The following reflection originally appeared in the newsletter I sent out on May 12th, 2025.
Feel free to read just the bold words and skip the rest.
Introduction
On a recent Sunday morning, my wife and I were driving across town to spend the greater chunk of the day helping her parents move. She asked me, “how do you feel about helping with the move?”
I thought for a moment, and said, “I don’t really feel anything about it too specifically. It’s just what we’re doing. There’s no chatter in the mind looking forward to it or dreading it. However, I like your parents and I like helping, so I suppose I feel good.”
A few days later, I read a passage from the Buddha where he describes right view as “not taking a stand” about matters of self, existence, non-existence and on and on.
Instead, one practices the middle way — observing how stress/suffering arises and ceases, and applying oneself to that end.
It struck me that in that car ride, I essentially “wasn’t taking a stand” on the move. There was no “me” who had an opinion or preference. That didn’t mean that I didn’t care or that I wasn’t going to wholeheartedly help; it just meant I didn’t add a whole bunch of mental-emotional noise around the day.
When We Do Have Opinions & Views
As I reflected more deeply, I thought about the views and opinions I do have.
These include trivial matters, like which is the most ergonomic way to load the toilet paper aside the toilet. They also include more substantial matters, like a view that kindness is preferable to meanness, or that removing environmental protections and opening half the country’s forests to logging is a terrible idea.
Right here we find the profound nuance the Buddha offered that is easily missed in a world that hates nuance and loves to bicker about 200 character quotes.
In essence, the profound nuance is that there’s a difference between having a view and clinging to a view. In Buddhism jargon, the latter is sometimes called a fixed view, or in this case, I’m calling it, “taking a stand.”
When we look around at our world of polarization and division, what we find are lots of people taking a stand — clinging to their views and opinions, and not able to have real dialogue. There is “my side” with “my people,” and the “other side,” aka the enemy. Of course, “my side” is always correct!
When I teach about “not taking a stand,” the most common objection is that the way to get things done is to have strong views. The implicit belief is that if we don’t take a stand, then that means means not caring, being apathetic, lacking conviction, or having no view at all. The feared outcome, of course, is that “the enemy” will win.
But what if we can get outside of this whole “good side” and “bad side” delusion, ground ourselves in a deeper truth, and act from that place?
In this spirit, today I want to share a beautiful teaching I learned from the Zen Peacemakers, an organization of socially engaged Buddhists who are actively helping heal the world AND refuse to take a stand.
There are three basic steps they offer: not-knowing, bearing witness, and loving action.
Tenet 1 — Not-knowing
I’ll start with a story, as told by Alan Watts:
“Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbors came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.”
The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.”
The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbors then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.”
The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbors came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”
The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad — because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.”
To approach life from a place of not-knowing is to act like that farmer. It’s about not jumping to conclusions or holding fixed views. It’s a willingness to meet whatever is happening with an open mind.
This includes helping someone move, witnessing socio-political turmoil, or having an off day, among other things.
Rather than take a stand about what this means or doesn’t, or how wonderful or terrible it is, we start from the ground of open-mindedness. Like the farmer says, “maybe it’s this way, maybe it’s that way.”
To be very clear, this is not a lack of caring, apathy, intellectualizing a situation, or “trying to find a middle ground” — it’s a movement of genuine openness to the present moment.
Of course, this is incomplete by itself, so we move onto the next step.
Tenet 2 – Bearing Witness
From the ground of genuine openness, we bear witness. This means observing what’s happening with equal parts care and groundedness.
I sometimes think of this step as being like a mature meditator babysitting a toddler. If we’ve done a lot of meditation practice, we can babysit without a lot of worry and without micromanaging their every movement.
We’re engaged with them, present with them, care about them, and can empathize with their joy of eating a strawberry as well as their pain of scraping a knee. We are there for the ride, but not consumed by the emotions and thoughts that go along with it.
We just witness, “right now, it’s like this.”
When we get steady with present-moment-awareness, we understand more intimately just how frequently and continuously things change — even the saddest day has its gaps, like moments where we sneeze and forget about the turmoil for 3 seconds, among thousands of other examples.
At the core, we bear witness to suffering and well-being.
