If we take time with Art, it can (and will) transform us, softening the heart or tweaking the brain gently with new vibrant thoughts. The key is to slow down and to allow what you see to enter your physical being. Breathe - look again - breathe … and notice what you feel inside.

About a week ago I was in need of a serious dose of peacefulness and wellbeing, and I decided to take a trip to San Francisco’s De Young Museum to look at an exhibition of Monet’s late paintings so I might find safety and pleasure all together. My lifetime of looking at art had taught me that it was indeed a refuge to be treasured. There is something almost magical that happens to you when you enter a museum with its perfectly spacious galleries and generous lighting … it is akin to walking into a church where all the elements — the stained glass, the votive candles, crucifixes, the hard wooden pews and incense — invite you to come to rest and find solace in the quiet. And so I marched through the galleries at the De Young to witness the paintings Monet created in the last decades of his life when he took refuge in his humble country estate at Giverny and meditated on the flowers, the lily pond, the Japanese bridge, and the ever changing light.

Monet is an old friend in my life; I’ve been looking at his purple/green/blue/gray and pink impressionistic pieces since I was pretty young, and have noticed that the paintings keep pulling you in each time you return. Close up you see the affectionate and meticulous brush strokes that create the movement of water and plants, and stepping back you feel the enormity of the natural environment: a luminous lily pond where you can see layers below the surface and feel the dampness, and the perky freshness of the lilies. I don’t know who told me that this back and forth viewing of the painting was the best … it feels almost as though Monet with his flowing white beard and dapper fedora stepped up and whispered this into my ear as I stood before the giant “Nympheas” at L’Orangerie in Paris, paintings he gave to his country at the end of World War I … Each time I see these canvasses, I feel compelled to stop, sit down and breathe deeply for a while, reflecting on the generosity of nature and this prodigious artist.

Being a witness to Art can replenish our hearts and calm our agitated psyches. When I wandered through the Metropolitan Museum in New York recently, I came upon two exhibits that felt transformative. One of those was a small show of Dutch paintings, featuring Vermeer, Hals, and Rembrandt. I remember standing in front of a Rembrandt portrait and again being pulled in … to see up close the deep dark tones of his oil paint : the blacks, browns, and ochres … and then there was the stunning gloss of the surface; it was so seductive I could imagine the smell and taste of the paint itself. When I come close, I see the smooth strokes with no bristles apparent, and when I pull back I see the smooth blending of light and shadow, texture and smoothness, and the haunting human face staring back at me from years ago. I am invited in. Another small exhibit featured Italian drawings in the tradition of Leonardo, master draftsman as well as all around genius. The figures in these delicately rendered pictures came alive with a minimum of busyness on the paper. The fine swirling lines in ink, the shading and the cross hatching, all succeeded in making the face of a young man feel palpable, sweet and soft and alive. Stylized as they were, these fine line drawings revealed humanity in their subjects… I walked away with a desire to pick up sketch pad and pencil and begin to draw.

So, I’m imagining sitting around the dining room table with wine and cheese and flickering candle light, and asking these particular artists what all of this means. Why are we so captivated by their work? Why exactly have these men become legendary? What I think they’d say to me about this alchemy they’re responsible for is that it is all about being present with love and tenacity, about forging ahead, knowing you are an integral member of the natural world. None of these works of art could have been produced unless the artist agreed to continue witnessing and belonging to this world. I’m thankful that countless artists over the centuries have stayed this course and countless people now journey to museums all over the world to take a look and receive the gift…

Art’s generosity puts me at ease and makes me feel held... I’ve come home to a safe place, and for the time being beauty (and love) is all that matters.

About a block and a half from the expensive Nomad Hotel on Broadway sat a man on the frigid concrete, surrounded by plastic materials and bags that created a wall of sorts who offered up insights and thoughts to everyone and to no one in particular. The temperature in New York when I first noticed him was an icy 25 degrees and everyone on the street bustled as fast as they could to get somewhere out of the cold. For the ten days I stayed in that hotel, this man never budged. Day time, night time, there he was. Not ranting and railing and crying out in desperation, but holding his own and calmly speaking his piece to the masses who didn’t listen.

