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Hope in the Worst of Times

Writer's picture: Rhyena HalpernRhyena Halpern


Thoughts on MLK Day, January 20, 2025


“My head is like a bad neighborhood, I would rather not go there."


I have been meditating for 51 years and I still feel this way about my head, pithily captured so accurately by Jack Kornfield. Such a noisy mind I have! 


So many awful and totally strange thoughts enter when I venture to sit quietly. Sometimes, lovely ones or clarity comes across the screen of my mind.


Buddhists say this is the nature of the mind, and advise becoming curious and relaxing into the noise. Push nothing away. Welcome it all. Aspire for right word, thought and deed but let yourself be.


Jewish ethics says its expected to have a less than stellar mind. It is okay to have impure, negative and bad thoughts, just don't act on it in word or action. 


I would just like to sit quietly with a quiet mind today. It is an auspicious day. I am determined to stay clear and strong and not give into negative thoughts and future fears.


I attended a zoom yesterday with Jon Kabat Zinn and Roshi Joan Halifax, two of my favorite spiritual teachers. Roshi read this quote in honor of Jon’s late father in law and my/our personal hero Howard Zinn: 


"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.


What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.


And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

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Rhyena Halpern

End of Life Doula

Third Act Coach

Death & Dying Educator

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