Part II: Staying with the World

Part I stayed close to the body. This second part moves outward, into the conditions that shape the world we live in.

Part II: Staying with the World

What I’m learning in my body and mind is the same thing I’m learning about the world.

We live inside conditions we didn’t choose—histories, systems, identities, economies, borders. Most of them are human-made. Rules, ideologies, currencies, categories. Imaginary lines that only become real because we collectively agree to live as if they are.

And yet, they shape our lives in very real ways.

As someone who moves through the world with the label of “Black” or “Brown,” I’ve had to learn how to navigate a constant cognitive dissonance: knowing, on one level, that these categories are constructed—and on another, that they determine how my body is read, how my safety is negotiated, how my belonging is questioned.

The mind wants control. It wants certainty. It wants separation—this versus that, us versus them—because separation feels easier to manage. But this same habit of mind is what keeps us tethered to the illusion that we can dominate or escape conditions rather than live within them honestly.

This isn’t just personal. It’s systemic.

Our institutions—governments, economies, healthcare systems—are shaped by the same human conditions described in the skandhas. Greed, anger, ignorance don’t disappear when scaled up. They multiply. They become policies, gatekeeping, and concentrated power that serves a very privileged few.

And still, paradoxically, these same systems can also save lives.

I’m sitting in a medical chair because of one of them.

The healthcare system I’m inside of right now is deeply flawed, inequitable, and often dehumanizing. And it’s also providing treatment, skilled care, and moments of genuine compassion. Both are true. To deny either is to simplify something that is fundamentally complex.

Practice has taught me not to collapse this tension.

Just as I can hold fear and gratitude together in my own body, I can hold critique and appreciation together in the world. I don’t have to resolve the contradiction to remain present. I don’t have to pretend systems are purely evil or purely benevolent to see clearly.

This is the same work.

The skandhas don’t stop at the skin. They move through institutions, cultures, and histories. They condition how power is distributed, whose suffering is ignored, whose bodies are protected, and whose are expendable.

But they also condition care.

The nurse who brings me a blanket.

The infrastructure that delivers medication.

The people who choose, again and again, to show up inside imperfect systems and act with integrity.

Practice doesn’t ask me to stand outside the world and judge it.

It asks me to participate without losing my humanity.

To stay awake to how suffering is produced—without letting bitterness calcify the heart.

To name injustice—without letting hatred become another form of conditioning.

To see clearly—without abandoning compassion.

This is slow work. Uncomfortable work. Ongoing work.

Just like with illness, there’s no moment where the world suddenly becomes “fixed.” There’s only the continual practice of catching the mind, noticing where separation hardens, and choosing—when possible—to respond rather than react.

I don’t practice to escape this world.

I practice to remain intimate with it.

With all of its constructed boundaries.

With all of its harm and care.

With all of its unfinishedness.

The living Dharma doesn’t belong to monasteries or cushions.

It’s moving right here—through bodies, systems, and choices.

And the question it keeps asking me is the same one, whether I’m alone in a chair or moving through a broken world:

Can you stay present without closing your heart?

See you soon.

-DT