He broke my heart in a way. I wanted to witness him everyday during my stay. It seemed like the least I could do. Ellen Bass’ poem - “If You Only Knew” - about recognizing the mortality of our fellow beings, comes to mind:

“What if you knew you’d be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?”

This man stayed on my mind the whole time I was in New York as I tried to figure out his story. Why was this sane sounding, clean black gentleman spending his days and nights on Broadway in lower Manhattan? What difficulties had brought him to this place? Where were the people he loved, the place he once called home? I attempted to engage him one afternoon and offered him some cash and he responded with some surprise. In the end he took my five dollars and thanked me politely. I had the distinct feeling that the money I offered was not going to booze or drugs, but perhaps into a private kitty he may have to help him pass his days on this very street. He was an unusual man, perhaps in his fifties and looking relatively healthy, unlike most of the homeless people I walk by in San Francisco whose scabbed faces and bloodshot eyes make my heart hurt. This gentleman on Broadway gave no signs of being on death’s door…

I think I want to find a story in my mind for this man. I want to give him a past populated by people who cared for him and with whom he had community. If I had gone back to visit him one last time before I left New York, I might have asked him some questions about his past, his visions for his life, but sadly I became too caught up in the momentum of departing and never did revisit his little enclave of plastic bags and blankets. It is now a week since I last laid eyes on him, and I can’t get him out of my mind.

There’s an enduring question in my brain now, and that is: what about the white privileged guilt I carry? What about my grinding discomfort with the disparity between my own advantages in society and that of this man I watched every day in NY? How do I understand our shared experiences of this human journey? One thing I believe is that in writing of the experience I come closer and closer to feeling our commonality and mutual understanding. I have to keep looking, allowing for the suffering that bubbles up in my heart at this man’s (and so many others) deep loneliness, and perhaps one of these days I’ll be able to move toward him as though he wasn’t on the other side of some wall or invisible barrier. Perhaps then I’ll be able to greet him just as a fellow traveler like myself who knows suffering AND intermittent joy.

This morning I was reminded by a friend and teacher of meditation that meditation is about reality, which means that it is about the present moment. He pointed out that the past is gone, residing somewhere in our web of memories, and that the future is not (yet) real. When you sit, breathe, and feel your body, even with the nervous energy of your mind trying to butt in, you are experiencing present moment reality from one moment to the next. All the other “stuff” of life falls away, or at least becomes less tangible.

What this practice asks of us is simplicity, a paring down of our dreams and expectations and judgments and plans. In order to understand who and where and what we are, we need to stop and breathe and feel into our physical body and our heart.

Here are some things I didn’t have to think about when I sat in meditation this morning for 20 minutes: Trump and his surreal universe, worries about my blood pressure, thoughts about old age loneliness, concerns about publicizing myself and my book, the sad difficulty of reconciling the income inequality so vivid in San Francisco, my own mortality which is becoming more and more “real” to me, the complications of being connected to family …. Those are all thoughts and feelings that I have carried over months and years, and for most of them I have no resolution. They come and they go, like clouds in the sky, like the sun and the moon and the seasons, and when I can let them just be for just a while I’m a more peaceful and hopeful person. Instead of wrestling with these prickly, painful pieces of life, I get to have a clear and simple experience, like sipping a cup of tea in early morning while listening to Bach, or walking in the finest of drizzle on a Saturday afternoon with my dog on Union Street, and feeling the gentle bathing of my dry skin, smelling the freshness in the air. My walk in the rain was a moment devoid of thoughts and plans or worries and I was enormously happy. It was simply a walk, one step at a time.

What is the best way to know ourselves? Is it through the thoughts, plans, and striving to make things happen, or is it through the various moments of presence like that rainy afternoon after my lunch of a perfect ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of rose? I believe the happiness comes from allowing our hardworking brains to take a rest from trying to orchestrate and fix us. It is then that we can see who we really are.

