifty different countries. It was people from all races and ethnicities, from every conceivable political and religious background, and it included Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Shintoists. Even Russians and Americans worked together in the middle of the Cold War, driven by a common vision and mission: liberating mankind from this terrible disease.

It is a banal observation, but the situation in 20th-century India cannot really be compared with the situation today. We are now living in a hyperglobalized world. And the smallpox virus is more lethal but more easily spotted—by pustules and scars—than the corona viruses. And yet: What can be learned from the past? Goodwill is not enough. It takes perseverance, strategic skills, a feeling for a country’s culture, political support, and the courage to make quick, unconventional decisions that will not please everybody. And it takes medical technology innovation.

You worked for many years as a doctor for WHO, coordinating vaccination campaigns in rural India. In your book Sometimes Brilliant, which was published in 2017, you describe in detail how, in the face of enormous resistance, you put the large city of Jamshedpur under quarantine when it was the site of new smallpox outbreaks. You were driven and obsessed by the goal of finally eradicating this disease.  I was. The mere fact that the shutdown of Jamshedpur prevented a high-ranking politician from leaving the city and that we kept him quarantined in the city against his will almost led to my deportation from India. It was really close. But I can only say: Do not put me on a pedestal! The fight against smallpox only succeeded because of the tireless effort of almost 150,000 people, especially the local Indian staff. And it succeeded with the aid of epidemiological giants such as Muni Inder dev Sharma, Nicole Grasset, Bill Foege, and Donald Henderson, who trained me.

And yet one thing strikes me as unusual, after all. I am referring to your unwavering focus and commitment, for which you yourself credit a man who in India is revered as a saint. His name is Neem Karoli Baba, and he has a temple in Kainchi, at the foot of the Himalayas. How did you end up there? It is the classic dropout story. After medical school and an internship in San Francisco, I lived in a commune. And in the early seventies, my wife and I, together with forty others, set out in buses for India, following the Silk Road, known today as the “hippie trail.” We drove through Turkey and Iran to Afghanistan, across the Khyber Pass to Pakistan and Nepal, and finally into the Himalayas. My wife, Girija, led us to follow Baba Ram Dass to the Kainchi ashram, in northern India. There, we meditated, sang, and practiced yoga together with Neem Karoli Baba’s Indian disciples and a handful of Westerners. One day in July 1973, Neem Karoli Baba told me to go to Delhi immediately to work for the United Nations and help eradicate smallpox. The imminent eradication of this disease, he said, is God’s gift to humanity because of the hard work of dedicated health workers.

What was your response? At first, I did not respond at all, hoping he would drop this crazy idea. But Neem Karoli Baba did not let up. So I went to Delhi, but of course the people at WHO, a suborganization of the United Nations, did not want to hire a hippie with a big bushy beard wearing a white robe who was all fired up by the prophecies of his guru. I returned to the ashram. I had barely arrived when Neem Karoli Baba ordered me again to make the daylong trip to Delhi and to offer my help.

How often did you have to go back? At least twelve or thirteen times over the course of several months. Sometimes he was confronting me in front of everybody; he’d throw apples or oranges at my testicles when we were sitting at his feet and ask: “What’s the matter? Why are you still here? Get yourself to Delhi, to WHO!” Eventually I tied my hair into a ponytail, borrowed an ill-fitting suit, and bought a tie ugly as sin—my concession to the dress code of the establishment. The WHO people too became friendlier and softened up more. We got to know each other. And finally, it happened. I was hired, first as a simple office employee, then as a doctor to help eradicate smallpox.

“Having experienced something like this, how can I not be optimistic?”

But how does an Indian guru, sitting in a temple, wrapped in a wool blanket, detached from the world’s news channels and definitely not a reader of epidemiological articles, even know what the smallpox virus is? And how does he know that there is somebody in front of him who will do everything he can to eradicate this disease from the earth? I just don’t get it. Welcome to the club! I don’t get it either. And believe me, I have been thinking a lot about the mystery of this kind of transformation. When I first came to Neem Karoli Baba, I was far from believing that there was something bigger than my own little life. He changed me through his simple presence. It was a transmission without words, beyond words. He gave me the courage to continue with my work when I was gripped by despair and yet another smallpox outbreak somewhere threatened to thwart all our efforts. But how did he do that? And why did he foresee the possibility of eradicating this horrible disease? If there is someone who understands what has happened here, they have unpacked one of the great mysteries of life. And I deeply hope that they will call me and tell me.

What does your guru mean to you today? My house here in Mill Valley, California, is filled with pictures of him. And I still see myself as working for him, following his instructions. Seriously. I worked for WHO in smallpox, polio, and blindness programs, in refugee camps in Southeast Asia. And over the years, when I ran out of money, I sneaked back into corporate America to set up a company until I had earned enough to continue with the really important tasks.

As soon as smallpox was eradicated, you set your eyes on the next big task. Together with your wife, Girija Brilliant, and people with WHOm, along with your friends in the hippie movement and the Grateful Dead, you founded the Seva Foundation, which aims to fight needless blindness. How did that come about?After we eradicated smallpox we all went back to our universities or other jobs. But we  had tasted success. We felt that so many had been saved from suffering and death, and we were touched by it so deeply that we wanted to repeat it. We did not only want the epidemiological experts on board but also people who had a good heart and all kinds of good ideas, though perhaps not such good credentials. Moreover, based on my own experiences, I wanted to find out what arises from a combination of spirituality and public health. My former boss at WHO, Nicole Grasset, said: “You are planning the Red Cross of hippies.”

It seems she was right. Absolutely. One day, she sent me a telegram: she had raised money to fight blindness in Nepal and wanted to know whether we’d be interested in collaborating. I said yes, of course—and I invited my coworkers and fellow supporters to a meeting. There were some friends from Neem Karoli Baba’s ashram, some former small-
pox warriors, as we called them, plus epidemiologists and ophthalmologists from the United States and from India, including the medical doctor and surgeon Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, who later became famous as the founder of Aravind Eye Hospital in South India.

There is a photo of this meeting, which took place in 1979. Standing next to medical doctors and epidemiologists is your friend Wavy Gravy, the poet, clown, and political activist who gained overnight fame at the Woodstock festival. He went onstage and promised breakfast in bed to 400,000 people, and he, together with members of his commune, actually distributed food to several thousand people who hung out near the stage. And everything remained peaceful! This combination of heart, spirituality, and mind worked, and I think it is the secret of Seva’s success. For example, to raise money for Seva, Wavy Gravy managed to mobilize the rock ’n’ roll scene, and he organized the first of many benefit concerts with the Grateful Dead in San Francisco. This way, we have been able to raise more than half a billion dollars over the last decades—money that went directly to give the gift of sight to five million blind people.

Today, more than five million people in two dozen countries have regained their eyesight, thanks to the Seva Foundation. What can we learn from this? Can the principles you have followed in your work be applied more broadly? I think so. For example, we found out that one of the main causes of blindness is cataract—a disease that can result from age and poverty. In order to improve eyesight, you need to have a lens that is put into your eye. When we got started in 1979, such lenses cost some 500 dollars, and they were all manufactured in the developed world. Everybody was convinced that the developing countries were not smart enough and that they lacked the technology and hygienic conditions necessary to manufacture their own lenses.

Sounds quite arrogant. And it is dangerous nonsense. So what did we do to prove them wrong? We bought the machines you need to manufacture these so-called intraocular lenses. We disassembled them and smuggled the individual parts to India in our backpacks. There we reassembled them in a clinic and helped create Aravind Aurolab, which is today one of the biggest manufacturers of such lenses worldwide. Now they cost less than a dollar, and any farmer in Nepal or India can afford them. We thus furnished proof that entire production sites can be exported to developing countries to reduce costs.

