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We live in an increasingly polarized world—in our communities and inter/national politics. How can courage and compassion help us work with the intensity of our times, especially with the US elections on the horizon and the many issues at stake?
According to trauma facilitator Thomas Hübl, polarization is a symptom of trauma, the shadow elements and disowned pain in the collective. Courage allows us to face into pain and intensity, and compassion helps us continue to care about those who may hold different views than our own.
Rather than give into “othering,” flattening those we disagree with into two-dimensional stereotypes, when we cultivate courage and compassion, we open to a vibrant three-dimensional spectrum of feeling and sensing, in which empathetic listening across difference becomes possible.
This is where the healing begins in our community and in our world.
About Holly
Holly Gayley is a scholar and translator of Buddhist literature in contemporary Tibet and associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research explores gender and sexuality in Buddhist tantra, literature by and about Tibetan and Himalayan women, ethical reform in contemporary Tibet, and theorizing translation, both literary and cultural, in the transmission of Buddhist teachings to North America. She is author of Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet (2016) and editor of Voices from Larung Gar: Shaping Tibetan Buddhism for the Twenty-First Century (2021). Her most recent book just came out: Longing to Awaken: Buddhist Devotion in Tibetan Poetry and Song (2024), co-edited with Dominique Townsend. For more than two decades, she has regularly led meditation workshops and retreats.