Endowed with this clarity, and peace, we can go forth and make choices about how to participate in the vast number of challenges surrounding us.

To my readers:

I am going forth tomorrow for a ten day holiday in one of my favorite cities in the world: New York. I will be walking the snowy streets, visiting museums, theaters, and eateries, and will return to San Francisco hopefully refreshed to pick up my blog writing.

When I was quite young I fell in love with a young Italian man who happened to be sailing on the same ship as I was from Italy to America. Within six days on the ship he (I withhold his name as he is alive and well and living in the midst of his sprawling Italian family in Brooklyn) and I quickly found an intimate place with one another, and we smiled, held hands, strolled on the ship’s deck in the golden afternoons speaking affectionate words, kissed, and had a perfectly sweet time. I was thirteen and he was nineteen. When I write about this rare chapter in my life, I find myself astonished that I had this unusual romance at all. After all, a girl of thirteen is quite a different person than a young man of nineteen…

This was rare, innocent, and perfect — and it changed my life forever. Love was offered. Though he and I were never destined to have an enduring relationship, we carried it on for a year of letter writing and daydreaming of one another, while he settled into his life in the lower Manhattan and I finished out my last year in Rome with my mother and stepfather. I’m sure I didn’t imagine that it would go on forever, the way we are apt to later in life when we crave predictability and safety. One of the remarkable things about this relationship was that it came about and thrived in the moment; perhaps that is why I can still remember the details of it so vividly even though it unfolded sixty years ago. I still recall his sharp pine aftershave, his large hands with long fingers, his brilliant green eyes. I remember how his mouth curled beautifully when he sang to me while playing his guitar, and that his body was both long and protective. I remember the soft pale blue sweater he wore on our last night on the ship as we danced to a tinny orchestra, surrounded by the smell of cigarettes and human sweat. I remember it was just enough for us to say, “Ti Amo (I love You)”. Was this unique coming together possible only because we found ourselves caught in this bubble of the ship’s voyage in June of 1958, unaware of anything else that was going on? During those idyllic days I had no clue that my family would eventually break apart, and he had no idea he’d have to settle for drudge work at a pizza shop downtown when he really dreamed of becoming a hairdresser. We simply held on to each other, his tall 6”2” form folded around my short 5’2”, as the outside world seemed to blur in the distance. When we left this romantic bubble behind, the itineraries of our lives took over and we were no longer in control, no longer bound together.

Why do I consider this moment of young love? I’m approaching another birthday (74), and experience the gradual slowing down of my body and fatigue in my brain, and there is a melancholy hanging over my world. Why not look at love and romance? There’s something there that offers hope and comfort. I’ve often been drawn to (and intimidated by) figuring out how to write a “love story” because there was so little romance in my life growing up; intimacy was certainly an unfamiliar experience. Later in life I watched romantic dramas like Casablanca or An Affair to Remember and I cried, I suspect because what I saw was that love stories often ended darkly and sadly, that romantic love was fragile, ephemeral. Yes, that fluttering, quivering, warm body-to-body stuff could not last - it had to burn itself out. I think of the fleeting and feverish life of a hummingbird or butterfly, creatures of unspeakable beauty who are given lives of such short duration… Unlike animals in nature, humans become more and more complicated, as we attempt to figure out our life’s goals and keep a mental list of our preferences and dislikes, and gradually move away from the magic of momentary intimacy. We become committed to getting somewhere and being someone.

