Jeremy Mohler

Writer and meditation teacher

Is it wrong to feel compassion towards cops?

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I recently bonded with a friend over the work of meditation teacher and psychologist Tara Brach, who just published a new book called “Radical Compassion.” We kept coming back to the same question: Is it wrong to feel compassion towards the police?

I’m angry at the cop who killed George Floyd. I’m outraged about cops harming protestors. But I’m also a little empathetic towards the police. It’s embarrassing to admit, but it’s true.

Let me be clear. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something about police brutality. I’m with Black Lives Matter: #DefundThePolice. Fire cops and hire more social workers. Build public housing instead of sending cops to terrorize the homeless. Give people well-paid work so they don’t have reasons to commit crime.

If anything, humanizing cops highlights the systemic nature of the problem. Cops are just doing their jobs — and that job is a violent tool used by the rich and powerful to control poor and working class people.

We might think that cops “protect and serve” the public. But modern policing began with slave patrols in the South. After slavery, cops helped break up labor strikes, regularly shooting and killing workers.

Today, cops are asked to do way too much. For decades, we’ve cut public budgets for things like education, housing, and social services while spending more and more on policing. Kids don’t need cops in their schools — they need higher-paid teachers, safer buildings, and more counselors.

That is to say, there are no “good” cops. There are good people who are cops. But policing in America is inherently violent and racist.

So, here’s my issue. I’m mad about the cops, white supremacy, capitalism — yet I know in my bones that compassion is the strongest catalyst for change.

I can’t just turn off my empathy. I used to hate the hustling part of myself that’s always striving to do more and more work. But then I started listening, trying to understand why that part wanted me to work so hard. Turns out it was trying to protect me. It thought that if I wasn’t always working hard, I’d be worthless, a loser, a nobody. Once I empathized with that part, I gained the ability, for the first time in my life, to actually, truly, authentically rest. (See Chapter 2 in my ebook “How to Get Out of Your Head” for more on this.)

And you know what? The more compassionate I‘ve become towards my workaholic part, the more empathetic I’ve become towards others who can’t stop working. As Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön writes, “By being kind to ourselves, we become kind to others. By being kind to others — if it’s done properly, with proper understanding — we benefit as well.”

She goes on: “So it is with aggression. When you get to tell someone off, you might feel pretty good for a while, but somehow the sense of righteous indignation and hatred grows, and it hurts you.”

I’m not going to lie. It feels really good right now to hate the cops. I felt a complicated sense of joy watching the Minneapolis Police Department 3rd Precinct building burn. But I’m also feeling compassion. Not towards police buildings, or for that matter any property. Towards the human beings who think they’re protecting but are in fact hurting us.

Again, that’s not to disarm your anger towards cops or whoever has hurt you. I’m just laying all my feelings out on the table, hoping that allows you to give yourself permission to do the same.

For now, all I’ve got are questions. Does compassion make me a less effective fighter against injustice? Is it just making me feel better in a fucked up, broken society?

Or better yet, here’s writer bell hooks: “For me forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”

Get my free ebook on meditation

My ebook, How to Get Out of Your Head, will help you start or stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast

On Meditation for the 99%, I take mindfulness out of faraway monasteries, expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

Mindfulness meditation helps me work smarter and relax harder

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My parents had yet to figure out I needed glasses, so I sat cross-legged a few feet from the television.

My mom was talking on the cordless phone. A lawnmower blared outside the wall. I felt free, content, and safe. Our quiet, rural Maryland home oozed 1990s middle-class prosperity. Five types of cereal sat in the pantry, and 50 cable channels awaited my eyes.

My mom came over to talk to me. “They wanted to hold you back from first grade. But I told them no,” she said. “You can handle it.”

An alarm rang inside my body. My throat tensed and mind churned. Why did they want to hold me back? What did I do wrong? Is Mom upset?

As far as I can tell, this is the first time I felt the shame that I’ve been running from since.

I hadn’t known that my teacher had been evaluating me—which was her job, of course. From then on, I was going to at least appear as though I was on task and working hard. I didn’t want to feel that shame ever again.

I often feel like I need to hustle, like I’m behind and must catch up. Behind who or what? I don’t know.

I have trouble truly resting and struggle to be present with others. I’m almost always leaning toward the future to get to the next thing on my to-do list. During my last semester of college, I even had three jobs.

I didn’t begin to notice this tendency to hustle until my mid-20s. Before that, I didn’t see it. Striving all the time was just the water I swam in.

Reading Karl Marx and learning from organizers in the Occupy movement taught me about capitalism. I learned that our society is divided between people who own things and those who work for them. Those of us not lucky enough to be born wealthy spend more time working for a living than enjoying that living.

Odds are, you feel the pressure to hustle too—most of us have no choice.

But knowing about capitalism’s flaws hasn’t helped me all that much.

Yes, it’s given me a perspective on why I feel dissatisfied despite living in the richest country in the history of the world. Yes, it’s given me a sense of comradery. Yes, it’s taught me that the solutions to many of our problems, like climate change, are systemic, not individual.

