‘we are here to change’
Last weekend, I went with Travis to an event at the Kadampa Meditation Center that featured guest speaker Gen Samten from New York. There were many good, practical, and easy-to-begin-applying takeaways, all based on compassion, giving, and patience. The thing I have been thinking about most though all week, was said at the very beginning of the first teaching when Gen Samten shared, “We are not here to gain knowledge; we are here to change.”
While I believe he meant specifically that those in attendance were not there that weekend to only gain knowledge from those particular teachings on compassion, giving, and patience, the wisdom of prioritizing change over knowledge could be applied to all things learned, from whatever source, at whatever point in time. While gaining knowledge is part of changing, knowledge itself is not the end goal - change is. In addition, the goal is to change ourselves, not necessarily anything else. I continue to consider how if I change myself, my way of thinking, and how I express compassion to others, I might change the world - or at least my perception of it - in my mind.
The teachings last week inspired me to trace back how I ended up in graduate school. It was often a rocky path stretching as far back as 2014 when my dad died. It sometimes seems that his death, and my grief, were the crossroads of everything. His death led me to leave my job in news and seek an entirely different job. It was through the next job that I was exposed to DEI talks and trainings, and while those are widely contested, they challenged me to think in different ways and eventually exposed me to sociological research. I was extremely fortunate to work where I did, when I did, with the people I did. Workplaces are complicated, imperfect, and so am I. The pandemic put some things in perspective, as did additional deaths in our family, various phases of burnout, and a return to college courses with the hope of being accepted into a sociology program where I could learn deeply about things that weigh on my mind.
I am lucky that I was accepted into the program and it’s where I want to be. Even so, being a sociology graduate student comes with its own, different challenges. Learning about, writing about, and discussing endless injustices makes me sometimes want to believe a whisper that creeps in and says, “If sociologists have been theorizing and researching injustice for more than 100 years and little change has been made in some ways, how can we really change anything?”
This week my mind circles around the thoughts of why I’m here - in the graduate program and everywhere else. The point isn’t just to gain knowledge, and I’m starting to think the point isn’t to believe an illusion that I can change many things outside myself. Perhaps the point is to change my thoughts and actions - based on knowledge - so that if there is any external difference to be made, it comes first from inside me.
I’ll think about that for a while.
Here is some love captured in March …