Another reason I’m drawn to this mysterious subject of love: the weather inside my head has recently turned cloudy and dull, and I needed to discover something in my mind that would remind me I was a living breathing writer who had something relevant to say. And the first thing that showed up that seemed meaningful was love. A lifetime of reading great literature and listening to the Buddha’s words have shown me a simple and profound truth: Love is what our human lives are about. Love binds us together. This love is vast - it transcends that early romantic love - and it looks like this: lifting up a broken friend, giving food to an anonymous homeless person, mending a withered relationship, giving comfort to someone sick or dying, creating art that elevates the human spirit, advocating for friends and family and community, fostering social change in a dark and dysfunctional society, teaching those who seek a larger understanding of life, or just listening to a young child… If we ever knew (as I suspect we all have) that pure sparkling “in love” sensation where we are able to sense it all: the color of his socks, the taste of the salt air, or the sound of the guitar and warmth of his hands, then we have the ability to pull from our hearts the generosity, honesty, and compassion we need to be the humans we need to be.

Dear Blog Readers:

I fully intended to continue my reflections on the meaning of borders in our fraught world, but because the arising news about ongoing injustices on our southern border was so grim and because something came up in my life to stop me in my tracks, I decided to make a little foray into spiritual practice. For those of you not interested in the “coming to practice” theme, I invite you to pass this over. It’s a bit personal, it’s a bit of rambling theoretical, and it still seems important to me over a week after I wrote it. I always appreciate any of your sincere response(s) to what you read here! Gratefully, Mag

There are probably as many particular stories about the spiritual journey as there are changes in the weather around the globe, or the clouds in the sky. I grew up without any spiritual conditioning and for many years of my long life I gave it little thought. I did get myself baptized at age fourteen when my sweet Italian (Catholic) boyfriend panicked at the vision of my going to hell unbaptized. My grandmother Dimond, who had nurtured me for many of my young years, had her own very private version of religion, and from time to time she expressed her concern that I was wandering through life without an anchor or moral compass. She treated the subject gently always and when she died at the age of eighty-nine, I never knew how deeply I might have disappointed her. Some months following her death, I remember sitting alone on the beach feeling a vast pool of sadness and sense of being lost in my life without her. I was forty five years old at the time, and felt like an orphaned child. As I sat watching the enormous waves, marveling at their immense power, I had an epiphany of sorts: I suddenly understood that I had not really lost this grand woman who had helped raise me, but rather I saw that I carried her inside me now. I had not been abandoned. And needless to say, that gave me some comfort and courage at what was a confused and unhappy period of my young life.

Years later I moved away from San Francisco after abandoning my marriage and family and setting my sights on a careless narcissistic character. Though my landscape was different - northern New Mexico, not California - my troubles were certainly familiar, part of an old pattern of emotional hunger and neediness. It seemed to be about careless decisions made without attention to what was happening inside me. Despair set in when I realized I had made a very bad choice. I was heartbroken and my sense of self seemed to be withering in the dry mountain air. And then … a dear friend who did bodywork gently pointed the way when she suggested meditation might ease the suffering I carried in my body. I followed her lead despite my doubts, found a little sitting group, and when I listened to my first dharma talk I began to understand that there was a way to cope with pain of both my heart and body. The light bulb moment came, and I saw that I could rely on this practice - this refuge - as I moved forward. All that was over twenty years ago.

My spiritual journey has been continuous and also unorthodox. I have made it my own largely the way my grandmother made Christianity her own practice; since that revelatory New Mexico moment, I have personalized it. Then … a recent conversation with one of my fellow practitioners at our monthly meeting stirred up confused and unsettled feelings about the nature of this tailor-made practice. The message I heard in this conversation was that somehow I might not be taking the Buddhist way seriously or intensely enough. It was true that I wasn’t practicing with the intense goals of liberation that many dedicate themselves to, running any spiritual marathon or mastering every possible concentration practice and reading all the suttas and commentaries in different translations, and therefore I felt regarded as a bit of an amateur. In short, it appeared I wasn’t striving sufficiently. Instead of reflecting on the ways I could serve Buddhism, I frequently considered how Buddhism could help me in times of pain and confusion - in particular, how the teachings could help me live with the dark political climate we find ourselves in these days and help me be a better human being in the world. I was quite aware of how fortunate I was to be following a venerable lineage of practitioners, but I didn’t seem to be able to sacrifice or purify; I was frankly somewhat attached (not a desired state in the Buddha’s view) to pleasures and experiences that were part of my life’s fabric. So, instead of feeling gratified that I had worked at staying on “the path” all these years and seeing my life transformed, I judged myself (another unwholesome choice according to Buddha) because like many Westerners I too frequently lack faith and confidence.

