Social Justice and Spiritual Practice
I can’t tell you how many meditators have written in telling me how appreciative they are of Clyde Ford’s interview with us a few years ago. His expertise at bringing together the elements of social justice and spirituality have provided yogis more than enough food for thought, and informed how a practitioner can also engage (without attachment) in worldly affairs. In the following excerpt, he describes the relationship between the meditation center and the world beyond the gates.
“You don’t run from it. You don’t wish for a better way of being in the world and then be attached to it.”
“We are living in the society that we are in; we are not living at [vipassana meditation] centers. We are going to centers to learn, to study, to practice, but we are living in the world. And the world we are living in, [in] the reality of that world, there are certain degrees of inequity. You could even call it suffering. We, as Vipassanā meditators, know something about suffering; we know how to deal with suffering. We know how to address it.
You don’t run from it. You don’t wish for a better way of being in the world and then be attached to it. You find a Middle Path that allows you to be present with the suffering, that allows you to work for something beyond the suffering without being attached to outcome.
That makes the practice of social justice part of the spiritual practice, not even separate from it. It becomes part of who we are as human beings. And how we live our lives. There can be no better example of integrated spiritual practice than a person who lives their life based on these deep principles.”