As we come to the end of our conversation, during which we have traced the path from eradicating smallpox to fighting blindness to tackling the coronavirus pandemic, one thing is becoming clear to me—namely the key role that narratives of success play in presenting other, new ways of thinking and living. You once famously said that the world is ruled by God and anecdotes. I am not so sure about God, but I am sure about anecdotes and narratives. That’s an anecdote right there. [Laughs.] Of course, I know that it is not really fashionable to come out as a believer. But I have seen too many inexplicable and impossible things to not believe that there is a higher power. But the thing is, there has never been a human disease eradicated other than smallpox. If we hadn’t been successful, we probably would not have the courage and the perseverance to tackle other diseases such as polio, malaria, and measles with the same resolve—until they too perhaps one day disappear from the face of the earth.

The post The Doctor and His Guru appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Frank Ostaseski is considered one of the most important representatives of the hospice movement in the United States. Inspired by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the teachings of Zen Buddhism, he is one of the co-founders of the Zen Hospice in San Francisco and for decades has shared his insights and knowledge in lectures and workshops worldwide. Ostaseski’s book The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully does not provide any ready-made recipes for better living in the face of the finiteness of life and death. Rather, its author—sometimes in the guise of a poet and storyteller, sometimes as an existential psychologist, then again as a phenomenologist of concrete experience—provides tools and suggestions for how to bring your full self to being with people who are dying. The media scholar Bernhard Poerksen met Ostaseski on his houseboat in the harbor of Sausalito, California.

Poerksen: You are one of the key voices in the American hospice movement and have spent all your professional life thinking about dying and death. In recent years, because of the pandemic, illness, dying, and death have dominated the public discourse. My question is: How has the pandemic shock changed how we feel about dying and death? Has there been a societal learning process?

Ostaseski: I see a double effect. On the one hand, thanks to the virus, the insight that we are all interconnected has been transformed into an experience. Today, we have to acknowledge that such a pandemic can only be met collectively and globally, only through cooperation, mutual consideration, and through vaccinating as many people as possible. On the other hand, dying and death have come out of the closet, so to speak, and moved to the center of public attention. By now, pretty much everyone knows of at least someone who has died of COVID-related illness.

We are talking about more than one million Americans and more than six million people worldwide so far. That’s right. Of course, death has always been there; it is, after all, part of life. But now it has an undeniable presence—and it is cutting across all classes and milieus.

So would it be fair to say that the pandemic has democratized the risk of losing one’s life? For suddenly each and everyone was at risk, irrelevant of social power and position, status and hierarchy. I would put it differently, because the certainty of death has always been democratic. After all, everybody must die. But now death has got our attention. Suddenly, the elephant in the room is visible everywhere. Whether this will lead to a permanent shift? I am at best cautiously optimistic, for cultural change is slow, sluggish, and rarely traceable to an individual event such as a pandemic. So I would say that, on the one hand, death has become more present. On the other hand, throughout the pandemic, most deaths were not concretely visible, death was not tangible as an immediate, direct experience. It was and is death at a distance, an impersonal, sanitized death, as it were.

What do you mean by that? When the AIDS virus was raging in San Francisco in the early 1980s, death was in our face, so to speak, on a daily basis, and it was very concrete, because it was possible to sit with the dying person in their home, hold their hands, wash them, change their diapers. This highly immediate, direct experience triggered an enormous wave of empathy and compassion. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people died lonely and invisible deaths on some intensive care unit. We learned about their death from the media and in the form of abstract numbers and statistics. We received second- or third-hand accounts of their suffering and were confronted with their dying through the stories told by exhausted nurses and doctors. We developed empathy with these health-care providers, because it was them we saw and because they had to work so hard. But we could not be close to the dying people themselves, we could not see them or touch them, we could not be there to experience their last breath. The risk of infection had forced them into isolation and removed their bodies from our sight and touch.

You have repeatedly collaborated with nurses and doctors working in emergency rooms. How was it for them who in fact had contact with their dying patients? My proposition is that they suddenly became ambassadors and reporters for the media and the families, going back and forth between the hospital beds, the relatives, and the public… …and in this new multiple role as intermediaries and carers, they also had to take on, time and again, the tasks of loving family members, because the real family members were not allowed to come inside the hospital. As a result, there was much more intimacy between them and the people who were dying. And much less intimacy between the people who were dying and their actual relatives.

In my view, there was an ambivalent virtualization of dying and death at the height of the pandemic. On the one hand, we had final messages via FaceTime calls, livestreamed funerals, the shared grieving via Zoom and in the form of candles that you could light online for others. On the other hand, all of this lacked the immediacy of direct experience. May I tell you a story? A while ago, a friend came to me asking for my advice. She was in a kind of shock, for she had experienced her father’s last breaths on her iPad, her face pressed to the screen, in a desperate, surreal attempt to produce closeness that was, however, quite removed from direct experience.

There is another kind of grief, an ambiguous, strangely diffuse grief, brought about by this pandemic.

We are talking about a distant intimacy enabled by the media, which is actually an utterly paradoxical phenomenon. It is an attempted but not really achievable intimacy. This friend wanted to kiss her father who was in a hospital in a different country, so she kissed the screen and the image of her semi-unconscious father. And he was dying that very moment. You could say that she kissed an idea of her father, but she missed the immediate experience of touch, of smell and bodily presence.

The screen and the iPad are what the internet sociologist Sherry Turkle has called “evocative objects.” Because they so obviously shape our experience, they make it possible to experience what is at the core of human experience—the closeness, the physical touch, the sudden, surprising depth. What’s more, the screen and the iPad show us what it means to be fully human—precisely because we cannot live our full humanity under the inevitably constrained conditions of digital communication.

What are the consequences when intimacy and contact—like in the example of your friend—cannot be lived and experienced fully? One consequence of such an experience is that grief is highly delayed—because you could not see the death, because you don’t have the certainty of seeing these last moments for yourself. Another consequence is a hard-to-define feeling of loss that is not only about the death of a loved one. What have you lost when you could not say goodbye to someone who is lying on their sick-bed or death-bed, when you could not give your father a real kiss, no longer see your own father, and thus authenticate his death? What I am trying to say is that there is another kind of grief, an ambiguous, strangely diffuse grief, brought about by this pandemic.

What is this other kind of grief about? It is about the loss of familiarity, of normalcy and tradition. Suddenly, we were sitting in our homes, isolated and bewildered, separated from friends and family; we had strange haircuts, were unable to lead the lives we used to live, stop by our favorite pizza place in the evening. Weddings were postponed. And postponed again. Graduations were canceled. Birthday and dinner parties no longer took place. And our normal everyday life—the separation of work and leisure time, of one’s work life and one’s personal life—dissolved. Was this simply inconvenient or already dramatic? Did we even have the right to be sad, especially compared to those who had lost their parents without being able to say goodbye to them, bury them, and grieve together with relatives? Wasn’t our own bewilderment a luxury problem, compared to those who got seriously ill or who had to bury their career dreams basically overnight?

What are you getting at? My point is that there were many individual, accumulating stories of loss, big and small. But there was also a comparing of the very different sufferings and fates and the question: Is my own sadness even legitimate when I have not lost anyone and have not become seriously ill myself? And there was a curiously ambivalent, not really quantifiable and qualifiable pain, caused by the ambivalence and indeterminacy of the whole thing.

So if I were to distill a key conclusion from our conversation so far, would it be correct to say: In times of pandemic, it was rare to have a good death and to have the fortune of grieving successfully together with a community of friends and relatives? I guess you could say that. In hospitals and nursing homes, crematoriums and cemeteries, strict rules applied. Sometimes only a handful of people, if any, were allowed to attend the funeral, and they had instructions not to touch or to hug under any circumstances. I am a little allergic to the idea of a good death, to be honest with you. Dying is messy, exhausting. It is a labor to die just like it is a labor to be born. And each death is unique and different. The romantic expectation of a good death and the hype about the last moment of one’s life only create enormous, unnecessary pressure—as though there was a universal assessment grid and as though it was a personal failure not to leave this earth smiling, in a state of bliss in the lotus position.

