I recently stumbled upon an article* describing a practice that moved me deeply.  It’s a Jewish pilgrimage ritual dating to the 3^rd century.  Several times a year, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims would travel to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  All would enter through the same door.  Most would turn right and circumambulate the huge plaza counter clockwise.   But some would turn left and circle clockwise—the grieving, the suffering, and interestingly, those who had been exiled, cut off from their ties to community, the direst of punishments.  And each time one of the former encountered a person who had chosen to turn left, they would stop, look that person in the eye, and ask, “What happened to you?”

The sufferer would speak their pain.–“my child is sick,” “my wife died.”  The questioner would listen, offer healing blessings and words of comfort, then move on to the next encounter.

Such a simple interaction:  “What happened to you?”  Yet packed with so much.  The speaker is invited to share their suffering with another, to be seen, and to receive reassurance that they are not alone; the listener to open themselves to the suffering of others, to be genuinely present for them, if only momentarily.   The larger community hears and holds the suffering of its members.  And it’s a reminder, too, that it’s not the listener’s job to ‘fix’ the pain, though I’m persuaded that the simple act of sharing may lighten the burden.

In our Buddhist compassion practices, valuable as they are, I sometimes have the feeling that they’re all a bit too . . . well, abstract.  Here we have real people sending and receiving in real time.  A different take on tonglen.

It’s hard to imagine how to translate this powerful practice to our modern situation.  Picture yourself walking down a street in Portland, where we daily encounter so much apparent suffering, and asking each of those persons, “What happened to you?”  First of all, it lacks the essential element of choice—in this case, the choice of the person who appears to be suffering to share their suffering.  Next it lacks the protective boundaries imposed by the ritual—both listener and speaker understand the limits of their responsibility in the situation.   And of course, it is not always possible to know when others are suffering:  like wounded animals, many of us disguise our pain.  Yet I’m haunted by the wisdom of this communal rite and wonder what a modern version could look like.  Your thoughts are welcome.

*https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/19/opinion/religion-ancient-text-judaism.html