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.

This ancient Russian folktale will help you through uncertain times

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It is said that Baba Yaga, an ancient Russian wise woman, lived in a hut deep in the forest. She was almost always stirring a pot and waiting to tell the truth to whoever visited.

One day, a young man knocked on her door.

“Are you here on your own or were you sent by another?” asked Baba Yaga.

“My father told me to come,” said the young man.

Baba Yaga threw him in the pot and cooked him. She kept stirring and waiting, until a young woman visited.

“Are you here on your own or were you sent by another?” Baba Yaga asked.

“I’m here on my own,” the young woman answered.

Baba Yaga threw her into the pot.

A third visitor, a young woman confused about the world, approached the hut.

“Are you here on your own or were you sent by another?” Baba Yaga asked.

The young woman said, “In large part I’m on here on my own, but in large part I also come because of others. And in large part I’ve come because you’re here, and because of the forest, and something I’ve forgotten, and in large part I don’t know why I came.”

“You’ll do,” Baba Yaga said and invited her into the hut to hear the truth.

So much is up in the air. Protests. A pandemic. The economy. A fascist president provoking his base with dog whistles about “law and order.”

Understandably, we search for certainty in the confusing muck. We want a role to play, an action to take, an escape route. We want to figure out who is good and who is evil, what is right and what is wrong. Part of us thinks that if we’re certain, we’ll be safe. If we know what’s going to happen, we’ll be okay.

Meditation teacher Tara Brach calls the part of us that wants certainty “the controller.” The controller is “the ego’s executive director, the self we believe is responsible for making decisions and directing the course of our lives. The controller obsessively plans and worries, trying to make things safe and okay, and it can give us at least a temporary sense of self-efficacy and self-trust.”

But—as it always is—the truth is in the uncertainty. It’s down there in the muck. It’s in noticing the urge to control and then letting go. It’s in the “I don’t know.”

And the hardest thing to do in life is to admit that “I don’t know” but still move forward, still do “the next right thing,” still fight for what is right.

Four cops killed George Floyd. But I don’t know if Floyd’s family will ever feel like justice has truly been served.

Policing has racist roots. It evolved out of slave patrols, squadrons of white volunteers who used vigilante tactics like lynching to enforce slavery laws. But I don’t know if we’ll be successful in dramatically changing how cops do their jobs.

Police budgets have been growing for years while public spending has been cut on things like education, social services, and public health. But I don’t know if we’ll be successful in defunding the police.

Most positive societal change (the 8-hour workday, the Civil Rights Act, etc.) would not have happened without masses of people rebelling, including violence against property. But I don’t know whether the vibrant, multiracial protests are going to lead to progress.

The real “looting” is corporate America getting a $4.5 trillion bailout while more than 40 million people are out of work. America’s billionaires have made more than a collective $434 billion during the pandemic. But I don’t know whether Congress is going to help people who need it most.

Coronavirus is still killing over 1,000 people in the U.S. every day. But I don’t know if and when a vaccine will be available.

As hard as it is, we should hang around in the messiness of “I don’t know.” Otherwise we harden and get rigid and close off and miss the truth that’s always emerging in the present moment.

At the same time, we must pick a side and engage somehow. We must protest or donate to legal funds or check in with friends or simply care for the vulnerable people in our lives. These are the types of moments that are historical inflection points. The rest of our lives will be shaped but what happens next. We must shake off the capitalist idea that we’re not in this together, that our freedom isn’t determined by the freedom of others.

I try to remember that people have been fighting for justice for a long, long time. And, like the visitors to Baba Yaga’s hut, we’ve still fought even though the future is unknown.

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.