I don’t consider myself a Buddhist, but I recite what are called the “three refuges” after meditating each morning. I even have them tattooed on my arm along with a fourth.

Buddha, dharma, sangha, justice.

Whispering these words reminds me of what really matters, regardless of what’s happening in my life, even a global pandemic that’s bringing the economy to its knees.

In fact, they’re helping me stay grounded more than ever—because it’s so easy right now to get caught up in every breaking news story, tweet, and ominous text from a friend about flu-like symptoms.

Here’s what they mean:

Buddha is a Sanskrit word that refers to every human’s ability to see reality absolutely clearly, just as it is.

Tragically, we rarely see things just as they are. We get caught up in stories about how they should or shouldn’t be. We get lost in worrying, planning, daydreaming, and remembering. We get triggered into overwhelming emotions that color our thinking.

Every time I do a silent meditation retreat, I’m reminded of my tendency to forget my “Buddha nature,” as it’s called. I see how I judge people without even talking to them. I judge their choice in shoes or how they enter into a room.

One time, for an entire week I hated a young, bearded man who was wearing a “Don’t Tread on Me” T-shirt. I thought, Who the hell does this libertarian bro think he is? But when we talked after the retreat ended, his voice sounded completely different than I’d imagined. He seemed like a pleasant person, despite his unfortunate political views.

Buddha also refers to our innate ability to be compassionate. Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön reminds us that even the most vicious animals love their offspring. Tibetan Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche once said, “Everybody loves something, even if it’s only tortillas.”

Right now, despite the craziness, we all have access to a more sane and caring way of being. People are picking up groceries for the elderly, fostering shelter animals, texting friends who might be lonely. It’s OK if you can’t be compassionate right now. But just know that one of these days you might.

Dharma refers to the way things actually are. So, Buddha is our ability to see reality clearly—Dharma is reality itself.

Reality is out of whack right now. It seems upside down and unnecessarily cruel. But it’s what we have to work with — it’s reality.

When I say Dharma each morning, I remember that reality is always changing, bringing good things and challenging things. Reality “adds wood to the fire,” so to speak. It’s what helps me grow as a human, to learn new things and develop new skills.

Dharma is the truth. And who doesn’t really want the truth, even if it’s hard to stomach? Who doesn’t really want to cut the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter?

“A pebble, a bamboo tree, the cry of a baby, anything can be the voice of the Dharma calling,” writes Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. “We should be able to practice like that.”

Sangha is community, particularly those who you’d consider “my people.” These are your friends who share a similar aspiration to wake up, to feel alive, to connect.

And God knows we need community right now. We’re seeing a natural inclination towards Sangha in all the online hangouts, meetings, and watch parties. Despite what cutthroat capitalists say about human nature, we need each other.

Thich Nhat Hanh goes as far as saying, “The next Buddha will be a Sangha.” Meaning, we can’t see reality clearly without close friends, allies, therapists, and others to help us.

Lean on your community right now. Don’t hold back.

Justice, to me, refers to the need for balance. I throw it on the end because I think the other three alone are insufficient.

There’s a need for justice in every situation, all of the time, because there’s so much injustice in our society. We’re watching it play out in Congress right now. The Republicans want to bail out the airlines, hotels, and other big corporations. The Democrats—in a pleasant surprise—want to help everyday people too, those who need it the most.

If we repeat 2008–9, when millions of people lost their homes and the Wall Street bankers who crashed the economy walked away scot-free, justice will not have been served.

We need justice to make sure everyone has their basic needs taken care of. If people’s material needs aren’t met, all the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha in the world won’t make a difference.

Want to start meditating or meditate more often?

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 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.

As I’ve written, I’m housesitting for my parents in rural Maryland while they’re in Florida for the winter. When I’m not driving back into Washington, D.C., to see friends, days pass without human interaction.

But the solitude isn’t what’s getting to me. It’s the silence, particularly at night.

The house is on a farm at the end of a mile-long dirt road. It’s a 20-minute drive outside of town, “town” being La Plata, which has a population of barely over 9,000.

Living in D.C. for the past 12 years, I’ve been rocked to sleep by the sound of roommates, ambulances, and drunk people in the alley.

Out here, there’s just empty, mind-bending silence and the occasional gunshot. The other night someone fired off a few semi-automatic rounds across the field from the house. I picked up a 12-gauge shotgun and peered into the darkness for a good 15 minutes.

I’m trying to enjoy being surrounded by the forest as it prepares for spring, and during the day I do. My mother’s side of the family has owned this land since 1849. It’s not as obviously gorgeous as the mountains out West, but there’s beauty if you look for it.

Most nights, though, as soon as the sky fades to black, I imagine someone breaking into the house. Images from TV murder mysteries fill my mind. I listen into the silence, imagining the sound of glass breaking or a door being kicked in. I go up to my room, lock the door, and watch Netflix with that shotgun next to my bed.

I know the odds of someone burglarizing a house this far out in the woods are low. But when we’re triggered into intense emotions, rational thinking is beside the point.

So far, what I’ve been able to do is bring attention to the fear. I’ve noticed that my shoulders and neck tense up as if something frightening is right behind me. The last thing I want to do is get out of bed to check downstairs.