As you begin your Buddhist journey you’re invited to join in the pursuit of wisdom, compassion, train the mind to settle and see what is true (otherwise known as meditation), and adopt principles of ethical behavior and wholesome habits. I see a thread that binds all these deep principles, which is non-harming. Until we see the cause/effect between causing harming and then suffering, then we go forward in ignorance. Sustained meditation practice shines the light on what is true in every moment, and brings us from ignorance to awareness and understanding. Of the many lists that the Buddha created in his teaching career, the Eightfold Path lays out a game plan or what I might call a “to-do list” to help his followers continue on the path to freedom from suffering. When you look at the elements of this path, they make infinite sense. After all, who could argue that speaking wisely, making wholesome efforts in life, practicing compassion, staying true to principles of non-harming, training the mind to be wise - are not beautiful and solid goals? These steps of the practice belong in the realm of common sense, and yet it takes ardent, relentless effort to practice them and integrate them into your life. Which gets me to my own story…

All my life I was drawn to becoming wiser and more aware, and so the Buddhist precept of “Right View” gave me comfort and felt familiar the moment I heard it explained. I had spent many of my childhood years not only studying in school to master such subjects as History, Literature, or Latin, but because I lived in an unstable and chaotic family environment, I also became a keen observer of my environment so I could understand what was authentic and reliable in my life. Meditation practice as a means to stop, breathe, and see what is real felt as though it made infinite sense. Of course, sitting on the meditation cushion for long periods counting one’s breaths wasn’t as easy as mastering my fourth year of Latin in high school, but as soon as I had that one crystal clear view of what I was dealing with, of who I really was, I said hooray! When we can finally see clearly then we can let go of the ideas and opinions we have about things that weigh us down and are not who we are. I grew up surrounded by people who dissembled and spoke in code, and I always hungered to find out who I was and what my life looked like. Buddhist practice gave me that opportunity.

I worked hard at it but not always. Right Effort (another piece of the to-do list) is hard because it involves relentlessness. You have to keep on doing it, continue to bring yourself into the present moment so you can find the clarity and openness of heart. The fluctuating rhythm of our lives and our susceptibility to distraction makes this difficult. We take many detours, such as eating, drinking, movies, books, traveling, making plans, daydreaming, and fabricating the story of our lives, and then what is to be done? Begin again. And again. And again. “Beginners Mind,” a phrase coined by Zen Master Suzuki Roshi, tells us it is never to late to wake up to our lives. Having lived a life where I frequently abandoned intentions and dreams because of the inconsistency of those around me and my own fears of inadequacy, the ability to come back to the important idea again and again and again suited me just fine.

I’m convinced now that my grandmother was Buddhist in her heart, though we never had a chance to talk about it. She was a born teacher, and shone light through the way she lived her life on several Buddhist behaviors: “right speech,” and “right action” which point to using language in a compassionate, timely, and wise fashion, and acting ethically, giving every being the regard and respect they deserve. The years I spent in her home watching her gracefully embrace people of diverse backgrounds no matter what the circumstances, treat them with infinite kindness, and stand up for righteous and just principles, taught me the tangible benefits of being a wise, kind, and conscious human being. I lived around her for many years from the time I was about five years old, and I breathed all this in as the years passed; much later when I first heard a dharma talk on compassion and ethical behavior, I was able to understand exactly what the teacher was saying. It all felt most natural. When I first became involved in the Buddha’s teachings, I remember feeling sorry that she was no longer around to share the experience with. She would have loved it and would have been so gratified I had discovered a path that would help me find ease in life and foster kindness in the world. Like the Dalai Lama, I do believe that “my religion is kindness.” As we practice right view, right speech, right action, we are helping cultivate a sane and harmonious world where the cause of no harm is paramount.

