A Mindfulness Teacher's Letter to Her High School Students on Injustice
By Cassandra Moore, Peace in Schools Mindfulness Teacher
Dear Mindfulness Students,
What a weird last day of school, eh? There’s the pandemic, an economic crisis, and a summer unfolding alongside the most widespread national protests since the ‘60s. Oh, and seniors are having a drive-through graduation, what?!
I wonder if you feel like your adolescence is engulfed in turmoil? I hope you find some ease this summer, and a lot of warmth and care. Before you go, I have one last serious question to ask you: What value is there in practicing mindfulness right now, in a time when it can sometimes feel like the world’s on fire?
At the beginning of our semester, many of you assumed that mindfulness or meditation required a calm environment—an empty room, silence, dim lights. Many of you assumed that meditation makes you calm, or that it should. We learned that these are misunderstandings, common myths of mindfulness. I have a little secret—we weren’t engaged in a simple version of Mindfulness 101 these past months: we have been engaged in something much, much deeper.
“What value is there in practicing mindfulness right now, in a time when it can sometimes feel like the world’s on fire? ”
The misperception that mindfulness requires and elicits calmness always comes with great consequence and would be a watered-down version of an ancient, complex practice. Because what if the world’s not calm for a long, long time? If we wait to do mindfulness until things are peaceful we might be waiting forever. We’d be waiting through a lot of grief and a lot of suffering that could use our awareness and compassion and mindful action. I invite you to noodle on the value of mindfulness and meditation right now, amid a pandemic and systemic racism and injustice. Part of Mindfulness is being with whatever is real, right? So if what’s real is fear or anger or overwhelm, then our practice is to honor our experience with non-judgment and compassion and not try to force ourselves to feel a calmness we don’t.
“I have a little secret—we weren’t engaged in a simple version of Mindfulness 101 these past months: we have been engaged in something much, much deeper.”
So what if we sit and sit and don’t feel calm but we feel fury and grief for what’s happening in the world? Grief and fury are a sane response to injustice, and to think that meditation is supposed to null those is to undermine the immense emotions that always have and always will motivate systemic change. Once we’re aware of what we’re really feeling and we can be with it, we then cultivate the ability to respond in an empowered way, not a reactive or habitual way. If we all did this, how empowered would we be, collectively, to respond wisely and authentically to systems that needing changed?
“Grief and fury are a sane response to injustice, and to think that meditation is supposed to null those is to undermine the immense emotions that always have and always will motivate systemic change.”
What if police officers practiced mindfulness? Politicians? How would the country be different? If they got present to their conditioning and sat with the ways they’ve been racialized and taught to fear or villainize black bodies? Because that’s what mindfulness is: it’s providing tools to dis-identify with the diverse conditioning that we all have in some form or another which causes ourselves and others suffering. It’s bizarre that mindfulness sometimes gets labeled “woowoo,” because I think this practice is the truest of trenches: it takes an immense amount of courage to look at our conditioning and to sit with it and kindly encourage ourselves toward a new way. In a summer already marked with police brutality and racism, I want to make sure you understand that our mindfulness practice is part of the movement toward much needed systemic change. Mindfulness is the call to unlearn and dismantle systems of oppression—in ourselves and outside ourselves. This is by no means where the movement stops, but it is an important pillar. One that you’ve been engaging in all semester.
“In a summer already marked with police brutality and racism, I want to make sure you understand that our mindfulness practice is part of the movement toward much needed systemic change. Mindfulness is the call to unlearn and dismantle systems of oppression—in ourselves and outside ourselves. ”
I want to tell you how subversive it is to learn mindfulness tools. It feels like this secret I’ve been keeping from you all semester—because you’re in a public school and subversive things rarely happen in public schools. But let me tell you, it is radical that we’ve talked about the Conditioned Mind and how to be free(er) from the conditioning that causes us suffering. By learning these tools, you are engaged in one of the most courageous things someone can do, and I want to celebrate your courage. The practice of decolonizing our bodies and minds from conditioning that teaches us to dislike ourselves, to not trust ourselves, and therefore to not trust each other is radical indeed: learning to free ourselves from a system that taught us to be distant from ourselves so that we also won’t be close to each other—because we can’t be authentically close to each other, or kind, or nonjudgmental, if we’re not close and kind and nonjudgmental with ourselves. Mindfulness is the practice of coming home to ourselves and each other.
“Remembering who we authentically are is a powerful act that contributes to equity and kindness—it feeds authenticity and connection and undermines separation, prejudice and inequity. ”
Do you remember where Mindfulness comes from? It's a thousands-of-years-old practice, and the word ‘Mindfulness’ comes from the ancient Pali word sati, which derives from the verb Sarati meaning, “to remember.” We’re remembering our inherent dignity, our worthiness, our inner gold, our interconnectedness.
And we live in a system that depends on us forgetting that. So that instead of holding awareness of our interconnectedness, we other and compete—and systems of oppression feed on that. Remembering who we authentically are is a powerful act that contributes to equity and kindness—it feeds authenticity and connection and undermines separation, prejudice and inequity.
How would the world be different if we each tried to cultivate faith in our inner gold, in our basic inherent dignity? My sense is that as our inner love grows, only then do we have faith in the strength, wisdom, and dignity of others.
Keep being part of the movement, please. I encourage you to keep practicing this summer. We need you in this fight.
Cassandra Moore is a Mindfulness Teacher for Peace in Schools. She came to Portland by way of New Mexico, where she lived as a resident at Upaya Zen Center for 1.5 years. This residential experience gave her a strong foundation in mindfulness, and deep trust in its positive impact on trauma, self-worth, and general wellbeing. Cassandra grew up the youngest of nine children in the desert southwest. She recently made the difficult decision to turn down a fully funded MFA in nonfiction writing and to instead complete a masters in counseling psychology so that she can integrate therapy and mindfulness practices, her deepest callings.