Are you privileged?

The above is a guided meditation, meant to bring some TLC to impulsive ignorance.In our everyday understanding of the word privilege, we tend to think pejoratively. We say the privileged are ignorant. Ignorance is seen as a quality that people get to have because they are so privileged that they don’t have to consider other people’s feelings. So they turn a blind eye to pain, injustice, suffering— in service of their own comfort, wealth, power and status.We forget that ignorance is actually a state of suffering, not a real privilege. We also forget that having a certain social status, political power, and material resources are also not real privilege. What do I mean by real privilege? I like to think there’s a deeper definition to that word, one that goes beyond the social justice context of modern times. If privilege is a special condition granted to an individual or group outside the norm — then understanding where real happiness comes from and how to walk the path towards it (in brief, having access to the Dharma), might be the most profound kind of privilege.Socio-political power, status, and wealth do not inherently lend themselves to real freedom. Real power, real resource, is wisdom, love, and mindfulness. It is understanding what the cause of suffering is and what leads to its end. That is real privilege. So we cannot expect the ones who have “privilege” as it’s conventionally defined (political leaders, billionaires, cisgendered heterosexual educated upper-middle class white men) to make real strides towards goodness in the world, because they don’t necessarily have true privilege.The Buddha taught that human life has the perfect conditions for awakening: just the right balance of pain and pleasure. In the animal realm, you’d be way too lost in your suffering. In the heavenly realms, there’s so much pleasure that you can hardly peel yourself away from the awesome sex, food, psychedelic experiences, or whatever it is they’re doing over in the deva realm. And not only is it ideal for awakening, being born a human is exceedingly rare. In fact, the Buddha gave an absurd but very illustrative metaphor to explain exactly how rare it is to be born a human:Monks, suppose that this great earth were totally covered with water, and a person were to toss a yoke with a single hole there [. . . ] And suppose a blind sea-turtle were there. It would come to the surface once every one hundred years. Now what do you think: would that blind sea-turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, stick its neck into the yoke with a single hole? (SN 56.48)Your chances of being born a human, according to the Buddha, are the same as the chances of that random turtle poking its little head up right through the single-holed yoke in a water-covered planet for its centennial breath of air. So yeah, looks like you made it pretty far. And not only did you make it all the way to human birth, you also found this path of practice. Not to mention that you’re reading an article about Buddhism at this very moment. Now that is privilege.If we keep expecting the ones with the wealth, power, and status to make real change in the world, if we stay frustrated and bitter and afraid, we’ll never step into our own power. We’ll never get to see that we, humans who have come to understand and care about suffering, are the ones who are positioned change the world for the better. And we’ll never stop the tide of fear and hatred and transform it into love, which is what this path is all about.The first step to stopping the tide of greed, hatred, and delusion in the world is not blaming or shaming— that’s just adding more hatred and thus creating more of the same. The first step is finding where we can start to love.Where can you stop hatred today? Where can you begin to love? Look into your mind and see where hatred enters it. Does it flicker when you’re reading the news? Does it seep in when you disagree with someone? Is there a category of people that you have not yet learned to include in your heart? It’s ok. This is what fear looks like, this is how the heart protects itself. Don’t judge yourself, that’s just more hatred. Love begins when we try to love ourselves for not knowing how to love, and for wanting to learn.I wrote this article based off of dharma talk I gave in the Spring of 2024 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, which you can hear by clicking below.And here are a couple of updates and reminders: This Monday July 21st, at 6:30pm PT, I’ll be giving a Dharma talk online through Spirit Rock Meditation Center.I’m excited to be teaching a daylong retreat with my dear friend Matthew Brensilver (aka Ol’ Dirty Brensilver) on July 27th. As you can see, even ODB was once an innocent young child, just like any of us. This retreat will be online and also in-person at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California.This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit caralai.substack.com/subscribe