I grew up in an atmosphere of heedless self indulgence and a sense of privilege, and inherited some less than healthy habits, but since I started sitting, reflecting, and understanding the consequences of my actions, I have seen that I had a choice: I could either cause harm to myself and others or I could stop, look, and make healthy choices for myself. This involves continual grappling with all my negative conditioning and bad habits. Like or not, they are part of my baggage. The more consistently I see them clearly, the lighter the baggage will become. When my sitting practice becomes inconsistent and devoid of energy, I gently remind myself to stop and sit and become aware; in doing this I become a better caretaker of the miind and body. I am seventy-three and my wish is to live long (at least as long as my beloved eighty-nine year old grandmother), and to love well.

I am not on a crusade to become enlightened, but to use some of these profound teachings to discover the joys and sorrows of inhabiting this human form. I can work on myself each and every day, speak the truth that I see to those who will listen, and open my heart to the beings who cross my path. This looks pretty consistent to me with the Buddha’s vision of the lay practitioner’s journey. And that is enough for me. The Dalai Lama once offered this in a teaching I attended: you cannot bring peace to the world until you find it in yourself. Yes. The Buddha said that there’s no one more worthy of love and compassion than yourself. Yes again. I’m a little curious about what enlightenment looks and feels like, but as long as I’m looking at what’s real inside me, I have to say that it’s not on my“to-do” list, and that’s okay. I feel deeply gratified I can offer my loving attention to those I encounter, work on bringing about positive change in the world, foster my mind’s clarity, strive toward equanimity, and always, always speak the truth.

I bow to my secretly Buddhist grandmother from South Carolina, and to my own instincts for survival and learning which have brought me to this place. It may look a little unorthodox but it sure feels right. I don’t think perfection was ever my strong suit…

Some 10th grade students at Galileo High School here in San Francisco are being tasked with writing an essay or poem that explains what borders mean to them. I am lucky enough to be a volunteer writing tutor working with these students and so I get to be a part of this provocative experiment. We have just begun, so I am not sure what I’m going to learn from the one student I’m paired with, a beautiful and mysterious looking Algerian girl of 16. But I can tell you, I’m fascinated to discover the thoughts and feelings that lie under the surface of her smart and enigmatic young face. She has lived here with her aunt for many years now, is fluent in English, and yet something tells me very connected to the culture she left behind. In our first conversation we talked about foreign languages (French, Arabic, Spanish, and Italian) and exotic places we’d love to visit in the world. It struck me that not only is she Algerian, but she’s also a citizen of the world. I thought it was only fair that I jump into the assignment with her, and so what follows is a somewhat free-form discussion of borders from this 73rd old white woman.

When I think of borders the first thing I see is a line in the sand, a mark of separation that says, “one side is this, and the other side is that.” There are other words that come to mind: wall, door, fence, containment, barrier, shield, separation, division, suffering, and death….

Many of the borders that I’ve crossed in my life didn’t look like very obvious, like the time when I was on a train from Italy into France and had lost my passport and was panicking for fear I couldn’t get home… it turned out that there was no visible border that our train crossed in the middle of the night, and those on duty could have cared less about looking at passports as we chugged along on our journey . There was a border crossing once that really felt like crossing over a line and that was in Tijuana when my husband and I were returning from Mexico and walking across with our luggage that included some bottles of tequila and kahlua, as it turned out one too many bottles! So, as we were about to cross into American territory, we were instructed by uniformed agents to get rid of the alcohol, either by drinking it on the spot or throwing it in the garbage. I remember that we both felt annoyed at having to dump the booze… Frequently we cross borders when we fly from place to place, so obviously we have little concrete experience of traveling from one particular country to another. That often made long journeys seem surreal to me. You go up in the air, have drinks and lunch and spend time there, and then come down in an entirely different culture, like traveling from Europe to India, or the US to Japan. Often mountains and oceans serve as borders of sorts … You cross over some mountains from Nepal and find yourself in Tibet. You soar in a plane over the vast Pacific Ocean and find yourself in Hong Kong.. On these trips the “borders” you deal with are the long, slow moving immigration lanes you must pass through with your passport before entering a different country.