As founder of the Zen Hospice in San Francisco, you have companioned more than 1,000 dying people, many of whom were homeless, drug addicts, dying of AIDS, and without any money or health insurance when they came to you for help and support. At the height of the AIDS epidemic, sometimes 30 to 40 people were dying in your hospice in a week. At some point, when your work became better known, a documentary filmmaker invited you to a conference to talk about death and dying. On the flight there, you noted down five key principles—your key insights and experiences from being with dying people—which you later turned into a book. Would you mind telling us these principles? I’d be happy to. I call them the five invitations, because it would be absurd to see them as provisions. The first invitation is: “Don’t wait.” Waiting for a better future makes us miss the present moment and life in all its fullness and abundance. And at some point it is too late. The second invitation is: “Welcome everything, push away nothing.” This call for radical openness and a fearless, loving acceptance of life as is sounds impossible, maybe even a little bit foolish. But it means taking the situation of the dying person seriously and accepting as it is— its wretchedness, its messiness, but also its beauty. The third invitation is: “Bring your whole self to the experience.” When we are with someone who is dying, it is all about showing ourselves as a whole human being and getting in touch with our own fear, grief, and helplessness.

That means letting go of an ideal of perfection, of the illusion that we have everything under control… …and it means opening up the space for real dialogue, real encounters. The fourth invitation is: “Find a place of rest in the middle of things.” We always think that we should treat ourselves to a break only when the circumstances are perfect, when everything is under control, when everything is finished. But this is not true, this does not work. So why not find a moment of rest here and now, for example during this interview? And finally, the fifth and last invitation: “Cultivate a don’t-know mind.” When we carry around too much knowledge, ready-made concepts and seemingly one-size-fits-all recipes, there is no room for surprises, curiosity, and a sense of wonder. The idea is to cultivate a beginner’s spirit, as the Zen Buddhists say, to be awake, seeking, and ready to learn.

What these principles suggest is that the art of dying and confronting the finiteness of one’s existence is in reality an art of living. Because everything that you described are not just maxims for dying well but also… …for living a life of meaning and purpose. Yes, of course. What I have learned from people who are dying is that death can be a teacher hiding in plain sight that shows us what’s really important, which is leading one’s life deeply and authentically, with vulnerability and compassion. For this, you need no grand, highly complex philosophy, no esoteric knowledge, and no spiritual idealism leading us away from who we are really. Actually, it is very simple: Living deeply into our humanity makes life fulfilling and dying easier.

And what comes after death? That is and remains a mystery.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Is he right? Not really, no. We could talk forever about the mystery of existence after death. We could talk about this until the cows come home, as we say here. Depending on tradition and religion, we will encounter different stories, attempts to bring light to the mystery, and to ward off the horror of death. However, we will not find the single, definitive answer. But it does not matter. Life itself is a mystery that cannot be fully solved—so why shouldn’t this also apply to death? I personally don’t believe in the reincarnation of my personality but I have faith in the idea that impermanence is not simply about loss and that every ending gives rise to a becoming, an opportunity for transformation—like a tree that falls in the woods and rots and gives rise to more becoming.

You said recently that for some years you have experienced the proximity of death also “from the other side of the sheets.” That’s true. I have survived a heart attack and five strokes and I am half blind. I had temporarily lost my sense of time and had difficulty finding the right words and keeping up with a conversation. And let me tell you, it’s damn hard for me, too, to accept my own helplessness. And yet it is instructive, also for others. When I returned home after my heart attack, one of my students who saw me as his Buddhist master came to help care for me. One day, he helped me get into the shower. And I felt so completely helpless and powerless that I began to weep. I remember crumbling onto the floor and weeping. First, he did not know what to do, because for him I was not an ordinary human being but his teacher and role model. But then something wonderful happened. All this specialness that separated us was suddenly gone, and there was simply Frank who was crying. Suddenly an entirely different dynamic was possible.

How do you feel today? I am in fairly good shape. Of course, since I live on a houseboat, I am sometimes afraid of stumbling and falling. But I take good care of myself, I am practicing mindfulness, I give online lectures and seminars, and I have the privilege of living in this very beautiful environment defined by the tides, the water, and the wind. I come up and down on the tides. You see, I live here surrounded by all these other houseboats in a floating, fluid, mutable and unstable world, not in a static, forever solid universe that knows no change. It is a wonderful environment to remind yourself of the fragility of life and to tell yourself: “Make plans, but hold them lightly!” Everything changes.

♦

This article was first published on December 23, 2022.

The post The Many Flavors of Grief appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Sitting in this room, in an out-of-the-way part of the medical center, I can feel a deep quiet, almost like sesshin. The atmosphere is still but expectant. Across from me is another clinician who is enrolled in a clinical trial and has just taken a study drug that might or might not be psilocybin. Neither I nor the clinician participating in the study knows whether the pill contained psilocybin or a placebo. My aim: to be present.

This person has qualified for the study because they have moderate symptoms of depression and burnout related to their work in the COVID pandemic. It is the first study of psilocybin-assisted therapy for doctors and nurses in this situation. The clinicians who qualify for this study have seen a lot of struggle and death up close. At their hospitals, in the course of trying to heal others, they’ve witnessed and experienced suffering—as well as hate speech, confessions, accusations that they are lying, and physical violence. They’ve had enough—too much, really. They feel broken.

Summoning my own presence under these circumstances is a challenge. It’s hard to “just” be present. My mind is busy with housekeeping (did I finish all the study forms?), anguish (witnessing shame for which words aren’t enough), hope (that they received the psilocybin rather than the placebo), and a million other things. All my worries are on full display, with surround-sound mesmerizing visual memes and gut-twisting, jaw-dropping sensations. And I haven’t even taken anything. No need for virtual reality; the multiverse is right here in my body.

My role, as the study investigator and therapist, is to support the clinician through whatever kind of experience the medicine, placebo or psilocybin, gives them. I had designed this study wanting, in my doctorly way, to fix a problem: to relieve suffering, ease burnout, and facilitate a kind of healing from the pandemic. But what I have found is that my real job is to answer a calling to be present, completely present. To bring myself back to this moment, this breath. This sense of support from the chair. This sensation of my feet on the floor. And then, to enlarge my subjectivity to take in my colleague. In those moments, what I receive is much more valuable than a sense that I have treated a condition or fixed someone. The moments are rich: tears over what wasn’t possible, a belly laugh over a baby photo, wonder and awe over finding themselves in this human body. The participants’ gestures are so unguarded that I find myself gasping at the vulnerability—and trust—in what they are allowing their bodies to show.

Neuroscience tell us that in those moments, my brain is using its experience and knowledge and felt sensation to simulate my colleague’s brain, and my brain is making predictions constantly, even if my conscious mind hasn’t asked. I’m generating predictions every moment. For me, the temptation is to jump into action. As a physician, after all, I’ve been trained to intervene, interpret the gesture, make a diagnosis, invoke a psychological model, say the perfect thing, offer the exact right kind of touch.

But what I’ve learned is that I should wait. I can notice my impulses, my triumphant interpretations, my savior complexes—Ah yes, my old friends. They mostly show up as insistent thoughts, ideas, concepts. Instead of arguing with all this thinking, however, I try to drop into the body. I go to the sensations of my feet on the ground, my seat in the chair, my breath moving in and out of my belly.     

I’ve been a Zen practitioner for more than thirty years at this point. What first drew me to Buddhism was my own sense of inadequacy as a young oncologist to face the suffering my patients brought to our visits. Facing a fellow human who is turning toward you with eyes full of terror and hope and despair can be daunting, and I found myself scrambling to do more and more and more. Yet inevitably, I would find that after offering everything else—treatments, advice, resources—all that was left was just me. A moment of existential contact. It was shocking, and only then did I begin to understand the elaborate ways that many of my mentors reacted, attempting to smooth things over or distract the patient and themselves from disappointment and despair. But to me, those elaborations felt evasive. So I searched for another way—and found Zen.

