Joan Halifax Standing on the Edge quotes

"I grew up in southern Florida. Every year of my childhood, hurricanes turned our neighborhood upside down. Electric lines crackled in the wet streets, old banyan trees were uprooted from firm earth, and terracotta tile roofs were blown completely off the Spanish-style stucco houses in our neighborhood. Sometimes my parents would take my sister and me to the beach to watch the hurricanes come in. We would stand at the water’s edge, feeling the force of the wind, the slap of the rain. And then we would quickly return home, open all the windows and doors, and let the storm blow through." 

Joan Halifax Standing on the Edge.

"The Buddhist concept of interdependent co-arising also gave me a new way of viewing the world: seeing the intricate connections between seemingly separate things. As the Buddha explained this concept, “This is, because that is. This is not, because that is not. This comes to be, because that comes to be. This ceases to be, because that ceases to be.” Looking into a bowl of rice, I can see sunshine and rain and farmers and trucks driving on roads."

"I have a friend who was a dedicated and skillful psychologist, but after years of practicing, he had caved in to futility. In a conversation with me, he confessed, “I just can’t bear to listen to my patients anymore.” He explained that at a certain point in his career, he had begun to feel every emotion his patients were going through, and he was totally overwhelmed by their experiences of suffering. The constant exposure had eventually dried him up. At one point, he couldn’t sleep, and he was overeating to relieve stress. Gradually, he had moved into a space of helplessness and emotional shutdown. “I just don’t care,” he said. “I feel flat and gray inside.” Worst of all, he had begun to resent his clients, and he knew this meant he needed to get out of his profession. 

His story exemplifies the negative outcomes of a combination of all the Edge States: what happens when altruism goes toxic, empathy leads to empathic distress, respect collapses under the weight of sensitivity and futility and turns to disrespect with a loss of integrity, and when engagement leads to burnout. Suffering had crept up on the psychologist, and he began to die inside. He could no longer absorb and transform pain to find meaning in his work and his world. My friend is far from alone in his suffering. Many caregivers, parents, and teachers have confided similar feelings to me. Part of my work has been to address the devastating epidemic of futility, which leads to a deficit of compassion in people who are expected to care."