Clearly this issue of borders is complicated. Despite globalization and internet and such, today’s political climate tells us that we are different from others: our skin color, our religion, our traditions, our language, our level of education and advantage, our trustworthiness, and so on. The more these differences are clung to, the more people begin to think in dualistic terms: believing that their religion is better than another’s, or their traditions superior, and their sense of righteousness more solid. This unfortunate dual thinking operates on both sides of the equation… There are clearly surface differences in our human community and then there are often deeply held internal views that come to us over time in our families and society, and these become stirred by fear. It appears that too often in too many places people are being warned to guard against that which is different, because the very fact of that difference is a threat, the threat of annihilation. The vision that the brown and black and yellow red and white skinned peoples can coexist with common purpose in peace and harmony seems frequently less clear. So sad.

Even before I came to Buddhism, I couldn’t subscribe to the notion that the white race was inherently superior to the others, or that the Protestant tradition superior to that of the Muslims or Sikhs or Jews. Why? Because I traveled over different parts of the world from the time I was young, and I discovered new ideas, connections, and a sense of comraderie when I looked others in the eye and asked questions and listened to answers. I was blessed to have been able to have such an opportunity and all the learning that came along with it. And since I’ve practiced in the Buddhist tradition, I’m even more convinced that the barriers that people construct to define their lives are unwholesome and in fact destructive. If you live within tightly held barriers, then you cannot learn or be connected to others; you become trapped by ignorance and isolation. Not helpful. The Buddha believed in one human family, and I find that I do as well.

If borders are meant to protect us from others, what exactly are we trying to keep at bay? Is it just illegal drugs and all the horrors that go along with them, or is it something else?

I can see that we want to be safe and secure; this makes sense. But history has already shown that the borders that already exist have not kept us safe. It’s one thing to lock your door at night, or the trunk of your car, but creating barriers, walls, and the like, cannot keep humans from pursuing their vision of a new life in America, or prevent those driven by greed who want to traffic in drugs. The human will is formidable. I’m certainly not saying that border security is hopeless - what I am saying is that it is the intention behind the plans for security is vital. If the plans are made keep the violence and mayhem at bay are done from an intention of keeping all peoples safe, then that makes sense; if systems are put into play out of a xenophobic view that we must prevent our country from assimilating others, then I have to say it is wrong.

Our country has a racist past, there is no doubt, and we are currently wrestling with new waves of anti-foreign, anti-immigrant feelings that are profoundly unsettling. Sadly the word “border” for many has become synonymous with exclusionary views. Wrong. I’m thinking that borders are perhaps abstractions, even those old fences and walls… They can be climbed. They can be torn down. These fences and walls are symbols in a way of a dark constricted fear of change, a fear of the unknown… And there are other “borders” that exist in our everyday lives, those interior states of mind that tell us what is good and what is bad, who is ok and who is not. As soon as we find ourselves clinging to one adamant point of view that looks like a value judgment, it would be wise to stop and reflect whether we’ve hemmed (fenced) ourselves in, created a border in our mind that keeps us from expanding and living in peace.

I would love to think of borders as wonderful “frames” around a drawing or painting, or the intricate lace trim on a beautiful dress, or the covers of wonderful books … These contain but do not limit. They can even enhance. The cultural borders and all the pain and suffering that comes with aggressively defending them is a scarier phenomenon. In the end, all I know is that no wisdom or harmony will come if people don’t talk to one another, look each other in the face, and try to understand. The psychic borders keeping people from this do not help our world, and it is our job as conscious beings with one precious life to respond to this, to give our best selves to the challenges of bringing the world together, not tearing it apart.