Are Bearing Witness Retreats Sugar for the Privileged Practitioner?

Over at one of her blogs, Buddhist blogger Nella Lou writes:

There’s a lot of these witnessing retreats going on where the bourgeoisie pay substantial amounts to be with suffering, whether that be located on the homeless streets, at Auschwitz, in Rwanda or elsewhere.

This to me turns the extraordinary suffering of people into a circus. The spectacle of suffering.

The purpose seems to be to assuage some kind of privileged guilt. You can’t buy that. Give your money to a refugee organization and your time to a literacy campaign.

I know people who have gone on these kind of retreats. Mostly Buddhist folks who have gone with Bernie Glassman to meditate at Auschwitz.

Glassman, founder of the Zen Peacemakers, has done some powerful, innovative work weaving together Buddhist teachings and social engagement (in my opinion). He seems to be someone willing to try a lot of different approaches out, to take risks, and let go of whatever doesn't work. And he's hilarious to boot.

However, I can also see Nella Lou's point about things like the Auschwitz retreats, although I do wonder if some of this is largely context dependent. For example, if someone dedicates their life to service and social action, and attends one of these retreats as one step along a larger life path, then I'd say there's no problem. Furthermore, there's a particular attraction to Jewish Buddhist practitioners to the Auschwitz retreat specifically, which often has both a personal healing element, as well as a collective recollection of, and reclamation of, past injustices to it. I don't know if Bernie and the others who started that particular retreat have also been concerned about the re-emergence of Nazi groups in Germany and eastern Europe during the past few decades, but that's something which comes up for me in connection to the Auschwitz retreat.

On the other hand, I wonder how often it's the case that at least some of the attendees of these kinds of retreats are mostly there for themselves, for some experience to take back home with them. Or how many of these folks are also actively involved in their communities.

So, I don't know. What do you think about all of this? I guess another question might be around the idea of "bearing witness" and why people feel compelled to go half way across the world to do so. Especially when suffering is all around us.

The Miserys of Guilt and Shame

Do you struggle with guilt and/or shame? I certainly have had periods where I was overwhelmed with both. Doesn't happen as much any more, or for as long when it does, for which I am grateful for.

This post from Yoga in the Dragon's Den is equally relevant to both yoga and Buddhist practitioners. Here is an excerpt:

Having grown up in a culture in which shaming or "guilting" people into doing things is such a big part of everyday life, I am aware that it can be an effective tool to get people (and even myself) to do things. But I just think that the emotional/psychological baggage created by guilt can't be good for one in the long run. So a few years ago, starting from around the time when I began to do yoga, I resolved that, even though I am far from being a perfect human being (are there perfect human beings out there? Please get in touch with me: I want to get to know you :-)), I am going to try my best to live life on my own terms, for better or for worse, and to try not to look back and feel guilty about stuff I could have or should have done.

Now, I think there is value in separating guilt from shame to take a closer look.

In my experience, guilt is always self-focused, overly attached to a solid self that "screwed up." Feeling guilty about yelling at your kids, or stealing money from the petty cash jar at work doesn't do anything to rectify the situation. In fact, it maintains thew focus on yourself. The person or group of people who have been harmed by your action confront you and you say something like "Oh, I feel so guilty. I wish I hadn't done that." And sometimes what happens here is that the other person or group of people end up talking to you about your guilt. Or they end up having to accept that you felt guilty, and that nothing else can be done about what happened. Of course, sometimes nothing else can be done, but that's not really the point.

Shame is more tricky, although I don't think in the end, it's any more helpful. For the most part, shame just universalizes a mistake or set of mistakes into a totalized view of one's self. Instead of feeling bad about a particular behavior and it's consequences, you see yourself as a "bad person" who will "never get it right."

Indulging in either shame or guilt, in other words, not only doesn't help rectify the original situation, but also creates a stickiness around the mistaken behaviors that keeps them fixed in your mind and body. You keep thinking about what happened. You create a negative image of your self around what happened. And so you end up carrying what happened, often long after others might have forgotten it.

What Buddhists, for example, tend to point to as a more proper response is a feeling of remorse. Remorse is tied to repentance for specific actions, which then can lead to a sense of compassion for yourself and others who have made similar mistakes. Being remorseful help break down the self-focus, and also burns through attachments to misdeeds through both the act of repentance, and also any decisions that aid in rectifying a situation.

What have your experiences been with guilt and shame? Do you see them as helpful or harmful?