What we need is care and not correctness

Maybe to be free includes releasing the need to be right

On October 8th, 2023, I reposted something from The Slow Factory about the ongoing occupation of Palestine on Instagram. Hours after this, a friend dm’d me and said what I posted was not ok, and that it wasn’t the time to argue for “the other side” but to exercise my lost compassion for the families brutally terrorized by the Hamas.

When I read this message, I felt shame rushed like boiling heat towards my face. Did I do something wrong? Did I mistake this situation somehow? Then, I felt clenching at my chest. Something felt explosive in the heart. Have I been oblivious about Zionism in my social circle this whole time? To mask the shame and the anger, I turned to defense. First, I took down the story out of a desire to deescalate the situation, as if my emotions could be forgotten along with this post. Then, I researched more about the history of Palestine/Israel and tried my best to fact check the sources I was reading. In a fury of googling, I caught myself in a familiar position: I was constructing an argument to disprove my friend’s criticism. I wanted so badly to prove myself right, so much so that I had neglected a crucial fact in this interaction - that my friend who critiqued me was likely in pain. My practice as a Buddhist gave me a clue: I was witnessing and experiencing the first noble truth of dukkha, which is commonly translated as “suffering” in English¹. The unyielding grip on the idea of me, mine, and I in the constant flurry of this world spins into an unending cycle of suffering. To end this cycle of suffering, I must let go. I went back to the chat with the friend and deleted the draft of rebuttals. Instead, I typed a few words, “I’m sorry. Are you ok?”

My friend said he forgave me and told me that some of his friends were dead and missing from the attack. My heart sank, I had no idea that they had friends in Israel. I felt incredibly torn: I wanted to be with the grief my friend was experiencing and yet this empathy felt like a betrayal of decades of suffocation of the Palestinian people. Because of this tension, I felt inadequate at meeting with this moment. Our conversation fizzled, and I never heard from him again.

I continued sharing news and updates from Bisan and other Pro-Palestinian sources on Instagram because I saw that my own liberation is bound to the liberation of all people. A few weeks later, another friend dm’d me and said that I was uneducated, deeply antisemitic, and a Nazi supporter. Then, the brother of this person, who was a close friend of mine, messaged me separately and said that filtering the Palestinian-Isarel dynamic through the lens of oppressor versus the oppressed was privileged, shallow, and dangerous. What I believed in, according to him, was “equivalent of a Chinese person saying the cultural revolution was good.”²

I felt misunderstood, attacked, and therefore, hurt. I wanted to tell them that they were wrong. That my education level is in the 5th percentile of the country. That the ability to name the oppressor did not come from privilege but from the clarity after healing my own complex relationship with the colonizers that made my hometown known to the world. As these arguments built, something whispered in my ear, “Hurt people, hurt people.” To a wounded heart that had already located an enemy in me, liberation was neither compelling nor urgent. If they wanted to learn more about the nature of apartheid and oppression, they would have already done the research. Seeing that my reactions, no matter how articulate and important, would only add to the pain expressed by these people, I put down my armor said something like, “Hey, it sounds like you’re really upset. How can I help?”

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On our fridge is a laminated piece of paper titled “Eight verses of thought transformation” by Langri Tangpa, translated by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. I open and close the fridge door no less than 30 times a day, but I’ve read these verses only a handful of times, mostly because these verses are intimidatingly aspirational for me. Here’s what verses four and verse five say,

Whenever I see beings who are wicked in nature and overwhelmed by violent negative actions and suffering, I shall hold such rare ones dear, as if I had found a precious treasure.

When, out of envy, others mistreat me with abuse, insults, or the like, I shall accept defeat and offer the victory to others.

I remember thinking that this geshe³ was out of his mind to say that we should treat people who insult us like gems and winners. If I were mistreated, I’d fight back or leave. Even though I mocked these words, I was inspired by a way of living that moved with kindness and ease.

I imagined that just as my feed was inundated with gruesome genocidal images and videos of Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and more places, the people who vilified me were probably seeing news that depicted a very different world. It’s important to note that this sense of compassion is not out of a desire to avoid conflict but out of an intense desire for all of us to be free. Free Palestine. Free Congo. Free Sudan. Free the Uyghurs. Free from delusion, hatred, and greed.

I believe that progress is made through building bridges across differences. This means I have to release the need to be right and release the desire to convince others of my agenda. Rather, it begins with sitting down with the people who don’t agree with me and ask, how is your heart today? Then perhaps, one day, we will see that the space between us has always been filled with particles that link our skin and bones together. That when you feel something, I’d feel it, too.

While I’m working up to be at the geshe level of compassion, I’m still in the process of learning how to connect when distance feels way safer and easier. But it’s so hard. I haven’t talked to any of these people that I mentioned since then. Honestly, I feel scared because I feel like I’d be attacked again. Maybe that’s a part of compassion - the willingness to keep an open heart even when it feels vulnerable. I will meet you there.

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1. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn45/sn45.165.wlsh.html

2. The Cultural Revolution referred to the decade-long sociopolitical movement from 1966 to 1976 in Maoist China, during which tens of thousands of students rebelled as The Red Guards. People deemed to be bourgeoisies were publicly humiliated, tortured, murdered, and sentenced to labor camps. These people include my parents and close families.

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langri_Tangpa