A DEEP CURRENT OF PAIN moves through our world, ancient but immediate. It is the weight of unwholesome karma. It is the ignorance of our true embrace.

In Japanese, Avalokiteshvara is called Kanzeon, the perceiver of the sounds of the world. The sound of the world, that rush and roar that has filled our ears from beginningless time, is the sound of suffering, of a current of pain that flows without cease. The bodhisattva joins this current through vow, through this heart that does not long to leave the world of pain, but chooses instead to flow with it, to perceive, to respond.

We feel this current reflected throughout our lives as an unwillingness—an unwillingness to face each other, and also to face ourselves. Another person takes their own life, literally and figuratively. Another diagnosis of a terminal illness. Another child dies from malnutrition, another unarmed Black American is shot by police. Another brother or sister can’t stop drinking. Another brutal flag waves from the back of a truck. Your list is your own, but if you pay attention, you see that this suffering is boundless, immeasurable. It’s beyond accounting or compare.

Time and again, when I tell people I’ve lost a child, they say they could never imagine, and that is true. If you have not lost in that way, then you cannot even fathom the toll. But suffering, from person to person, is not so different. You can’t line one up against the other, one above and one