I recently read a book by the psychoanalyst and writer Michael Eigen, titled Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis, wherein Eigen writes about the Buddhist goddess Kuan Yin. Because a piece I wrote here a few years ago also evoked Kuan Yin http://shroominsharon.blogspot.com/2015/01/stepping-on-head-of-dragon.html, I was delighted to revisit this goddess. Eigen posits Kuan Yin as a counterbalance to the inclination—the force if you will—to destruction that psychoanalysis perceives as innate to the human condition:
Kuan Yin is variously depicted as a Buddha or aspect of Buddha, a goddess, or a psychic or spiritual force. Kuan Yin cannot do anything but be compassionate. People pray to her for favors and when favors are granted, all she wants as a reward is for people to say, thank you.
(44) This is a beautiful depiction of the Kuan Yin principle, which Eisen predicates on “an endless meeting of destruction and compassion.” Life is ceaseless destruction and without compassion for what we lose over and over again in the course of a lifetime, life would be unbearable. Living as we now are in the midst of a global pandemic, life as ceaseless destruction is an especially apt description of nature at work and the need to understand, to have compassion for, this overburdened, unappreciated planet that we call home even as she is wreaking mortal havoc upon us. Mother Earth has been so misused and unloved, for so long, that she has unleashed her fury in a cataclysmic way—to what end remains to be seen yet.
In the absence of a belief in the Judeo-Christian God, what do I have faith in, what elicits compassion in me? This is a big question to ask, never mind answer, but try to answer I will. For one, I have a deep faith in the value of human suffering and the meaning to be found there. In this regard, I have faith too in my innate ability to show compassion for my own suffering and that of others. Indeed I have worked hard in my life to nourish this attribute, which has deepened as I’ve aged. Compassion is the means by which I do much of my share of tikkun olam, evinced of late in the hospice care I provided to my dear friend Zelda and then my father, respectively, but also in the degree to which family and friends, all with great personal burdens, seek my counsel, support, and maternal solicitude.
Circling back to Kuan Yin, an outgrowth of the compassion I feel in the face of destruction and suffering is my profound sense of gratitude for all that I do have. Since the start of the pandemic, I have added to my daily routine an early morning recitation of five things in my life for which I am thankful. In the absence of a belief in God, I direct my gratitude to the likes of Kuan Yin and her Hebraic, mystical sister, the Shekhinah, God's exiled consort. Compassion and gratitude may seem like incidental, even gratuitous things to counter the enormity of our present situation, but I believe they run deeper than destruction and are available to us to mitigate the latter's ravages, necessary though that dismantling is. So yes, even in the midst of a global pandemic and its path of relentless destruction, not to mention living through what appears to be the collapse of the American Empire, I am reminded of the basic things for which I remain grateful, such as loving friends and family, a comfortable home, relative financial security, good health, and good food, to name a few. Not even the destruction raging all around me right now can dampen my gratitude for these gifts, for which I say: Thank you, Kuan Yin.
