Education as a practice of Love

A first approach to the pedagogy of transmuting suffering through love

Freud famously said that the world runs on two major impulses, Eros (Love) and Thanatos (Death). He saw these as opposed forces, and that’s where he got it wrong. Love and Death are not opposed, they are a continuum, part of the great spiral of Life. Flourishing life is propelled by Love, but this would be impossible without the rich compost of Death to bring Life forth.

Our physical bodies are constantly changing, cells dying and being renewed daily. We are not “the same” from decade to decade, at least as far as our physical bodies are concerned. On an atomic level, there is a constant energetic dance going on that we participate in without realizing it until that moment when the whole body gives out and can no longer serve as a home for our spirit. At the moment of death, the spirit sloughs off the body and our eyes open to a different dimension as we continue our process of learning and growth.

The process of learning and growth is fundamentally what we are here to do—it’s why we choose to incarnate, and it encompasses every aspect of our lives, guided by Love, by which I mean the nurturing of the fundamental pull towards Eros or flourishing felt by every form of life on the planet. From bacteria to bees to birch trees and humans, all life on the planet seeks to realize its fullest potential, to live its life fully and contribute in its way to the flourishing of the whole system. Love is the selfless, non-transactional, unconditional nurturing of that flourishing.

Our goal, not just as educators but as participants in this grand system of Life, is, quite simply, to love—to create beloved community, in Rev Martin Luther King Jr’s sense of a community in which all can thrive. If we are being our best selves, we help each other flourish by offering ourselves in service to this higher goal—one for all and all for one, each one’s well-being helping the whole community to shine more brightly.

We can’t “fix” or “save” the world and having “the weight of the world on our shoulders” is counter-productive. We help others and the planet as a whole thrive when we ourselves are shining bright and thriving.

For many years I taught classes in the literature of human rights and social justice. I immersed myself in stories of suffering and my own spirit drooped under that weight. When I shared these stories with students, I felt guilty as I saw the horror and shock in their youthful eyes, mutely asking: how can humans treat each other so badly? I felt it was important to share the truth about human behavior with them, to puncture the charmed bubble of their privileged existence. But what did it really accomplish? Was I practicing love, by sharing stories of suffering?

These days, I am more likely to share historical stories that help us understand how we got here, as a society—how did we become a society where violence and suffering are so widespread? How is trauma is passed down psychologically and through the gene pool, and what are its effects? What social structures arise in response to the distortions introduced by rigid beliefs about hierarchy and right/wrong?

I am interested in working with students to consciously process trauma through love, knowing that in this way suffering can become a fertile field for the growth of better, more harmonious social relations. Three ways of approaching this are:

·      Practice tonglen: breathe in the pain of the world, breathe out kindness and compassion to all those who suffer.

·      Practice seeing the beauty in everyone, even those with whom we disagree, or those who are doing hurtful things.

·      Practice seeing the potential for learning in everything that happens.

As each one of us is connected to so many others in the web of human and more-than-human relations, our individual cultivation of these simple but powerful practices will help the love we grow within our own hearts spread far beyond our own purview. Transmuting the suffering of others can help strengthen us individually and collectively, orienting us  ourselves towards the light of positive growth and healthy flourishing.

It is not necessary, and even counterproductive, to immerse ourselves in grief, pain, fear and rage at the rampant injustice and suffering in the world. Yes, it’s important to be aware of the reality of the negative conditions that so many, human and more-than-human, are living with on the planet. But once aware, our role as agents of love must be to focus on the positive change we want to see and to be in the world, to stay bright and steady in our own light. That is how every major change agent has managed to rise above the tumult of their time and place and make a difference. They stood tall and firm in the practice of love, and inspired others to do the same.

The phrase “be the change you want to see in the world,” attributed to the great agent of love Mahatma Gandhi, should become a driving force in educational practice. Children know instinctively what feels good, and they go towards it. Yes, there are always a few born with destructive pathologies, who feel good by hurting others. But the vast majority of us are born loving beings, who crave the love of those around us, and know that to receive love we must give it.

Education, as beloved community, should be steeped in the practice of love.