One of the first things you notice as an American arriving in Kathmandu is the traffic. Greater Kathmandu is home to more than 1.6 million people and traffic is everywhere.
And throughout the city, and the rest of Nepal, there are virtually no traffic control devices. No traffic lights. No stop signs. No speed limits. Nothing.
On any given street you will find trucks and buses and cars, dozens and dozens of motorcycles, scooters, bicycles, and people. And everyone just … goes.
It’s hard to imagine that there isn’t a traffic accident or a pedestrian struck every second, But there isn’t.
Everyone goes, and everyone looks out for everyone else. Cars and motorcycles all scoot around slower moving trucks and buses. People make it across wildly busy streets and intersections. And it all just works.
During our recent trip to Nepal, we spent two days at the Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Namo Buddha, and were blessed with several hours of private instruction by Khenpo Choeyni. What humanity needs to cultivate, he taught, is called Bodhicitta. This, he defined as the “awakening mind” or “compassionate mind.”
A mind that is awakened is aware of the complete interdependence of all things, and is driven by compassion to free all sentient beings from suffering.
One of the great teachings of the Buddha was that nothing exists independently. Everything that exists, and everyone who exists, is dependent on something, and someone else.
So the more we understand our complete interdependence on each other, the more we realize how important it is to cultivate generosity and compassion.
In this week’s Torah portion, Jacob and his children are completely ignorant of this important truth.
In Parashat Vayeshev, Joseph is described as a “נער – Na’ar – a youth,” – immature, self-absorbed, and lacking in awareness and wisdom. He bad-mouths his brothers to their father. Repeatedly, he relates dreams where he lords his superiority over his brothers, imagining them bowing down to him.
In response, Joseph’s brothers fixate on their own grievances. They resent Joseph for the luxuries and favor his father showers exclusively upon him. They rage with hatred and anger. They lack any curiosity about him – as he shows no curiosity for them. They consume themselves with worry, anxiety, and doubt.
Thus they lose all capacity for compassion. They toss their brother in a pit and then sell him as a slave to Egypt. They deceive their father, pretending to realize their brother’s death, with no empathy or concern for the agony this ruse will inflict.
Every character in this story is blinded by self-absorption. Jacob has no compassion for his sons and the heartache he inflicts by elevating Joseph above his brothers. Joseph has no compassion for his brothers and the resentment he sows. His brothers, so deeply mired in their own pain and insecurity, have no compassion for Joseph or their father.
One of the unique hallmarks of American society is how we celebrate the individual – how we glorify rugged individualism, self-reliance, and independence. We hail those who make it on their own, and acclaim those who are “self-made.” Frank Sinatra joyously sings of the American virtue of living life on one’s own terms, caring nothing for what others think and feel, doing it “my way.”
But I think our glorification of the individual can make us selfish and self-absorbed, dulling our capacity for empathy. We grow oblivious to the nature of our interdependence. We shun the stranger, and close ourselves off to curiosity – never wondering about the other, never questioning the truths we think we know.
One of the many things we learned in Nepal, and what our tradition teaches in the story of Joseph, is that we are better served by starting from a place of curiosity and compassion and by beginning with a good intention for understanding and generosity.
A society that begins with compassion will develop an awareness that our lives are all interwoven in a tapestry of interdependence.
And so we need to learn how to accommodate and make room for each other, to be able to rely and depend on each other, to watch out and take care of each other.
Our collective journey in life is traveled along the same shared roads. So let’s build a society that hums with compassionate traffic.
Rabbi Dan Levin
Temple Beth El of Boca Raton