The body and heart and mind, if given unfettered space, know how to put themselves back together. This is completely opposite to the rush-in-and-save model of medicine that was drilled into me during my years of medical training.

My Zen practice has helped me access a whole different dimension of what it means to provide care, especially when my knowledge as an oncologist has run dry. Over time, I have realized that while my medical expertise is important, my ability to be present matters more. And as I’m moving into psychedelic therapy, I’m learning that lesson again. I can continue to come back to myself, my own body, and then enlarge my subjectivity from there again and again. When I’m with a study participant, I’m trying to adjust from being quick to act to being slow to act. I am there to keep them safe, of course, but I’m also there to enable them to have their own process. I’m slow to act because I don’t want to interfere by inserting myself into their experience.

Then, when I do act, I can use the smallest possible intervention, which often proves to be the wisest route. I’m not there to direct that study participant’s trip. I don’t know nearly enough about the state of their heart and mind, much less how to put it back together. The big lesson for me, now having been present for a number of these psychedelic journeys, is that they know. Somewhere. That knowing comes from a place not easily accessible by our conscious busy minds. But the body and heart and mind, if given unfettered space, know how to put themselves back together. This is completely opposite to the rush-in-and-save model of medicine that was drilled into me during my years of medical training.

The way I learned this was during my own experiences with psychedelic medicine. On one of my own trips I went back in time, many years, to the bedside of a woman I will call Angie, in one of her last days, a young life cut short by cancer. The whole scene came flooding back: a house on a quiet street with a big tree, a big fluffy bed, her body at ease, my own unease. I was saying my goodbyes, trying to offer some kind of contact, feeling unsure whether I was getting through. And then she began to move toward me, very slowly, like a time-lapse movie. I paused for a moment, worried that I was upsetting her, or that this was a sign of pain. I said, “Are you OK?” She didn’t say yes or no. She couldn’t talk. Yet she kept moving until she was facing me squarely. Still unsure, I went on. I told her how much I admired her, how much love she had created in this world, how I’d miss her. And in my trip, I suddenly realized that she did hear me. She did know I was there. And that ever-so-slow movement was her offering to me: her own offering of presence.

Sitting now with the clinician in the medical center reminded me of my visit with Angie in a way. At one point, we were sitting on the floor across from each other. I settled into myself, then enlarged my subjectivity again. At that moment, that clinician—that person—was simply there with me. She didn’t need another blanket, or water, or my hand. She didn’t need anything from me. We simply sat together for a time, and I imagined my own heart being big enough to offer space for both of us. 

For that clinician, who did receive psilocybin, there was a kind of healing in the process of preparing for the day, having the psilocybin, and taking in that moment of stillness with me. I didn’t do the healing, but my presence came into contact with hers. What I’m realizing now, as the study unfolds, is that how we all recover from the pandemic—from the suffering, the burdens, the changed identities—starts with how we cultivate our own presence, as well as how we extend that presence to the people we are with.

The idea that a reciprocity of presence could contribute to a kind of healing is not an idea that I ever heard about in medical school. I used to think of presence as something that I was supposed to radiate, like a force field that a superhero would summon. But one of the things I am learning, as I sit with other doctors and nurses in the study, is that presence emerges from the way we are with each other. Presence involves a kind of exchange, and it comes through our bodies. It is there when we’ve run out of all the other stuff we do, when we feel empty-handed, inadequate, and even bereft. It can be so easy to overlook—it’s so quiet in a world that is so noisy and full of distractions. But presence, I am finding, is almost always a possibility. We’re tapping into something bigger than our individual selves that is the ground of everything between us.

The post A Reciprocity of Presence appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I’ve long wanted to make a movie on something like the sneeze that goes around the world, or the dollar bill that goes from hand to hand. A cinematic display of the layers of interconnection large and small that make up our lives every single day, through joys and sorrows and complacent idylls and wild shatterings of expectations like lockdowns and COVID. A movie about how even in the most turbulent times, some things remain true. Maybe that sneeze started in Battery Park in New York City, and by the time we see someone’s nose start to wiggle in just-about-to-sneeze mode in Dubai, we have settled back into the most salient truth of all of our lives: We are all connected. 

Watching the film The Same Storm, which came out in September 2021, it struck me that writer and director Peter Hedges had just made my longed-for film about interconnection and intersectionality, and made it with great skill. The film consists of twenty-four actors filming vignettes on laptops and iPhones during the early days of the pandemic. No film crews and no trailers involved. “The Same Storm revolves around our ache to connect and the extraordinary lengths we go in order to,” the filmmakers say. “We crafted a multi-protagonist story that explores how—in spite of the pandemic and the havoc it has caused in a nation convulsing on multiple fronts—we remain connected through various technologies and platforms that have quickly become a critical part of our daily lives.” 

Interconnection tips over into intersectionality—we are each more than one thing, not so easily reduced or even categorized. Maybe that nurse on the screen, in addition to having a patient, has a mother, and a racial identity, and a lot of longing in his heart to not feel so alone. Everyone is kind of complicated that way. Some facets of our being are sources of power, some of disconnection, some of clarity, some of confusion. These unchanging truths greet us as we swirl through the extreme change of our recent traumatic experiences of the pandemic. 

How close to the time of a traumatic event one can write or produce or create a work that is more art than trauma is a subject of much debate. I’ve gotten various pieces of advice from different people about that topic, along with watching varied cultures around the world work on healing in real time while sometimes also producing some of the greatest literature the world has known, and sometimes producing, in terms of public art … pretty much nothing. Any healing on any level itself is an awful lot. We go down the chakras, as a friend of mine cleverly said. Sometimes our main job is just to survive. And brava that we do.

A lot of people don’t want to look back at all right now, and you can read that in the dismissive language chosen in some of the reviews of works done soon after a traumatic time. But I’m so glad that Peter, who is a friend, and his producers, who are also friends, did, and that those amazing actors got a chance to perform, despite the reported awkwardness of the technology or having to do their own makeup. Acting on that level really is a matter of the soul, and there we were at that point in time, so often cut off, more and more isolated from one another, and for those for whom making art means collaboration, mostly out of luck. 

The actors in The Same Storm include Mary Louise Parker, Sandra Oh, Ron Livingstone, Jin Ha, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Raul Castillo, Joel Delafuente, Noma Dumezweni, and Elaine May (in her first film performance in twenty-one years!) The performances are luminous. This isn’t a mere recounting (which in the end wouldn’t be all that enticing.) This level of storytelling reveals that there could be a way forward. There must be, please, and look! There is.

It has something to do with empathy, and compassion.

I once heard the Dalai Lama on creativity, as part of a panel at Emory University, responding to a question about suffering, transformation, and art. 

He was quite interesting. He said that in Tibet, beautiful art was considered so because of the inner transformation artists went through during the act of creation. Had they become more enlightened, kinder, more deeply aware? To him, that’s what made a poem or a sculpture or painting more valuable, worthy of being held in higher esteem. Alas, we tend to have different criteria. 

Watching The Same Storm I’m tempted to ask Peter Hedges what he thinks of the Dalai Lama’s answer. Gratefully seeing the extant hope shimmering across the screen, remembering the despair, I have a feeling I know the answer.

♦

This article was first published on November 18, 2022. 

The post ‘The Same Storm’: A Lockdown Look Back appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Larry Brilliant, doctor, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and ex-hippie, was a crucial player in the global effort to eradicate smallpox in 1973, but his path there was unusual. He was ensconced in an ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas when his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, told him to go to Delhi immediately to help eradicate smallpox in India, one of the world’s last strongholds of the virus. The end of smallpox, Neem Karoli Baba said, would be “God’s gift to humanity.” 

