Going Inward to Go Forward
Like Thoreau, I went to the woods to “live deliberately” to seek solitude and try to find the seed of mindfulness and compassion to go forward in this long journey.
I’ve had a fascination with solitude since I was a child. I fantasized of traveling to the woods and “live deliberately,” as one of my favorite writers, Henry David Thoreau, did when he traveled to Walden Pond for two years to contemplate not only himself but also the world around him.
The urge for solitude grows stronger as I pursue a professional career that necessitates energy for creativity. And it grows stronger as I progress through life and wind up in my current profession, where I am confronted with and deal with injustices on a daily basis.
“Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful…How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural–you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.” — Thich Nhat Hanh.
Going Inward: Understanding the Root of my Suffering
I read and listened to the news about a world that is getting more and more violent and about how my current job exposed me to the suffering of others and to continuous injustices that seem to have no end. As part of my profession, I had to increase awareness about the unfairness and injustice that often goes unreported or, if noticed, is largely ignored. I couldn’t comprehend others’ apathy toward others’ sufferings and blatant unfairness and injustice until now. And it caused me to suffer — not to despair, because despair implies that I am cynical about the current inhuman conditions improving, but to suffer because I absorb all of the pain I meet on a daily basis. And I suffer as a result of what I see as my incapacity to shed light on the daily injustices that occur in our country, as well as my inability to awaken or move others via the work that I do.
It reaches its’ climax this year, in 2022. I traveled to Jayapura, Papua, for work in July, and as I found out in 2019 while still working with my prior office, the injustices in Papua are still happening, and they are getting worse by the day. I spent a week there interviewing individuals and listening to stories of generational pain and suffering caused by our government’s inability and unwillingness to hear what Papuans actually value. I wasn’t even talking about independence; I was talking about basic human rights like the right not to be discriminated against and the right to be treated with dignity.
From August until this month, I worked and worked and worked without stopping. I absorbed all the sorrows of the victims of injustices that could be avoided if people could understand their own suffering and hence not create misery in others. As a result of failing to nourish the seed of love within myself, I was tormented with a huge amount of suffering, which nearly drove me to despair and hopelessness.
All attempts to discuss the glaring injustices that are occurring in our country appear to be failing. Despite the efforts of my organizations , other NGOs and CSOs, and the general public, the new criminal code, which contains dozens, if not hundreds, of problematic pieces of legislation ripe with new restrictions to oppress people, was legalized. I was enraged and frustrated, and it appeared for a time that things would only get worse from here, and I was on the verge of giving up and living in blissful ignorance.
Going Forward: Living in accordance with the Divine Will
But, by nature, I believe in humanity’s good, in kindness, and in the notion that, if we could spend more time alone or actually understand ourselves, we would realize that, at their hearts, humans are kind, loving, and compassionate.
O Arjuna, noblest amongst men, that person who is not affected by happiness and distress, and remains steady in both, becomes eligible for liberation. — Sri Krishna
So, like Thoreau, I went to the woods “to live deliberately” to seek solitude and try to find that seed of what could be perceived as naive optimism. But I prefer to refer to it as the seed of true love, as taught by Buddha and Thich Nhat Hanh. Loving kindness, compassion, joy, and inclusivity are the seeds of “true love.” This seed, like a juniper tree, pushes me to be deeply established and grounded in my current career.
Despite knowing that I would encounter a great deal of suffering and injustice and that I am especially vulnerable to it, I have come to realize that my vulnerability is also what drives me to do my work.
And although the state of the world and the ripeness of injustices surrounded me on a daily basis and I couldn’t fathom why they had to happen, I did what was told to me by Sri Krishna to Arjuna during the Mahabharata. Like Arjuna, by my ancestry I am a Ksatriya, and it is my duty to fight injustices and remember that inside me there’s a fragment of the Divine, which will always strengthen my will to go on my journey.
My second day in Jayagiri, a jungle just north of Bandung, has begun. I withdrew myself into a cabin and disconnected from the rest of the world. I read books by Thich Nhat Hanh and Bhagavad Gita to remind me of that seed inside myself that is almost forgotten and creates suffering not just for me but also for those around me, since I avoided looking deeply at what causes me to suffer. I’m at ease, surrounded by pines soaring to the clear blue sky, the dance of greeneries in sync with bird chirps, and the sun peeking shyly through the deep forest over the hills.
I am in the present; the past has passed; we have all done our best to prevent more injustices by delaying the legality of Indonesia’s new criminal code; the future has not yet arrived, and I cannot anticipate where this new condition will lead us as a nation. And dwelling on the present and what could go wrong would just increase my anxiety and distort the seed that I am attempting to develop.
I’m not fleeing the agony inflicted by exploitation, social injustice, and overt persecution. But I can only get stronger on this long journey to eradicate injustices in the world if I retreat inward, intentionally go to the woods, clean myself, and remind myself that the seed of true love, mindfulness, and the fragment of the Divine are deep within me.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…”
― Henry David Thoreau
