For Nepal, and for All Who Suffer
A quiet meditation for Nepal, Tibet and all those touched by loss — a reflection on grief, compassion, silence, and the mystery that holds us when words are no longer enough.
For a little while, we become still. We turn toward Nepal — toward the mountains and valleys, the villages and cities, and all those places where lives have been suddenly changed by loss.
There are those who have died. Those who are searching. Those who wait for news, and those for whom the news has already come. Somewhere, there is an empty chair, a bed no longer slept in, a familiar voice that will not be heard again. Each life, an entire world.
There are moments when words cannot reach what has happened. Perhaps they are not meant to. Perhaps there are times when silence itself becomes the prayer.
The mountains know silence. The rivers know how to continue. The earth receives everything. And so, for a little while, we ask nothing. We do not try to explain suffering or turn it into wisdom. We do not reach hurriedly for meaning. We simply allow ourselves to be here with what is — with the sorrow, the bewilderment, the fear, the immeasurable tenderness of being human.
Breathing in, we receive. Breathing out, we soften. Breathing in, we remember. Breathing out, we let go into that which cannot be named.
Perhaps compassion begins here. Not in knowing what to say. Not in rescuing. Not in making another person's sorrow bearable from a distance. Simply in allowing the heart to remain open.
Not their grief over there and our lives over here. Just grief. Just love encountering loss. Just this mysterious life, appearing for a while in a face, a voice, a touch, a name — and then disappearing again into the silence from which it came.
The body returns to the earth. The breath returns to the air. The river continues toward the sea. And love? Perhaps love does not belong entirely to coming and going. Perhaps what has truly been given, what has truly been loved, is not so easily lost.
So we sit quietly with Nepal. With those who are injured, those who are frightened, those searching through the ruins, those whose hands are tired from helping, and those who tonight will reach toward an empty place.
We do not need to fix anything in this moment. We need only remain — breathing, listening, allowing the sorrow of another to enter the great tenderness within us.
And somewhere beneath the names of nations, beneath distance and language, beneath even life and death, perhaps there is no separation at all.
Only this breath. This silence. This immeasurable life holding everything.
Nothing excluded.
No one outside.
Nigel Lott teaandzen.org
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