Brilliant went to Delhi and worked for the World Health Organization. He later became professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, cofounded The Well, one of the world’s first online communities, with Stewart Brand, was vice president of Google, and executive director of Google.org, the charitable foundation of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. He has advised several American presidents—but not Donald Trump. TIME named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. At present, he is managing director of Pandefense, a company advising enterprises in fighting pandemics. For decades Brilliant has warned of pandemics and accurately predicted the coronavirus crisis. 

I meet Brilliant in Mill Valley’s town square, then we take refuge from the piercing California midday sun in a shady restaurant. We order sandwiches, water, and coffee. “Let’s start,” says Brilliant, putting his small blue cap on the table. “What do you want to know?” 

Mr. Brilliant, as early as 2006 in a TED Talk in Monterey, California, you warned about a respiratory virus originating in Asia that would jump from animal to humans. At the time, you described in great detail that a virus would spread super quickly, bring air and freight traffic to a halt, push some countries’ health care systems to the brink of collapse, and cause many deaths. But one did not have to be prophetically gifted to make such a prediction—for the threat of a pandemic had been apparent to many epidemiologists for a long time. We fly around the world, we colonize the last wildernesses on the planet, we burn down forests, we eat wild animals—given the conditions of globalization and this enforced proximity and encounter between humans and animals, it is hardly surprising to see a whole variety of viruses jump to humans and to see the spread of novel diseases. 

In your TED talk, you used a computer simulation to illustrate the spread of a virus. Your conclusion: Outbreaks are inevitable, pandemics are optional. In order to prevent an outbreak from turning into a pandemic, it takes— —“early detection, early response.” This is the key formula for fighting a pandemic, and it still holds true today.

Soon after your talk, you became a consultant to Steven Soderbergh, director of the Hollywood movie Contagion. This film, a streaming blockbuster of the last two years, today feels like a hyperrealistic report of the COVID pandemic. In the movie, the virus that jumps from bats and pigs to humans is much deadlier, but other than that, you once again got a lot of things right. Yes, based on what we know from history, I assumed that such a pandemic would come to us from China or Southeast Asia; I assumed that the virus would be transmitted via touch or air and would spread enormously fast. And in the movie, like in the COVID-19 pandemic reality, we have amazing, altruistic doctors and nurses, but we also have panic buying, the scramble for scarce vaccines, and lots of ignorance, disinformation, and bizarre conspiracy theories.

The bullshitters and self-appointed seers and healers in Contagion do not peddle hydroxychloroquine but instead propagate a quack remedy from forsythia flowers. You found the mistake! We missed the part about the hydroxychloroquine. One hundred points! [Laughs.] But once again: much more revealing than misplaced pride in correct or actually not-quite-so-correct prophesies of doom is the question of what I myself and other scientists who predicted similar things did not see and understand, despite everything we know. 

Where did you go wrong? My fundamental mistake was that I, like Magister Ludi Joseph Knecht, the hero in Hermann Hesse’s novel The Glass Bead Game, assumed a completely rational world, as though we lived in Hesse’s fictional province of Castalia, a place of enlightened and judicious decision-making. Instead, we have been seeing divisions and hatred, silo thinking, the politicization of mask-wearing and vaccination, the return of nationalism and populism on the world political stage. All of these are centrifugal forces pulling us apart at a moment in history when nothing would be more important than consensus, cooperation, and collective strategizing.

But you are also saying: There is no reason to give up. Why? I can only give you my personal reasons. In 1967, WHO developed a comprehensive global program to eradicate smallpox, an extremely cruel disease that killed more than half a billion people in the last century alone. In some cases, you cannot touch a single spot on a victim’s body without causing bloody sores. Other forms of smallpox are inevitably deadly. Some attack pregnant women in particular. In 1967, there were still 34 countries affected by smallpox. In 1972, the year I joined the program, the number of countries with smallpox was down to five. In the fall of 1975, I was part of a team that was sent to Bangladesh because it looked like they might have found what turned out to be the last case of Variola major, the killer variant of smallpox.

You discovered the last patient infected with “killer smallpox”. Yes. In October 1975, we found three-year-old Rahima Banu in the village of Kuralia. It was obvious from her scarred face that she was ill with smallpox. She had become infected with Variola major. We searched ten miles around that case, we double-visited every household and vaccinated everybody who had been in contact with her. And we offered a reward of 1,000 dollars for the detection of further cases.

Which was a small fortune at the time. It was. So it was not surprising that we quickly received thousands of reports. We followed up on them meticulously, but all cases turned out to be chickenpox. That is why we were finally convinced that this little girl was the last living human being infected with the deadly variant of smallpox. 

Can you describe what the encounter looked like? There we were, standing in this small, impoverished village, looking at each other. First, Rahima Banu hid behind her mother; she was crying and terrified by this white-skinned man. At some point, I gave her a balloon that said, “Smallpox can be stopped.” I had had them made in San Francisco and carried them around with me for years. And I took a picture. 

What was your personal reaction? I cried. For I realized that after thousands of years, millions of dead, and a madly exhausting fight against a terrible disease, the chain of infection and suffering would be interrupted right here and now. Sometimes I would think to myself that I had seen the last deadly smallpox viruses dying in the sun when this little girl started coughing, picking the scabs off her skin and throwing them to the floor. In any case, this image of Rahima Banu, who survived the disease, continues to be a key inspiration for my life to this day. And now I ask you: Having experienced something like this, how can I not be optimistic?

For you, the eradication of smallpox is a success story that proves global cooperation in fighting a pandemic is possible and can work. Exactly. I was then working in India, where smallpox outbreaks exploded once again in 1974, a country with 21 different languages, with a population of then 600 million people, 20 million of which were constantly on the road, thus able to potentially spread the virus. Again, if it is possible to eradicate smallpox under conditions such as these, why not believe that other miracles can happen, too?

How big was the group of people fighting smallpox? There were some 150,000 people in India alone: doctors, nurses, vaccination experts, people with local knowledge and language skills who went from place to place, from village to village, knocking on every door to find people infected with smallpox. They came from fifty different countries. It was people from all races and ethnicities, from every conceivable political and religious background, and it included Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Shintoists. Even Russians and Americans worked together in the middle of the Cold War, driven by a common vision and mission: liberating mankind from this terrible disease. 

“Having experienced something like this, how can I not be optimistic?”

It is a banal observation, but the situation in 20th-century India cannot really be compared with the situation today. We are now living in a hyperglobalized world. And the smallpox virus is more lethal but more easily spotted—by pustules and scars—than the corona viruses. And yet: What can be learned from the past? Good will is not enough. It takes perseverance, strategic skills, a feeling for a country’s culture, political support, and the courage to make quick, unconventional decisions that will not please everybody. And it takes medical technology innovation. 

You worked for many years as a doctor for WHO, coordinating vaccination campaigns in rural India. In your book Sometimes Brilliant, which was published in 2017, you describe in detail how, in the face of enormous resistance, you put the large city of Jamshedpur under quarantine when it was the site of new smallpox outbreaks. You were driven and obsessed by the goal of finally eradicating this disease. I was. The mere fact that the shutdown of Jamshedpur prevented a high-ranking politician from leaving the city and that we kept him quarantined in the city against his will almost led to my deportation from India. It was really close. But I can only say: Do not put me on a pedestal! The fight against smallpox only succeeded because of the tireless effort of almost 150,000 people, especially the local Indian staff. And it succeeded with the aid of epidemiological giants such as Muni Inder dev Sharma, Nicole Grasset, Bill Foege, and Donald Henderson, who trained me.

