“The basic goodness of the human heart, which is born tender, responsive, and eager to reach out and touch life, is unconditional. It is not something we have to achieve or prove. It simply is.” John Welwood
Dearest Judy,
You’ve asked me to write about depression, so here goes…
For starters, I don’t really know what causes anyone else’s depression. My understanding is that a loss of energy, interest and pleasure in life, like any moment of imbalance in my internal wiring, can be triggered by a huge number of things. There are the private sufferings of a body that so often doesn’t work as I wish, emotional storms that seem to come from nowhere and take up residence, and such deep longings for my relationships and my world which, despite my best efforts, continue to elude my control. I can approach it all with the best of intentions and with years of practice and still find myself unraveling at times in moments of overwhelm.
My teacher John Welwood described depression as a “loss of connection with heart…that ‘part’ of me that is most tender and open to the world.” Sometimes I think that something like depression motivated Siddhartha to begin his search to find freedom from suffering. On that famous chariot ride, the world as he had known it fell apart. All that he previously had looked to for comfort and happiness was shown to be ephemeral: unsatisfactory and completely unreliable. At that, his first deep realization of the inevitability of aging, sickness, failure and death. Siddhartha reportedly experienced an “… oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that come with realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it’s normally lived; a chastening sense of (one’s) own complacency and foolishness in having let (himself) live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a way out of the meaningless cycle.”
It sounds a lot like depression to me.
In terms of my spiritual practice, the arising of depression can be good news if I, like Siddhartha, have the willingness to take its signs as an invitation into a deeper inquiry: where is there suffering? What is its cause? What leads to more affliction for myself and others? To less? How do I gather myself when I’m lost?
I am inspired by Siddhartha who, even near death, never lost his curiosity or his radical and fierce presence with his own actual experience. He refused to be guided by views – his own or others’ – about how things were supposed to work. He didn’t give up. He came to see that starving himself to death was helping no one. He ate. He nourished his body and, in doing that, he nourished his mind. He saw that the journey was difficult enough and, on a relative level, that he needed food in order to go on. Further, he received food from Sujata. He opened to another who was simply and kindly there with care and generosity.
For me, this guides me to pause and look to see what nourishment these particular conditions are calling for. I am asked to clearly notice my experience but then to not take 
any of it too personally. I am invited to investigate, very intimately and with a kind and tender heart, what is actually going on here and what is needed. Now. What food or medicine or time with wise others or quiet time alone or in nature will be of benefit? I am invited to genuinely receive in my mind and heart and bones the small moments of goodness that come so very relentlessly and that I otherwise hardly notice. Whether it is the simple, purring affection of my kitty or the wonder of the sunrise, the presence of my mechanic Anthony who came to rescue me yesterday when my car wouldn’t start. My body and mind, my heart and soul, do need goodness and care; I will be reminded with pain if I forget.
At a deeper level, Siddhartha also saw that these ordinary, important, and healthy practices are not, ultimately, enough. No matter what I do, my body still ages and gets sick and my family and friends suffer, and social structures and automobiles fail in profoundly painful ways. Life asks me to see this to be true. “Depression,” John proposes, “sets in when I do take it all personally, when I discover these limitations of my human world and conclude that there is something basically wrong with me (or the world) because I experience pain or I feel vulnerable or sad, or I notice that I am not in control.”
Actually, John proposes, when I bump into these limitations, I am very close to knowing a much deeper reality, the larger openness of my being. If I try to “explain” my sadness and limitations as a personal failing, or at least, as someone’s fault, my very stories can keep me locked into a conceptual mind that is determined to “rise above” or “figure out” a way out. What is needed is, paradoxically, to relax more deeply and lovingly into the not-knowing itself. Maybe it’s like learning how, when in the water, I need to stop struggling and to relax and allow water to simply hold me.
“… at the root of depression – in the rawness, vulnerability, and poignancy underlying it-our basic sanity is always operating…Depression…can be an opportunity to awaken one’s heart and deepen one’s connection to life…. our true nature…inherently attuned to things as they are, apart from our conceptual versions of them.” John Welwood
My spiritual life and my very sanity call me to fierce and faith-filled investigation and to practices and people and circumstances that help me to remember.
But then, of course, you already know all of this:
A SIMPLE EXCHANGE
Judy Grissmer
Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness…
and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely, until it flowers
again, from within, of self-blessing… Galway Kinnell
The eighteen-year-old cat was kicked to death
at my sister-in-law’s house that day,
by a nine-year-old boy who came to play
venting the pain of his difficult life on a cat
named for the sun. I could not shake
the story—could not shake my sorrow.
But the next morning, when I was meditating,
and felt the full presence of the soft tabby
who entered my arms, I knew this
was beyond story—and I was not afraid.
There was no consideration of time.
I simply held him.
He wasn’t asking for much,
just to enter into my sorrow.
And do you know,
I felt him begin to settle, saw him
start to remember the good
that had been his life—the love
of a sweet grandmother, the voices
of the small twin boys—
the pleasure of purring in the sun.
He remembered his name, and when
he had that to take with him
he was gone—and he had taken
my sorrow.