Welcome, dear readers, to another month of taking metta off the meditation cushion and out into everyday life.

Last month found me diving into a new caregiving job and new sanghas on alternate weeks, as described in “Metta-in-Waiting.” This month, instead of surfing new waves as I had hoped, I unexpectedly found myself washed up on new shores.

After completing my first week as a live-in caregiver for a young man with cerebral palsy, I handed over to the alternate caregiver for a week so that I could volunteer at the first of three Kadampa centers I was exploring. Something already felt off at the first handover but—with so much changing at once—I put these niggles down to nerves.

At the second handover, the alternate caregiver revealed their true colors; when we found ourselves alone, they bluntly told me to take a holiday already. Keeping my wits about me, I emailed the office for advice, and sat with the increasing suspicion that I was working with a predator. What was still unclear: were they simply trying to increase their earnings or edge me out for some more worrying reason?

Things felt more and more off with each handover, as their hold over our shared client increased. It was hard to pinpoint exactly why, and even more difficult to keep biting my tongue as the hero-worship skyrocketed. To hear our shared client tell it, the alternate caregiver was Jesus! Yet all I saw was grooming 101 . . . but to what end?

Meditation practice helped me to observe and document in the hope of identifying patterns and motivations. I submitted weekly reports to the office of my misgivings to keep more experienced eyes on the situation. There’s a fine line between safeguarding and overprotecting, and discerning what was my responsibility and what was the responsibility of the management agency that had recruited us both.

I asked to be moved, paradoxically because of how much I cared for the client, hoping that a fresh set of eyes could get to the root of it all better than me. While the agency agreed to my request in theory, in practice everything stalled. Regular readers may remember a similar uncomfortable situation I found myself in this time last year, as described in “Metta Holds the Stage.”

On sleepless nights, I had hard questions for the Dharma: what was my true rather than imagined role in all this? Why was this new work I was enjoying feeling so difficult? Why was I still treading water where I no longer wanted to be? And when exactly had I enlisted in the karma police yet again?

I call these moments my Erin Brockovich blues—a nod to the US paralegal who successfully litigated against Pacific Gas & Electric over contaminated drinking water in California in the mid-1990s and made famous in the eponymous film starring Julia Roberts.

Whenever existing friends or new acquaintances would comment in conversation on how challenging caregiving must be, I bit my tongue even harder: I found the work surprisingly easy and deeply satisfying, the real challenge was this intangible “extra.”

During the three caregiving weeks that I remained in the situation longer than I wanted, I found myself circling back to the Kadampa centers I had felt most welcome at during my weeks off. Something about the genuine refuge I was finding there helped me say “enough” when a potential transfer fell through and I discovered that my reports had probably gone unread—or worse, unbothered about—by the office.

I called out who needed calling out, explained why I was done keeping the peace in an impossible situation not of my making, why I wouldn’t be returning to support the existing client, and . . . watched the fireworks explode between all involved, who had until now been choosing to do the easy thing over doing the right thing.

By day, I volunteered in the Kadampa center’s World Peace Café. By night, I faced reactions from those at war with themselves and each other in the form of emails and texts and voicemails. And it got ugly. I was beyond grateful to be held by such a peaceful space so I could choose my responses. It was also an excellent lesson in the fine line between keeping the peace—as I had been doing—and holding the peace (what I was doing now).

I held my ground with as much metta for myself and the others involved as I could muster.

When I began receiving calls at all hours from the office, I simply left my phone in the dorm room while volunteering to set a boundary on my time. When they got HR involved, rather than reliving the two months I had already spent asking for help navigating this Catch-22, I simply exported some hundred pages of email and text threads for a fully transparent review.

When I could barely get out of my bunk bed from the exhaustion of still not sleeping, my bunk mate sweetly did my laundry. When I burst into unexpected tears in the café one afternoon, our manager kindly whisked me aside to hear the full story and urged me to retreat to the meditation room or do solo cleaning tasks or attend prayers for as long as I needed to regain some balance.

When I turned down an invitation to a communal meal with the other volunteers to take yet another HR call that felt like going in pointless circles, I later found a plate of food they’d lovingly set aside for me.

The center’s director welcomed me for as long as it took to sort out next steps. What I appreciated and respected about their offer—the center, the volunteers, and the tradition itself—was that they weren’t trying to be a pure land. However, their small everyday kindnesses were providing a pure shore to peacefully wait out my own and others’ storms.

After the final HR meeting, I sat dazed and confused by the mixed messages and absence of useful outcomes, other than I was welcome to apply for a new placement and try again. A private ocean of tears followed over how quickly my good intentions had become so bent out of shape. The next day, I raged to my best friend at how unfair it had all felt after discovering work I loved. She wisely reminded me to consider how all this might also be working for—rather than just against—me.  I cleaned the center top to bottom to nearly pure-land levels while pondering her question.

Utterly exhausted from vacuuming and scrubbing and organizing, I caught a glimmer of sea glass: why not hand all this over to someone with the power to investigate properly and change things as needed: the founder of the management agency, themselves the parent of a child with physical disabilities? My reasoning was that if they were on “team do right,” they could clean house more effectively than I. And if they were on “team do easy,” then it was time for me to leave the whole sorry mess on their doorstep.

Compiling all the documentation after hours in the café, I discovered an email I had previously overlooked—not meant for my eyes but sent to me in error. It was from the manager who was meant to be supporting me during the placement—who, HR had assured me, was deeply concerned about me—outlining step-by-step how to discredit me to all involved. In that moment, it felt as if Manjushri’s had sword sliced away months of castaway confusion in one fell-swoop. And it felt right to then hand that weapon over to the founder privately, rather than wield it against those still at war with themselves.

At the time of this writing, I don’t know if or how my doorstop “delivery” will be received, whether to give another caregiving placement a chance, or what was purifying in me so deeply during this chapter. All I know for certain is that it made me even more mindful of the life-preserving power of small everyday kindnesses during inner and outer storms.

And so, dear readers, whatever unexpected shores you may find yourselves washed up upon, please remember to beachcomb for any metta amid the flotsam and jetsam.

Or, to metta-morphose All Saints’s “Pure Shores” woven into Piers Laurenzi’s “Spaced” remix:

I’m moving, I’m coming
Can you hear what I hear?
It’s calling you, metta
Out of reach (reach)
(Take me to my beach)
I can hear it, calling you
I’m coming, not drowning
Swimming closer to you

Never been here before
I’m intrigued, I’m unsure

Related features from BDG

Buddhist Ideas on the Psychological Root Causes of Disputes and Conflicts
Cultivating Peace: Buddhist-Inspired Approaches to Conflict Resolution
Doing Conflict Better
Buddhism and Conflict Resolution

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