And yet one thing strikes me as unusual, after all. I am referring to your unwavering focus and commitment, for which you yourself credit a man who in India is revered as a saint. His name is Neem Karoli Baba, and he has a temple in Kainchi, at the foot of the Himalayas. How did you end up there? It is the classic dropout story. After medical school and an internship in San Francisco, I lived in a commune. And in the early seventies my wife and I, together with 40 others, set out in buses for India, following the Silk Road, known today as the “hippie trail.” We drove through Turkey and Iran to Afghanistan, across the Khyber Pass to Pakistan and Nepal, and finally into the Himalayas. My wife, Girija, led us to follow Baba Ram Dass to the Kainchi ashram, in northern India. There, we meditated, sang, and practiced yoga together with Neem Karoli Baba’s Indian disciples and a handful of Westerners. One day in July 1973, Neem Karoli Baba told me to go to Delhi immediately to work for the United Nations and help eradicate smallpox. The imminent eradication of this disease, he said, is God’s gift to humanity because of the hard work of dedicated health workers.

What was your response? At first, I did not respond at all, hoping he would drop this crazy idea. But Neem Karoli Baba did not let up. So I went to Delhi, but of course the people at WHO, a suborganization of the United Nations, did not want to hire a hippie with a big bushy beard wearing a white robe who was all fired up by the prophecies of his guru. I returned to the ashram. I had barely arrived when Neem Karoli Baba ordered me again to make the daylong trip to Delhi and to offer my help.

How often did you have to go back? At least twelve or thirteen times over the course of several months. Sometimes he was confronting me in front of everybody; he’d throw apples or oranges at my testicles when we were sitting at his feet and ask: “What’s the matter? Why are you still here? Get yourself to Delhi, to WHO!” Eventually I tied my hair into a ponytail, borrowed an ill-fitting suit, and bought a tie ugly as sin—my concession to the dress code of the establishment. The WHO people too became friendlier and softened up more. We got to know each other. And finally, it happened. I was hired, first as a simple office employee, then as a doctor to help eradicate smallpox.

“WHO, a suborganization of the United Nations, did not want to hire a hippie with a big bushy beard wearing a white robe who was all fired up by the prophecies of his guru.”

But how does an Indian guru, sitting in a temple, wrapped in a wool blanket, detached from the world’s news channels and definitely not a reader of epidemiological articles, even know what the smallpox virus is? And how does he know that there is somebody in front of him who will do everything he can to eradicate this disease from the earth? I just don’t get it. Welcome to the club! I don’t get it either. And believe me, I have been thinking a lot about the mystery of this kind of transformation. When I first came to Neem Karoli Baba, I was far from believing that there was something bigger than my own little life. He changed me through his simple presence. It was a transmission without words, beyond words. He gave me the courage to continue with my work when I was gripped by despair and yet another smallpox outbreak somewhere threatened to thwart all our efforts. But how did he do that? And why did he foresee the possibility of eradicating this horrible disease? If there is someone who understands what has happened here, they have unpacked one of the great mysteries of life. And I deeply hope that they will call me and tell me.

What does your guru mean to you today? My house here in Mill Valley, California, is filled with pictures of him. And I still see myself as working for him, following his instructions. Seriously. I worked for WHO in smallpox, polio, and blindness programs, in refugee camps in Southeast Asia. And over the years, when I ran out of money, I sneaked back into corporate America to set up a company until I had earned enough to continue with the really important tasks. 

As soon as smallpox was eradicated, you set your eyes on the next big task. Together with your wife, Girija Brilliant, and people from WHO, as well as your friends in the hippie movement and the Grateful Dead, you founded the Seva Foundation, which aims to fight needless blindness. How did that come about? After we eradicated smallpox we all went back to our universities or other jobs. But we had tasted success. We felt that so many had been saved from suffering and death, and we were touched by it so deeply that we wanted to repeat it. We did not only want the epidemiological experts on board but also people who had a good heart and all kinds of good ideas, though perhaps not such good credentials. Moreover, based on my own experiences, I wanted to find out what arises from a combination of spirituality and public health. My former boss at WHO, Nicole Grasset, said: “You are planning the Red Cross of hippies.” 

It seems she was right. Absolutely. One day, she sent me a telegram: she had raised money to fight blindness in Nepal and wanted to know whether we’d be interested in collaborating. I said yes, of course—and I invited my coworkers and fellow supporters to a meeting. There were some friends from Neem Karoli Baba’s ashram, some former smallpox warriors, as we called them, plus epidemiologists and ophthalmologists from the United States and from India, including the medical doctor and surgeon Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy, who later became famous as the founder of Aravind Eye Hospital in South India.

There is a photo of this meeting, which took place in 1979. Standing next to medical doctors and epidemiologists is your friend Wavy Gravy, the poet, clown, and political activist who gained overnight fame at the Woodstock festival. He went on stage and promised breakfast in bed to 400,000 people and he, together with members of his commune, actually distributed food to several thousand people who hung out near the stage. And everything remained peaceful! This combination of heart, spirituality, and mind worked, and I think it is the secret of Seva’s success. For example, to raise money for Seva, Wavy Gravy managed to mobilize the rock ’n’ roll scene, and he organized the first of many benefit concerts with the Grateful Dead in San Francisco. This way, we have been able to raise more than half a billion dollars over the last decades—money that went directly to give the gift of sight to five million blind people.      

Today, more than five million people in two dozen countries have regained their eyesight, thanks to the Seva Foundation. What can we learn from this? Can the principles you have followed in your work be applied more broadly? I think so. For example, we found out that one of the main causes of blindness is cataract—a disease of age and poverty. In order to improve eyesight, you need to have a lens that is put into your eye. When we got started in 1979, such lenses cost some 500 dollars, and they were all manufactured in the developed world. Everybody was convinced that the developing countries were not smart enough and that they lacked the technology and hygienic conditions necessary to manufacture their own lenses. 

Sounds quite arrogant. And it is dangerous nonsense. So what did we do to prove them wrong? We bought the machines you need to manufacture these so-called intraocular lenses. We disassembled them and smuggled the individual parts to India in our backpacks. There we reassembled them in a clinic and helped create Aravind Aurolab, which is today one of the biggest manufacturers of such lenses worldwide. Now they cost less than a dollar, and any farmer in Nepal or India can afford them. We thus furnished proof that entire production sites can be exported to developing countries to reduce costs. 

As we come to the end of our conversation, during which we have traced the path from eradicating smallpox to fighting blindness to tackling the coronavirus pandemic, one thing is becoming clear to me—namely the key role that narratives of success play in presenting other, new ways of thinking and living. You once famously said that the world is ruled by God and anecdotes. I am not so sure about God, but I am sure about anecdotes and narratives. That’s an anecdote right there. [Laughs.] Of course, I know that it is not really fashionable to come out as a believer. But I have seen too many inexplicable and impossible things to not believe that there is a higher power. But the thing is, there has never been a human disease eradicated other than smallpox. If we hadn’t been successful, we probably would not have the courage and the perseverance to tackle other diseases such as polio, malaria, and measles with the same resolve—until they too perhaps one day disappear from the face of the earth. 

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On March 14, 2020, just after COVID-19 was declared a national emergency, meditation teacher and activist Shelly Tygielski wanted to find a way to support her community in South Florida. She decided to create two simple Google forms: one to give help and one to get help. She shared both forms on social media. The next morning, each form had over 500 responses from around the country. As more requests for help kept pouring in, the mutual aid organization Pandemic of Love was born. Since Pandemic of Love’s conception, the organization has connected over 2 million donors with individuals and families in need and has responded directly to global crises including hurricanes, mass shootings, and the ongoing war in Ukraine, distributing over $150 million worth of supplies and resources to Ukrainian refugees in Poland and surrounding nations.

In a recent episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sat down with Tygielski to discuss her work in Ukraine, the history of mutual aid, and the radical power of just showing up. Read excerpts from their conversation below, and listen to the whole episode here.