But it wasn’t until I started practicing mindfulness meditation that I found a practice for whenever I feel overwhelmed by my tendency to hustle.

Meditation is a roadmap for working with almost any overwhelming emotion. When you notice that your mind is focused on the future in an unhealthy way—be it worrying or overplanning—let go of the thoughts. Then bring your attention to the feelings of your breath or the sensations in a neutral-feeling part of your body, like your feet.

Most importantly, mindfulness taught me acceptance. I’ve learned to accept that part of me wants to hustle all of time. It’s just how I am. It’s just how we are.

When that part—or any part of me—is barking orders in my mind, I can allow it to be there even if I don’t listen. What a relief. I don’t have to listen or drown it out. I can just let it be. I can just let myself be.

“If you allow that you’re not relaxing, then you’re relaxing,” says Tibetan Buddhist monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

Acceptance creates inner freedom, a little space to decide whether to hustle or not. Sometimes I need to kick ass and get shit done. But do I really need to strive when I’m making dinner or visiting a friend?

That might not sound like much, but it’s been huge for me. I finally can relax … like, actually relax. Not veg out with Netflix or a beer. Relax, as in, who I am is enough—I’m okay.

Free ebook on mindfulness meditation

My ebook, How to Get Out of Your Head, will help you start or stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries, expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.

Like everything these days, mindfulness is being co-opted by neoliberalism

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If you’ve paid any attention to politics recently, particularly on Twitter, you’ve heard the word “neoliberalism.” It’s used to describe so many different politicians, ideologies, and policies that it’s hard to define what it means.

But it’s important to define, because neoliberalism shapes almost everything about our lives, even how we practice meditation—and that’s a problem.

My favorite definition comes from political scientist Wendy Brown, who says it’s “the expansion of markets—understood as competition—to every feature of life, including democracy, human social life, education, social services, and so forth.”

Think about how social media has turned our lives into a contest for attention—for more and more likes, shares, comments, “engagement.” And how high-stakes testing has transformed K-12 education into a competition with winners and losers. And how journalism has become a battle for clicks.

Neoliberalism is dog-eat-dog capitalism on hyperdrive, and the real sinister thing it’s done—what makes it different than prior forms of capitalism—is make us incapable of solving big problems together.

Climate change, gaping inequality, mass incarceration, the opioid crisis. History shows that the only way to fix these sorts of enormous problems is when massive political movements are able to force the government to increase and reprioritize its public investments.

But it’s hard to imagine another Civil Rights movement or a return to the New Deal era, when nearly a third of American workers were in a labor union.

Neoliberal logic makes us think that the solutions to our problems are individual. If you’re lonely, just post on Facebook. If you’re struggling to pay the bills, just work harder. If you’re unfulfilled at work, just quit and “do what you love.” If you’re worried about the environment, just become a vegan.

God forbid we’d band together and fight for a higher minimum wage, universal healthcare, or ending the fossil fuel industry.

What does all this have to do with meditation? Two things.

What meditation produces, mindfulness, can help you notice when you slip into this way of thinking.

When you notice your mind is off in the future, telling yourself to hustle, to work harder, to pull on your bootstraps, let go of the thought. Note silently in your mind, “thinking”—or even “neoliberalism.” Bring your attention back to the sensations of your breath, feelings in your body, and the sights and sounds around you.

Mindfulness won’t stop you from neoliberal thinking, but it can help you notice when you’re in the trance and snap out of it.

And two—I meet so many people who are trying to get into meditation by themselves. They want to know what apps to use, how often they should practice, what books they should read.

Go figure: meditation is being filtered through neoliberal logic. Corporations are rolling out mindfulness programs for employees left and right. Meditation is on every list published about what to do to have a more productive day.

“[Meditation] can provide benefits, but the way they’re being deployed is a neoliberal cooptation, where they are then refashioned as performance enhancement methods in alignment with institutional goals, whether it’s a corporation or the military,” writes Ron Purser, professor of management and practicing Buddhist.

When I got started with meditation, I learned from other people, like, in the flesh, in real life—but it took me awhile to get there. I’d spent years as what Zen priest Roshi Joan Halifax calls a “book Buddhist,” reading about meditation but rarely actually practicing it.

Then a girlfriend took me to a class. Seeing other people meditate—people that looked like me, normal people—encouraged me to do it more often. Going on a weekend retreat with 20 people, albeit strangers, motivated me to meditate every day. Talking about mindfulness with other people inspired me to learn how to teach meditation.

It’s absurd that this has to be said, but to really embrace meditation—and to live in a society that has a shot at solving climate change and our many other crises—we need other people.

Free ebook on mindfulness meditation

My ebook, How to Get Out of Your Head, will help you start or stick with a regular meditation practice. Get it for free here.

Listen to my podcast Meditation for the 99%

On Meditation for the 99%, I take meditation out of faraway monasteries, expensive retreat centers, and Corporate America, and bring it to work, relationships, and, especially, politics. Listen everywhere podcasts are available.