Nurturing Spring in the Depths of Winter: Anthony Kennedy, the Kali Yuga, and Us.

My first reaction to the news that United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is stepping down was shock. I didn’t think he would do it. Justice Kennedy was known as the Court’s swing vote—a Republican who was nonetheless willing to side with the Court’s liberal wing on certain matters of principle. I saw him as embodying the sort of centrist instinct that aims to keep an equilibrium between opposing extremes. As such, I thought he would take the measure of the current climate and choose to remain in office until calmer seas prevailed.

My second reaction was to scroll through Twitter to share in the outrage and the fear. That felt good—at least I wasn’t alone. My third was to text a close friend who works in Democratic politics, hoping to commiserate and stoke some outrage of my own.

But as the shock passes and I live with the news, I’ve felt a different perspective arise. I keep thinking about the Hindu concept of the Kali Yuga. It’s a period of time when the demon Kali, who personifies the worst instincts of humanity, rules over the world. The Kali Yuga is the winter of civilization, a time when we turn away from our better angels and get caught in our selfishness and ignorance. We cut ourselves off from each other and forget our innate compassion.

That sure sounds like what America is doing today.

But as scary, ugly, and painful as the Kali Yuga is, it’s also an essential part of how the universe works. During the Kali Yuga, we see all of our darkness brought to the surface and into the light. It’s getting harder and harder to look away—from our own individual prejudices and fears, and from the way these manifest in our society. War, poverty, mass incarceration, the subtle madness of borders, and the insanity of an economy where millions go hungry while a small number of souls trapped in their own golden prisons stockpile vast fortunes—all of these have been with us for far longer than the reach of living memory. So has our fear of each other, of our superficial differences, and of the imagined cost of caring for one another.

All of that is out in the open today. Even people like myself who have led fortunate lives can’t help but stare into the abyss. If we pay attention, we might even be lucky enough to see ourselves looking back.

That’s uncomfortable, but that’s also where the light and the power and the forgiveness and the new beginnings all come in.

The Kali Yuga is like a forest fire, burning through the calcified structures of our society. I don’t want to minimize—in any way—the suffering that the Trump administration and their congressional allies are causing. A lot of people are being hurt, and we’re going to have to deal with the repercussions of that hurt for a long time. But at least more of us are paying attention. None of this hurt is really new, but we as a nation are seeing it more clearly, and that is a tremendous opportunity to do things differently going forward.

A decade ago, we elected a president who was brilliant, inspiring, and seemed like a genuinely decent man. It felt like dawn had arrived. But if I’m honest with myself, his presidency was…underwhelming. He helped pass some good laws, was a steady hand on the wheel, and clearly cared, but overall, the country seemed to slip further into dysfunction. We kept up, even escalated the seemingly never-ending drumbeat of military operations the world over, deported hundreds of thousands of people, did little to advance the cause of a kinder, more humane justice system, and remained a country where people frequently go to bed hungry.

My point is not to single out President Obama for criticism, but to the note the status quo held fast. We hoped that he would change us, but we did little to open ourselves up to change, and so the general pattern remained the same.

Today, things really do seem to be changing, and in a bad way. One of Justice Kennedy’s final actions was to rule in favor of upholding President Trump’s ban on people from several majority-Muslim countries from traveling to the United States. That’s the sort of ruling many of us would have believed confined to the Dred Scott era of history, were it not staring us in the face today. The Kali Yuga isn’t pretty, especially when it reminds us that our material progress has only papered over our ongoing spiritual disconnect from one another.

The past isn’t nearly as past as we like to think it is.

But when the status quo starts burning down, when the fire tears through the forest, when the winter cold freezes the good green earth, something else happens. Space opens up for new ways of seeing each other and ourselves. When the old world dies, a new one can be born.

So the Kali Yuga doesn’t just have to be a time of suffering. It is that, for all of us. Now is a good time to despair, because there is a lot to feel hopeless about. We don’t have to turn away from that.

But now can also be an opportunity to do things differently, because that which was blocking substantive, positive change is no longer standing. Our delusions of exactly what our society looks like are being swept away—we’re hearing the voices of people crushed beneath the wheels of the machine and speaking out ourselves. Because of this, the Kali Yuga can be a remarkably energizing, invigorating period, where the seeds of spring begin sprouting within the soil even as the ground remains hard and frozen at the surface.

We’re already putting ideas on the table that would have been seen as too radical a decade ago. Genuine universal health care, universal basic income, and a college or trade school education for everyone are all being talked about. When Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a recent speech in Los Angeles, joked about how the people protesting the event were from the “open border crowd,” my first response was, “right on! So am I.” The truly vile conduct of the Trump administration towards immigrant people is raising important questions not just about how we treat our immigrants, but how we separate families of Americans through mass incarceration and our cruel, abusive notions of justice. Our president’s individual behavior towards women has me, and millions of other men across our country asking ourselves, “what are we doing wrong and what can we do better?”

We’re even talking about the merits of socialism and moving away from our all-too-inhuman economic system, not just in university discussion sections but in the halls of Congress, where a United States Senator who openly stands for a government that really does provide for the basic needs of all its citizens is considered by some to be the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.

I don’t believe that now is only an opportunity for liberals and progressives either. Personal responsibility is as essential as our responsibility to one another, and a Republican Party that advocates for personal responsibility and private enterprise can be an important balancing force. Now is a chance to learn how to do that in a wise, compassionate way. We need many different voices in the choir, even as the old song has grown stale.

There’s a lot of room at the table right now. For all of us.

There’s also a lot of room for us to evolve as individuals. The Devil is actually a beloved figure in the Buddha’s teachings, not because he’s great fun to be around, but because he shows us our own rough spots. He’s a mirror, and if we can bring ourselves to look at him, we can really begin to open up on the inside. Now when I see our president’s racism, narcissism, sexism, disregard for the needs of others, and deep discomfort in his own skin staring me in the face, I’m learning to ask myself, “where is all that within me? What’s my part in this?” It’s not comfortable, but if I can be honest and bear witness to my own flaws, I can start to develop both compassion for myself, and the ability to really let go and act differently.

Kali shows us who we are at our worst, and reminds us that something within us isn’t satisfied with acting that way. He points us towards seeing that deep down, we all really do want to be good, decent, loving people; that indeed, that’s who we really are.

I don’t know what’s ahead of us, and I don’t know how long our American Kali Yuga will last. I do know we need to show up—to vote, to stand together, and to do our best to look at ourselves with as much honesty as we can muster. We need to bring kindness, generosity, attention and forgiveness to everyone we encounter, as best we can. We need to forgive ourselves when we fall short, as we all do. We need to laugh. We need to let our sense of who we are die, and be reborn in openness and the eternal, perfect impermanence of the present moment. We need to be the alpha and the omega.

Or at least we should give it a shot.

I’m afraid. My heart hurts for the folks who are feeling directly the brunt of our government’s abuses. Knowing that, it was also a beautiful day in Los Angeles today. My wife and I took a walk in the sunshine and held hands. It’s all here with us, the pretty, the ugly, the painful and the powerful, and beneath it all, the winds of change are in the air. We can’t stop the change, but we can do our part to shape it. Let’s meet the Kali Yuga with gratitude for the opportunity.

Let’s remember that spring is as inevitable as winter.

Ian is a writer who lives in Los Angeles and blogs about spirituality and politics at openheartbeginnersmind.com. You can also follow him on Twitter.

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