On the power of communities of care

I started getting involved in mutual aid incredibly informally. Through working as a community organizer and meditation teacher in South Florida, I got to know a lot of the people in our community. I saw that a lot of these individuals had unmet needs, sometimes financial, sometimes something as simple as a ride to meditation on Sunday mornings. I also realized that there were people in our community who could fill those needs. If I could be the matchmaker and then step out of the way, we could start to create communities of care, where we bring people together, create safety nets, remove the stigma of asking for help, and build and live in a community where we recognize that every single person, regardless of their socioeconomic status, has something that they need and something that they can give. As our community continued to grow, we were able to come together in the face of tragedies including hurricanes and mass shootings simply by creating these direct connections. Rather than creating a nonprofit organization or a formal charity, we found a way for people to connect, to have conversations, and to form strong, sustainable methods of being in community together. 

On the evolution of Pandemic of Love

As of May 2022, Pandemic of Love has over 4,000 volunteers in close to 300 communities across 20 countries, and we’ve connected over 2.2 million individuals who have transacted directly over $62 million. It’s a staggering number. And it reminds me that a lot of people doing a little bit really makes a huge impact—if we’re all committed to doing even one thing, then it can make a big difference in the world and in people’s lives. I think that Pandemic of Love has taken off because people recognize how important human connection really is, especially during the time of the pandemic. Being able to connect with others is a necessity for our survival as human beings. At a time of forced physical disconnection, having a way to connect with somebody in a meaningful way was a very powerful thing. Picking up a phone and asking a person in need in your community, “What do you need? And how can I help you?” is such a powerful act that goes beyond paying someone’s utility bill. In the process, you’ve helped someone feel seen and heard, which is not something we should take for granted.

On the relationship between self-care and social transformation

There’s an intricate and undeniable connection between inner work and the way we show up in the outer world. I do believe that it’s important to start with inner work. It’s very important for us to understand our origin story—our traumas, our trials, our tribulations. But I see a lot of people who get stuck in that inner work loop. It’s like a hamster wheel. They fail to connect all of the classes that they’re taking and the personal work that they’re doing to the way that they’re showing up in the world. This is why I always tell people: Even if you don’t feel like you’re ready, just show up anyway. You may feel like you’re not fully healed or you don’t have all the right skills or the pedigree to start something. But whatever stories you’re telling yourself about why you can’t change something or why you can’t do something, just show up. Helping other people can actually inform a lot of our inner work. The work we do in the outer world can make it easier for us to connect the dots.

On the obligation to care

I don’t know if this was embedded in me by my parents or by my community, but if I am not completely consumed by a fire and I’m able to get out alive, then I feel like I have a moral obligation to grab pails of water and run back into the fire. This helps me feel less helpless, and it also makes me feel that rather than just sitting in my sorrows and complaining, I’m actually doing something to contribute to a better world. When there’s a crisis, I immediately think about the actions that I can take. What can I do in this moment that’s tangible and actionable, something that can be of assistance? It might be something really small: something like a kind word or picking up the phone and reaching out. But that small thing could be a huge thing for the person receiving it. I want to live in a world where every single person has enough. The only way to achieve that is by making sure that the people who have more than enough are actually lifting up and giving to the people who don’t have enough. This is the work of Pandemic of Love, and this is the work that informs my life on a daily basis.

♦

Life As It Is is a podcast series that features Buddhist practitioners speaking about their everyday lives. You can listen to more of Life As It Is on Spotify, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, and iHeartRadio.

The post Running Back Into the Fire appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week.

Myanmar’s Military Releases Vitriolic, Anti-Muslim Monk Ashin Wirathu 

Myanmar’s military junta has released the Buddhist monk Ashin Wirathu, notorious for his nationalist and anti-Muslim tirades. The military government released a statement on Monday that all charges against Wirathu had been dropped, without providing reasons for his sudden release. In 2019, Wirathu was charged for sedition after he gave a series of speeches criticizing then-leader Aung San Suu Kyi and the civilian government. Wirathu thwarted authorities for months before eventually surrendering in November of last year, and the monk has been held in prison awaiting trial since his arrest, according to the BBC. The military’s statement added that Wirathu was currently receiving treatment at a military hospital, though his medical condition is unknown. 

Bhutanese Monks Join Push to Promote Sexual Education

In Bhutan, senior Buddhist monks are working to increase awareness of sexual health and rights. In addition to the standard religious services and ritual dances that occur during annual religious festivals known as Tshechu, which are held at monasteries across the country, monks are also using the occasions to teach people about reproductive rights.

Monks aren’t the sole leaders of this movement, however. For decades, Her Majesty Queen Mother Sangay Choden Wangchuk has been advocating for increased awareness of topics like reproductive health and gender-based violence among the Bhutanese population. Her work as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) includes organizing workshops and training classes on reproductive health and rights, which more and more male monastics are attending. “There has been a change in the mindset of monks, who now freely discuss and advocate on issues of sexual and gender-based violence, which in the past were perceived as a private matter,” said Lopen Sherab Dorji, one of the first monks in Bhutan to participate in a life skills education training conducted by UNFPA.

Nonprofit Home Instead Donates $100 to Senior Living Community for Every Vaccine Administered at Pasadena Buddhist Temple 

On Thursday, the Pasadena Public Health Department hosted a COVID-19 vaccine clinic at the Pasadena Buddhist Temple, reports Pasadena Weekly. For every shot given, senior care nonprofit Home Instead donated $100, up to $10,000, to senior living community Pasadena Village, which supports seniors who live independently at home. Donations to Pasadena Village will help lower membership costs in the community that sets up support networks among members. This is just one of many vaccine clinics that the temple has hosted. “We’re really happy that we can be one of the sites that they use,” Kathy Kumagai, Pasadena Buddhist Temple board president, said of the partnership they’ve formed with the Pasadena Public Health Department.

Twenty Years Later, Buddhists Reflect on September 11

Twenty years ago today the attacks of September 11 stunned the world. In the first issue of Tricycle magazine that followed the attacks, leading Buddhist teachers shared practices and perspectives for the unprecedented moment in time. Twenty years later, the same teachers reflect on what their words mean today. Read more here. For more reflections on 9/11, read a blog post written by a practitioner while on retreat with Bhante G just eight days after the attacks; and a reflection by Sharon Salzberg one year later.

Sakyadhita to Honor the Life of Venerable Bhikkhuni Kusama in Memorial Service 

The Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women will hold a memorial service to celebrate the life of and pay tribute to Venerable Bhikkhuni Kusuma, a pioneering female monastic who passed away on August 28. The service will be held over Zoom on September 11 at 10 p.m. EDT and will include chanting in Pali, a dedication of merit in Korean, and a sharing of remembrances. Sakyadhita’s vice-president Dr. Eun-su Cho will also share a recently recovered video of Bhikkhuni Kusuma leading the historic ordination of the first Sri Lankan nuns to become fully ordained in modern times. Interested participants can join through this Zoom link. 

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Nothing is permanent, so everything is precious. Here’s a selection of some happenings—fleeting or otherwise—in the Buddhist world this week.

Venerable Dr. Kusama Devendra, Sri Lanka’s First Female Monastic in 10 Centuries, Dies at 92

On August 28, Venerable Dr. Kusama Devendra, a pioneering Buddhist monastic, died in Sri Lanka. She was 92. The author of several books and the founder of Ayya Khema International Meditation Centre in Horana, Sri Lanka, Bhikkhuni Kusama is also credited with reviving the Theravada bhikkhuni (female monastic) order in Sri Lanka. Inspired by Sister Ayya Khema, her mentor and an outspoken activist for female Buddhist practice herself, Bhikkhuni Kusama ordained in 1996. She was the first Sri Lankan bhikhunni in ten centuries. Now, there are 3,000 ordained bhikhunnis in Sri Lanka.

