What Helping Homeless Women Taught Me About Buddhism
Spoiler alert: It requires listening and an open mind
Less than a month ago, I was chatting with a homeless woman (and her male partner and their canine companions) at their panhandling location — about 10 blocks from my home. I had given them some gift cards and supplies but stuck around to engage in some friendly and interesting conversation (as I usually do). That’s when I noticed a man walking toward us with a confused look on his face.
He’s an older dude who owns a house directly across from me. I don’t like his vibe so I’ve never gone beyond basic neighborhood small talk with him. Mostly, it’s a quick wave. Anyway, he seemed genuinely puzzled to find me hanging out with homeless people. He said hello but I could tell he wanted to say and ask a lot more.
He got his chance last week when we crossed paths near our block. I had my earphones in — listening to a podcast — but he could not help himself. He had to stop me and ask about what he had seen.
“I saw you talking with those homeless people,” he began. I nodded my head, bracing for an ignorant, uninformed diatribe. He did not disappoint me. “What’s wrong with these people?” he asked. “They’re so young. They should get a job. Have they no self-pride?”
I inhaled and exhaled and let all the potential angry replies dissipate. You may see me as someone always ready to let loose and school people. In my daily life, however, I can be quite judicious. This guy is friends with my landlord and her family. I don’t need to dismantle him and have an enemy on my own block who will surely spin the story in his favor when he relays it to my landlord, etc. So, I replied: “It’s a lot more complicated than that. Things are rarely what they seem from the outside.”
“Oh,” he answered, “so they’re mentally ill?” I assumed this was the only “acceptable” explanation in his narrow mind but I felt the need to continue — out of the respect for a homeless woman I’ve been helping for more than a year.
“That’s not for me or you to know,” I calmly retorted. “All I’m saying is that you can’t know someone’s story just by walking past them.”
He wasn’t listening. “I see them there a lot,” he said, making no attempt to hide his contempt. “People driving by honk their horns and hand them money. It makes me sick. I would never ask strangers for help and if they ever offered, I wouldn’t take it.”
“I hope you’re never in that position,” I smiled.
“I never will be. I’d never do that to myself. I’d never let that happen.”
“Famous last words,” I replied. “No one lets it happen or does it to themselves. You should hear the stories I’ve heard.”
The man seemed utterly baffled by my line of thinking. I could feel him trying to process my last response. His eyes glazed over and this is all he had: “Ah, so I was right. They are mentally ill.”
I laughed. I didn’t mean to but I did. “If that makes you feel better,” I said, “you’re obviously free to believe it. I gotta go now.”
Happy with my “admission” that he had accurately diagnosed the mental condition of two random strangers, he smiled and waved before moving on.
In case you think I’m claiming I “understand” homeless, I’m not. However, I have a unique perspective. In October 2016, I started a one-man program to directly help homeless women on the streets of NYC. (You can donate right here, right now.) Let’s just say I’ve learned a few things.
Perhaps the biggest surprise among those lessons was a firsthand experience in the “Four Immeasurables” of Buddhism:
Metta (loving-kindness)
Karuna (compassion)
Mudita (sympathetic joy)
Upekkha (equanimity)
I feel comfortable (but immodest) saying that I’d already been working on the first two. If I hadn’t embraced some level of loving-kindness and compassion, I doubt I would’ve even started doing this work!
But what’s sympathetic joy? It’s been called both the opposite of jealousy and an antidote to boredom, but mudita goes even deeper.
“Mudita is a word from Sanskrit and Pali that has no counterpart in English. It means sympathetic or unselfish joy or joy in the good fortune of others,” writes Barbara O’Brien, the author of Rethinking Religion. “In developing mudita, we come to appreciate other people as complete and complex beings, not as characters in our personal play.”
On that note, lemme tell you about B.
B lost both her legs in a subway accident. When I met her, she was living in a medical homeless shelter and panhandling daily in a wheelchair. B has four kids who, for a while, were living with her ex. It was not a good scenario. Very long story short: The State eventually took the kids away from him and temporarily placed them with B’s mother.
As I got to know B, I genuinely cared for her as a friend. We both looked forward to chatting whenever I’d bring packages full of supplies geared to fit her specific needs. I bore witness to B’s journey and encouraged her as she dealt with mean-spirited passers-by (some actually screamed for her to “get a job”) and with a mountain of obstacles, e.g. housing, child services, medical bureaucracy, lawyers, etc.
One year, just before the holidays, B learned she was finally going to get housing in upstate New York and (wait for it) get her kids back! She was so excited to have Christmas with all of them for the first time in many years
I knew I had to do something special to commemorate B’s holiday reunion with her kids and to say goodbye. So, I rallied the support of some online donors and friends to raise money for gift certificates. After ensuring that all the establishments — including an art supplies store for B’s oldest, who dreamed of becoming an artist — were wheelchair accessible, I proudly presented the donations to B. She opened the envelope, saw nearly $200 in gift cards, and burst into tears — waving me in for a hug. We stayed that way, both of us weeping, for quite a while. She whispered to me, over and over, “You’re my angel.”
When I tell you that I felt pure ecstasy at that moment, I’m not exaggerating. I wasn’t the one getting the gifts. I wasn’t the one who was now ready for an epic Christmas reunion. But I was as happy as I’d ever been in my life.
Some might call it mudita.
Upekkha, or equanimity, is a word used in India to mean “to see with patience.”
"With equanimity,” writes Shaila Catherine, a Buddhist meditation teacher, and author, “we accept the world as it is, and connect anyway. An equanimous mind accepts the fact of pain in the world. It understands suffering and cruelty as part of this world that is dominated by ignorance; it engages and responds anyway.”
In other words, we accept that things arise not from our wishes but from other causes. This brings me to J.
She’s Latina and probably in her late 60s. I’d most often find her on random subway platform benches — sitting alone, listening to her old school transistor radio. She speaks roughly 75 percent Spanish/25 percent English. I understand (on a good day) 10 percent Spanish. I could sometimes see the palpable frustration on J’s face and hear the genuine exasperation in her voice. And why not?
How often she must have prayed for divine intervention and some practical joker of a supreme being sends her a middle-aged white guy who was in way over his head. Her eyes silently exclaimed: “Really, God? This guy seems sincere but, seriously?”
Despite it all, J and I shared some laughs, a deep bond was created, and I promised to keep checking on her. I kept my promise for as long as possible. She didn’t have a usual spot so whenever I would see J, my day was made (mudita). I can only hope I brought a little glimmer of light into her life, too.
Somewhat inevitably, the time came when I could no longer find J. It always worries me when one of my “regulars” vanishes. This situation has sometimes resulted in me eventually encountering them and hearing updates about illnesses, arrests, assaults, hospital visits, or surgeries.
However, years of fulfilling this mission have taught me that finding J (or any other homeless woman) is something beyond my control. I’ve had to condition myself to let go of expectations and simply bask in the moment when I do cross paths with someone who I call a friend. I worry about J but I’m doing my best to “see with patience.”
It wasn’t until very recently that I learned about upekkha and realized I was now officially working on all four states of Brahma-vihara. Who knew that my Buddhism teachers would arrive in the form of vulnerable yet wise homeless women on the streets of the Big Apple?
After hearing about a) my neighbor’s reaction and b) my personal experiences, I now challenge YOU to become open to such lessons from unexpected teachers.
Mickey Z. is the founder of Helping Homeless Women - NYC, offering direct relief to women on New York City streets. To help him grow this project, CLICK HERE and donate right now. And please spread the word!
