It was the final morning of a four-day meditation retreat dedicated to the cultivation of lovingkindness.  Some 150 people had come together at a beautiful retreat center in upstate New York to sit in silence, practice mindfulness meditation by observing our breath and physical movements, and work with two master teachers of a Buddhist-inspired practice of “metta” or lovingkindness meditation.  Over and over again through the weekend we were invited to repeat a series of phrases expressing wishes for the well-being of others – first for ourselves, then for dear loved ones, then for “neutral” people in our lives, then for “difficult” people in our lives, then for all beings in the world.

I had gone to the retreat in large part to sit with my long-time meditation teacher, Sylvia Boorstein, who has for many years been a primary spiritual teacher for me, a model of wisdom, humility, and compassion.   On this closing morning of the retreat, Sylvia was talking about the remarkable way in which people who have shared extended time together in silence become dear to one another.  Oddly, you develop a special kind of caring for the people who sit silently on your row, brush their teeth at the same time of the morning as you do, have an endearing smile, or kindly hold the door open for others.  Counter-intuitive as it may sound, one emerges from such experiences feeling deeply connected to one’s fellow retreatants, for the participants have shared open-hearted, though nonverbal, time together.  Many participants report that they have experienced a sense of connectedness and shared humanity even stronger than that engendered by normal social interaction.

Sylvia, in her absolutely unpretentious way, began to muse, “If I were in charge of the world . . . . ” One heard in her whimsical tone the obvious, “which I am not!”, for hers is a modest, down-to-earth wisdom, never grandiose or self-important.  What, then, was Sylvia’s grand fantasy?  She imagined leaders of nations or groups at war with one another spending a week of silent time together cultivating mindfulness, during which everyone would experience the others attending to basic human needs, without the words, opinions, and arguments that so often obstruct our natural sense of human connection to one another.  At the end of the week of silence, Sylvia imagined, everyone in the group would deeply know the humanity of all the others.  Then the conversation could begin, but from a place of heartfelt relatedness.

What, indeed, if we regularly found moments to see through the words, traits and debates of which so-called ordinary interaction is made - those differences that so often obstruct our whole-hearted sense of human commonality, even lead us to dehumanize “the other”?  What if we all created regular opportunities in which we were powerfully confronted with the reality that “the other” is just like us?  Perhaps minds and hearts would be changed. 

In truth, together we are in charge of the world.  Why not make this happen?