Based on my journey working with other emotions, like loneliness and grief, the next step is to accept that I’m afraid. But, so far, all I feel is ashamed. Once the stories about murders and break-ins fade away, I think things like, I’m 34 years old, I shouldn’t be afraid. Or, I should be a man like my dad who seems to never be afraid.

“Shoulds” are a dead giveaway that we’re fighting reality. When we think we should or shouldn’t be a certain way, we’re trying to deny who we really are in this moment.

The German psychoanalysis Karen Horney called this the “tyranny of the shoulds.” It really does seem like a tyrannical leader in the mind takes the steering wheel and won’t let go. There’s a rigidity to the “shoulds.” We are either this or that, good or bad, strong or weak.

But the part of me that’s afraid needs to be seen and held with compassion—just like a frightened child. If I keep denying that I’m afraid by wishing I wasn’t, that part will keep being afraid because it doesn’t trust the other parts of me. It will keep taking over and causing me to freeze up.

Thank God for my meditation practice, which has developed the muscle memory in my mind to watch out for “shoulds.”

“Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better,” writes the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön. “It’s about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That’s what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest.”

I’m curious about my fear, but befriending it sounds so lame. Who wants to be friends with someone who’s afraid of the dark like a little kid?

I’m not there yet. But at least I know where my edge is, and I’ve come to trust that when I step towards my edge rather than away from it, good things tend to happen.

Want to start meditating or meditate more often?

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 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.

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A few weeks back, I did a full day of group therapy with the American Academy of Psychotherapists. When I say “full,” I mean nine hours of deep diving into break ups, miscarriages, divorces, deaths, and family history.

I’m glad I threw myself in the ring. The Tibetan Buddhist monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche calls pushing past our edge, “adding wood to the fire.” But damn, I didn’t expect to be burned so quickly.

Minutes into one of the sessions, I shared that I felt disconnected from three women who were talking about a common experience. One of the women responded that she didn’t want to hear about “a man’s problems.”

I’d been trying to be honest and vulnerable, as the group therapist had instructed. What she said made me feel even more disconnected and a little ostracized.

Part of me wanted to explain what I’d meant so she’d know I was a feminist and one of the “good guys.” But another part remembered that she’d mentioned that she’d recently gone through a divorce. She was probably projecting on to me her resentment towards her ex-husband or maybe even all men.

I decided to listen to this more aware and skillful part. I let the moment pass and the group’s conversation shifted towards processing her pain and resentment.

I tell this story to bring up one of mindfulness’s benefits that often gets overlooked. Yes, mindfulness meditation does all the things we read about in the New York Times. It increases focus, decreases anxiety, and turns up the vibrancy of life. (I wrote about these benefits in my free ebook, How to Get Out of Your Head.)

But the deeper reason I’m obsessed with it is that it also helps me show up more fully, especially with other people, over and over again.

What do I mean by showing up “fully?” When I’m mindful, I’m less quick to judge and compare. I’m more willing to say what I feel when the time feels right. I’m less in my head, planning what to say, taking things personally. Instead, I listen—not only to the other person but also to what’s going on inside of me.

See, the reason we don’t listen very well is because we don’t want to feel what’s going on inside of us. To escape boredom, we change the subject. To escape discomfort, we try to make the other person feel better by giving them advice. To escape feeling lonely, we talk about ourselves to try to get attention.

During a conversation, I’ve found it helpful to keep part of my attention on the movement of my breath or how my body feels. When I do this, my mind is less prone to spin off into things I want to say to impress or make the other person feel better.

I’ve also found it helpful to try to imagine what the other person is feeling in the moment as their talking. I try to be curious. Is their body tense? Is their voice raised? Is their breathing short?

Another tip: ask “dumb” questions, as I’ve written about before. If someone references something I don’t know about, I ask them to explain. If I don’t know where someone lives, where they grew up, what they do for work, whether they’re happy, I ask.

You’d be surprised by how many people are walking around dying to be asked about the most important parts of their lives. People will light up just because you put the effort into getting out of your own head to ask them to explain something they just said.

When I’m in the zone of mindful listening, it feels like everything I need is available to me—nothing is missing. I can always ask a question about something I’m curious about or don’t understand. No matter what, I can always say, “I’m feeling this way,” or “When you said that, it made me feel this.”

It’s like how the trumpet player Wynton Marsalis describes playing jazz: “There’s no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.”

The bottom line: when in doubt, listen—both inside and out.

I don’t want to pretend that listening is easy. This capitalist society of ours leaves many of us feeling disconnected, vulnerable, and alone. We’re pressured to lean on one person, a romantic partner, for connection and support. Community is undervalued and even seen as a threat—“socialism.”

“There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families,” said Margaret Thatcher, one of the most cold-blooded capitalists that ever lived.

So many of us are dying for deep, real attention. Facebook and Instagram don’t cut it. In fact, according to studies, social media makes us feel lonelier.

The writer and Zen meditation teacher Natalie Goldberg once told me that, after a meditation retreat, we want to tell everyone about our experience because we’re so vulnerable. But, she said, if we want our partner, best friend, whoever to understand what we’ve been through, we should just listen, and they’ll know—they’ll get it.

Reminds me of that Maya Angelou quote: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Listen more, and odds are you’ll be listened to more.

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.