Coaching as Instrument: The Three Tenets of Zen Peacemakers

This Week's Attunement 

"It is important to remember that the viciousness and wrongs of life stick out very plainly but that even at the worst times there is a great deal of goodness, kindness, and day-to-day decency that goes unnoticed and makes no headlines."
Biochemistry professor and science fiction author, Isaac Asimov, on the unnoticed good in the world

What's Inspiring Me
So I can continue to do what I do and inspire my clients as well
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Barry 

What can we possibly do in the face of the tragic events occurring half a world away?

We can give to the charities like these working on the ground and in neighboring countries to provide relief. We can seek connection, sharing our sorrows, our worries, and perhaps our outrage with loved ones. We can speak out against injustice and stand with those who are being persecuted. All those things feel natural, second nature. And we can quiet and soften ourselves enough to allow it to be.

The Three Tenets of Zen Peacemakers can inform us in how we might honor all that's happening by being with it. 

The first tenet is Not-Knowing: letting go of fixed ideas about yourself, others, and the universe. This allows us to release rigid beliefs and judgments that can narrow our sight of what is.

The second tenet is Bearing Witness: to the joy and suffering of the world. We can turn toward what we might reflexively want to turn away from and honor it even in its pain.

The third tenet is Taking Action: which arises from Not-Knowing and Bearing Witness. Taking Action may mean no more than continuing the three tenets.

In times like these, we can tend to feel helpless to help. AND our practices of Not-Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Taking Action if and as we can, is, at times, all we can do and that can be enough.