Fears Mount Over Ancient Buddhist City Mes Aynak in Afghanistan

The Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan has raised concerns over ancient Buddhist artifacts and sites, including the Bronze Age city of Mes Aynak, The Art Newspaper says. The site holds more than 600 Buddhist statues, stupas, and artifacts including jewelry, coins, manuscripts, and even human remains. It also sits atop a huge copper reserve with an estimated value of $50-$100 billion, which has so far remained largely untapped. But The Art Newspaper reports that the Taliban met with the Chinese this July to discuss various projects, including mining in Mes Aynak. Read more about the ancient city and  the documentary Saving Mes Aynak here.

Nonprofit Organization Dharma Relief Launches “Healing Race Relations” Initiative

Dharma Relief, a coalition of Buddhist organizations, teachers, and practitioners, is launching a new initiative that aims to mitigate the impact of racism against Black people in North American dharma communities. “Healing Race Relations” will provide financial stipends to Black and Brown Buddhist leaders to support their dharma activities, as well as educational resources and support for those aimed at healing racialized trauma in their communities. The stipends will address income, wealth, health, and other disparities between non-Black and Brown dharma teachers and their BIPOC counterparts. 

“Black and Brown dharma teachers are powerfully capable of addressing racial trauma through a Buddhist lens, but they are disproportionately under-represented and financially under-supported compared to other racial groups in securing funding for their dharma activities,” Dharma Relief told Lion’s Roar. The project will also offer anti-racism workshops and trainings in social resilience, diversity counseling, and somatic experiences for healing trauma. Dharma Relief is currently accepting donations on its website to support the project’s fundraising goal of $5 million. 

Dharma Relief was founded in April 2020 by Buddhist teacher Guo Gu to support healthcare workers and distribute medical supplies at the outset of COVID-19. Through its first project, “Responding to COVID-19,” Dharma Relief was able to fundraise $650,000 and distribute over 1.2 million masks to hospitals. 

Over 100 Tibetans Arrested This Month in China’s Sichuan Province for Possessing Photos of the Dalai Lama

After almost 60 Tibetans were arrested for possessing photos of the Dalai Lama earlier this month in China’s Sichuan province—specifically, the Dza Wonpo township of Sershul (Chinese: Shiqu) county in the Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (Chinese: Ganzi)—53 more Tibetans were arrested this week for the same charge, Radio Free Asia reports. Four people arrested in the first raid were released this week, but details about the other detainees remain unknown. “It is not the Chinese Communist Party’s business what Tibetans have on their phones or in their homes,” John Jones, Campaigns, Policy and Research Manager at London-based Free Tibet, told Radio Free Asia, calling the arrests “shocking” and a “real concern.”

Debate Over Religious Exemptions to COVID-19 Vaccine Heats Up

As state governments, businesses, schools, and hospitals weigh COVID-19 vaccine mandates, the debate over religious exemptions is heating up, too. Where do Buddhists stand? In predominantly Buddhist countries, Buddhists monastics have been some of the first people to elect to take the vaccine, and leaders, including the Dalai Lama, have encouraged followers to take it, leaving little room to claim a religious exemption from a Buddhist perspective. The Buddhist focus on compassion and community also leaves little question. As Duncan Ryuken Williams, a Soto Zen Priest and Director of the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at the University of Southern California, puts it, “Vaccines are a modern-day approach to preserving the lives of many sentient beings.” While he okays exemptions based on medical concerns, he stops short of supporting religious exemptions. To religion professor Candy Gunther Brown, banning religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine is a slippery slope from a legal perspective, but from a Buddhist point of view, the issue is an opportunity to move away from an individual rights view, which favors the self, toward a view that puts the collective good first. Read more here.

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As COVID-19 cases continue to rise around the country due to the highly contagious Delta variant, state governments, schools, corporations, and religious institutions are weighing vaccine mandates. Where there’s a vaccine mandate, there’s a protest, from California and Washington State to New York, and then come the debates over religious exemptions. 

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, businesses are allowed to mandate vaccines so long as religious exemptions are offered to employees with “sincerely held religious beliefs.” According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), if an employee applies for a religious exemption to a COVID-19 vaccine requirement, the “employer must provide a reasonable accommodation unless it would pose an undue hardship,” defined as “having more than minimal cost or burden on the employer.” “Reasonable accommodations” might include remote work, regular COVID-19 testing, or mask requirements. Public schools in 44 states also provide for religious exemptions to vaccines. But states and cities, historically the sources of vaccine mandates as opposed to the federal government, are not required to make religious exemptions.

Should religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine mandates be allowed? Are exemptions the right of an individual, or do they threaten and thus impose on the rights of other people? Where do Buddhists stand?

Joy Brennan, assistant professor of religious studies at Kenyon College whose work focuses on Buddhism, tweeted on August 28 that she is adamantly opposed to religious exemptions for vaccine mandates.

As a religious studies professor I go on record as 100% opposed to religious exemptions for vaccination mandates, particularly at private institutions like my liberal arts college, which has granted such an exemption.

— Joy Brennan (@joycbrennan) August 28, 2021

From a legal perspective, judging the merit of a religious exemption is complicated, says Candy Gunther Brown, professor of religious studies at Indiana University.

For one, there’s no consistent standard for evaluating whether or not a religious belief is “sincerely held.” And “who’s to judge?” she adds.  

“Some individuals do feel that they are being coerced to do something that’s a violation of their conscience,” Brown says, “and some people, perhaps many people, are using religious exemptions as an excuse that blurs easily with politics. But who’s to judge the sincerity? Who’s to disentangle what’s political and what’s religion, or what’s good science or bad science?”

In certain cases, a religious exemption may affect just one person, as in a Jehovah’s Witness refusing a blood transfusion because of his or her own beliefs. But an exemption for the COVID-19 vaccine affects many, and “the courts have tended to intervene in that because of the public good,” Brown says, referencing the precedent of New York State’s 2019 decision to end all exemptions except medical ones for the measles vaccine.

Still, it’s not so cut and dry, Brown says. Even though major religious leaders, including the Dalai Lama, have encouraged people to take the COVID-19 vaccine, and even though resisting the vaccine puts greater numbers at risk, it could be a slippery slope to ban religious exemptions altogether.

“The question is, could there be a future situation where the same kinds of arguments for public interest get used, but they’re applied in a manner that’s then more damaging to religious freedom?” 

From a Buddhist perspective, Duncan Ryuken Williams, a Soto Zen Priest and Director of the Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture at the University of Southern California, supports vaccine mandates by recognizing Buddhism’s historical focus on preserving life and protecting one’s community. 

“From the earliest codes of conduct for the Sangha, we Buddhists have emphasized the creation of a hygienic atmosphere for our community in respect for the health and welfare of others,” he says, calling vaccinations “a modern-day approach to preserving the lives of many sentient beings.” 

He points out that some of the first people to take the COVID-19 vaccines in predominantly Buddhist countries were ordained Buddhist monastics, including the Dalai Lama. Duncan also calls on compassion and flexibility to accommodate those seeking medical exemptions. But he stops short of specifically supporting religious exemptions by instead returning to a focus on the greater good.   

“As a matter of alleviating suffering, we Buddhists should not be hesitant about trying to assist with healing a global pandemic. While we must have a flexible and compassionate mind to allow exemptions for those for whom a vaccine is medically inadvisable, we can certainly support mandating the currently best-known method to create a healthier community.” 

Brown reiterates this position by suggesting the Buddhist approach would be to move away from a rights-based argument and first consider society at large—calling upon the Buddhist principles of interdependence and compassion. 

“The opportunity here that a lot of religious leaders are recognizing is to not be so focused on oneself or one’s own rights, but to be focused on others,” she says, and specifically those who may be the most vulnerable. “Sometimes giving up one’s rights actually makes a lot more sense than then insisting upon them.”

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