Embracing our Shadow

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend a very interesting presentation by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk at Loyola Marymount University. He received the Doshi Bridgebuilder award “for fostering understanding between cultures, peoples and disciplines.”

The first book I read fifteen years ago by Tich Nhat Hanh was “Peace is Every Step,” followed by “The Miracle of Mindfulness.”  I highly recommend either book.

Hanh has applied focus on breathing and simple meditation to bring together groups of Israelis and Palestinians for better understanding. He has done this with a variety of groups that are in apparent conflict, with amazing results. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace award for this an other work of his monastery.

The presentation yesterday took place in the LMU gymnasium, which was half filled with students and interested people from the local community. Hanh had about thirty monks (male and female) from the Deerpark (Escondido, CA) monastery with him. To start, they led us in a guided breathing meditation, which I found very centering. Then there were several presentations related to the award, which was interesting to hear as LMU is a Jesuit university. They have a well-balanced perspective in teaching about different religions, finding common themes and disciplines to support a person’s spirituality.

Then we stood up and did more breathing, along with moving our arms and legs in different ways with each breath. It was somewhat like T’ai Chi or Yoga. Very hard to do when standing in bleachers…….Finally, Thich Nhat Hanh spoke (the reason I attended). There were a few gems that I took away from his very thoughtful speech.  Here’s the one that stuck with me:

We need to embrace our suffering like a mother embraces her child.  As we do this, we learn compassion and understanding of others. 

I never understood the buddhist focus on suffering until I heard Hanh speak about this.  I always thought all the talk about suffering was so negative.  Hanh said we don’t need to wallow in our suffering, but we do need to embrace it as a natural part of our lives so we may understand others.  It struck me that this approach is similar to the approach described by Debbie Ford in “Dark Side of the Light Chasers” where she talks about embracing our shadow self.  The shadow self is a part of us that we’ve repressed.  It can be either a positive or negative aspect of ourselves.  Repression causes either emotional or physical suffering.  When we embrace the shadow, we re-integrate that part of ourselves and are relieved of the suffering caused by the repression.