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24 EASTERN HORIZON | TEACHINGS

Talking to Our Enemies

By Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg is a meditation teacher and the cofounder
of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts.
She is the co-author of Love Your Enemies. Her other books
include Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, Real
Happiness: The Power of Meditation, and Real Happiness at Work:

Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace. This
article was first published in her blog on December 18, 2017

I was sitting in the living room of my friend’s house and affecting peoples’ lives every day, I’m also moved to
scanning the titles of his books, listening as he work to try to make sure those who seek to harm me or
described his well-considered intentions to talk to those others don’t have the power to dominate.
he disagreed with politically. We are cordoned off in our
silos, he said, and we rarely meet the people who have My mantra for a long time has been “Vote, vote, vote.” I
opposing views. This is the problem with our country believe that we each have to participate in the system
now, he asserted — we no longer talk to one another as it is: It’s what we’ve got, and through our elected
and we don’t even try to find common ground. representatives vital issues of peoples’ lives — like

health care and civil rights — are decided every single
He then asked me if I shared his goal. I said, “I day. This isn’t an academic exercise or an abstract
don’t want to harm people and I believe that hating consideration — hope is being whittled away for real
anyone inevitably takes too much energy. I want to have people struggling just to live. I have never heard the
conversations with those with radically different views word “despair” used so much as I have this year.
from those I hold, but the truth is I also want to keep
them from having power over my life.” Just then my eye I remember riding to New York City in a car from
fell on Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh’s book Massachusetts, watching on my phone as the Climate
entitled The Art of Power. March made its way through the streets of Manhattan.
I saw all these jubilant faces on Facebook and Twitter
Saying I want that power is not an expected Buddhist happy to participate in this show of solidarity, yet I
response, but it is the truthful response from me kept thinking, “Do all of you vote?” As long as we refuse
even at a time when people are questioning modes of to exercise this power we will become subject to the
dominance in power, and urgently working toward a actions of those who seek to keep it from us.
shift. Riane Eisler is one, through the work of the Center
for Partnership Studies. They describe their work as This is why I don’t think of sincere conversations as a
“moving from domination to partnership, from control singular remedy. In the same vein, I don’t think a new
to care, from power-over to empowerment.” vision of power is remedy enough. Both are important,
even essential. But in the heart of how things actually
I am inspired by that vision and want to help work work right now I’d rather not have my life choices
towards it. At the same time, as long as in reality there is determined by folks who march on the weekends while
a dominance model at work, one that is deciding policy waving Nazi flags.