If we’re not consumed by our stand, when we see beings suffering, we are naturally moved to help. When we see beings in a good place, we are naturally moved to be happy for them. When there’s nothing we can do, we naturally land in a place of equanimity (instead of despair or frantic action).
When I look at how my view of stripping environmental protections is bad, and bear witness to the sadness and thoughts that arise, there is a space created. It’s a sort of groundless ground that knows, at the depths, I am not that view nor that sadness nor anything else at all.
If we can even bear witness 1% of the way, we’re ready for the third step.
Tenet 3 — Loving Action
In the story I shared at the beginning, not taking stand didn’t mean I was going to sit at home and meditate all day instead of helping out.
In the story of the farmer, not taking a stand didn’t mean the farmer skipped his work and home life to drink beer and gallivant around town so as to avoid his responsibilities.
For the Zen Peacemakers, not taking a stand doesn’t mean they they sit around in some sort of intellectual indifference and do nothing.
If we can break the association of not taking a stand or no fixed views with doing nothing or being indifferent, then we can discover the power of caring action unencumbered by our mental-emotional noise.
One particular neurosis most westerners have is that they need to “fix it” for their actions to matter. If they can’t solve “the problem,” like oppression or racism or anxiety or a cancer diagnosis, then what’s the point.
Or, maybe they fall into the opposing neurosis, which says that if I can’t fix it, I’ll take a stand in anger and despair to prove my care.
In contrast, this step of the process says that what we do matters, even if we don’t fix the problem — and that we also don’t need stand-taking to engage in action. It says that every little bit we can tip the flow of our lives, the lives of those around us, and the universe itself towards non-harming and well-being actually truly matters.
If any change or transformation of real significance is going to happen, it’s going to be through all of us collectively saying, “I will act for what’s right, from a heart of love, regardless of the outcome.”
How To Engage In Action?
I often reflect that each of us uses our “gifts of chance,” or our unique circumstances or talents to tip the universe in a certain direction.
For me, a lot comes through in my teaching life. But I also see that how I show up with my family, community, and the random people I encounter, also matters quite a bit.
For example, in a world drowning in busyness, stress, smartphones, and division, to really show up with presence and kindness is a form of radical loving action.
For some of us, loving action may take the form of more overt civic engagement, like engaging in the political process, going to protests, voting, or educating the masses. Some of us it may come through care-taking, like a parent or young children, or perhaps through various forms of employment or volunteering.
If you feel like you are not taking “loving action” in your life, get really curious about this. When you look closely, maybe you are you already doing it but discounting it because you’re not “fixing all the problems.” Maybe you see yourself taking action, but it’s not exactly loving, coming more from anxiety and anger. Maybe without realizing it, you have actually “taken a stand” for despair, hopelessness and nihilism.
If you have a sincere spiritual practice, whether that’s a regular meditation practice or something else, can you notice how that spills into how you treat people and how you handle your free time? Maybe it’s already pointing towards “loving action,” or maybe it’s not so much, but in reflecting, you see some ways you could tip the needle that way.
I would go so far as to say if your spiritual practice is not leading to any noticeable action, something is amiss — and, as with the reflection of the day, you don’t need to “take a stand” to make a radically deep impact in this world of joy and sorrow.
On Death & Cancer
Over the last couple of months, in both my personal life and my teaching communities, 9 or 10 people have either had a parent die, received a cancer diagnosis, or had their partner receive one. Some, like my mother, were stage 0, while others are more serious.
In all of these cases, to “not take a stand,” is to refrain from going into “how terrible,” or “it shouldn’t be like this.” Rather, can I come from a ground “no fixed opinion,” bear witness to nature unfolding, to sadness in my own being, to the various emotions in the others, and take loving action — offer words, counsel, empathy, and more tangible resources like food or money.
I can’t solve the cancer and I can’t bring back their parent, but there is still a lot of witnessing & action that matters.
Conclusion
Seemingly everyone nowadays has a view on immigration, diversity, women’s rights, guns, the military, poverty, abortion, corporate capitalism, public healthcare, and any number of other social issues.
What strikes me as the true medicine of our time is not winning the battle of views, but rather modeling not-knowing, bearing witness, and loving action.
I know the phrase “not taking a stand” is a bit provocative, but my humble aspiration in poking at it is to awaken something within you that says there is a different way than what society offers.
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