Published 16 December 2024 in News
The Helsinki Notebooks
Sacred Activism By Octavia Roodt
The Helsinki Notebooks - Global Dispatches Against Fascism and the Far Right
The University of Helsinki - Faculty of Social Sciences - Academic Disciplines - Political History
Posted 16 December 2024
Sacred Activism
There is a quiet, contemplative side to activism – one that begins with deep self-awareness and unfurls into collective transformation. This is sacred activism. I discovered it through a journey that pulled me far from the ordinary rhythms of my life as an artivist in South Africa, into an experience of creative togetherness, rooted in mindfulness and compassion. This is how this journey went:
Interbeing, Now
I sit in a circle with others. We have come together in a quaint town in Denmark for a project that unashamedly professes a longing for a better world. In the centre, an unruly little bunch of wildflowers gazes at us from a pot, freshly picked and teaming with insects from the nearby garden. We have come from all corners the world to share this moment. Our mothers and fathers speak in different tongues – from Belarus, Belgium, Denmark, France, Hong Kong, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Romania, South Africa, and Sweden.
We are sober, secular, and prepared for what is to come. We all have some sense of how things are and how they should be. For now, we set these ideas aside. We settle into meditation. We anchor ourselves. We breathe together. We become aware of our thoughts, stepping back from them to simply be. Here. Now. Breathing here. Breathing now.
After about thirty minutes, we are invited to extend this awareness outward. We lean into the circle, opening ourselves to the presence of others. Energies spill over and through me, a tingling, trembling sensation. It is tender aliveness. A pressure at my heart. Breathless joy as tears trace down my cheeks. I watch, aflame, as a tiny spider crawls from the flowers to the bare toes of a stranger. We rest...together.
I return to my life, marked. My art, rejuvenated.
Fearlessness and Caritas
My experience in Denmark lingers within me, rooted in my upbringing after 1994 in South Africa, where I often hear the ghost of an existential terror in the stories people tell, particularly during election time. It serves as a touchstone, a reminder that beneath the tumult of struggle lies a space where resistance is rooted in compassion.
Now, if fascism, as argued by el-Ojeili (2019) and Trevor-Roper (1968), is rooted in fear, or a narrowing of perceptions, then perhaps the restful openness of contemplative traditions offers an antidote – an invitation to reclaim the broader perspective necessary for meaningful resistance. For, where fear gives rise to anger, withdrawal, and aggression, these emotions cannot survive in the deliberate, conscious, and slow experience of togetherness. And in sacred activism, collective moments are not merely exercises in bonding; they are acts of defiance against alienation and fear.
To express this, I have attempted to translate one of the Afrikaans poet-activist Breyten Breytenbach’s peace wishes (invoking the Buddhist term bodhicitta):
but to live
that I may die
I live in you
but to die
that I may live
I die in you
my dying is inherited
my life belongs to you
Breytenbach left this world on November 24th, 2024. With his passing, the poem has taken on new depth and significance for me. It has transformed in me. It has become exceedingly precious. Its reading has become a prayer. And, in this way, temporality has released me from clinging, allowing me to float in its preciousness instead – fearless. Hannah Arendt (1996: 11) describes this beautifully: “Fearlessness is what love seeks… Such fearlessness exists only in the complete calm that can no longer be shaken by events expected of the future… Hence the only valid tense is the present, the Now.”
Arendt’s deep engagement with authoritarianism, power, and freedom offers a powerful lens for understanding love within resistance. Her exploration of caritas or neighbourly love emphasises love as not mere sentimentality but a radical openness to others, a profound form of connection that transcends fear and exclusion. As she explains, caritas is “utter openness, with exclusion of all force and superiority” (Arendt 1996:204). It is distinct from the forms of affection we feel toward those we enjoy in our community, as our enjoyment always sits in clinging and loss – “the fear of not obtaining what is desired and fear of losing it once it is obtained” (Arendt 1996: 11).
When paired with resistance, love might seem an odd companion. Yet, for me, love has become that which sustains my action, my art – my way of resisting fascism, whatever form it takes in South Africa and beyond. This leads me suspect that, to protect and sustain the relational ethics of Ubuntu – or the African principle of existential mutuality (Ewuoso and Hall 2019)–, we must first stabilise within the tender and difficult experience of being-with others. To truly feel it. To embody that connection. To resist, in other words, in honour of the phenomenological “facts” that arise from interbeing practices – where mindfulness, love, and resistance intertwine, as described by Thich Nhat Hanh and examined by Western philosophers such as Elizabeth DeBold and Thomas Steininger. These practices ground us in the recognition of interconnectedness, deepening our capacity for collective resistance, and reinforcing the transformative power of love in the face of oppression.
Today, with a crystallised sense of what my body feels like when I am completely safe and open with other beings, I understand that love rests patiently beneath the cycles of mimetic blame and revenge that overwhelm my fragile will to act. It waits to be recognised. It waits for me, for us, to bend down, pluck it, and partake of it.
Mindfulness as a Foundation for Action
From a Buddhist perspective, figures like Dr Kamilah Majied, Tara Brach, and Jack Kornfield argue that practices dissolving the boundaries between self and other are uniquely capable of supporting solidarity and social justice. Paradoxically, using mindfulness to resist begins by first letting go. It calls us to move from fear to love, from rigidity to openness. As Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Snyder said, “If you want to save the world, save it because you love it.”
The G.R.A.C.E. model, developed by Roshi Joan Halifax, serves as a practical framework for this kind of compassionate engagement. The acronym stands for Gathering of attention, Recalling of intention, Attunement to self and other, Considering insights to discern action, and finally, ethically Engaging before ending the interaction. Halifax, a Buddhist teacher and anthropologist, emphasises the importance of political action born of contemplative practice, describing her approach as “socially engaged Buddhism.”
When we lean into mutual awareness and tap into the intelligence of interbeing, we mirror the attunement stage of G.R.A.C.E. – and the presence of others becomes tangible. From this, we can cultivate an embodied sense of empathy and trust. This empathy, in turn, becomes a catalyst for compassionate action (Halifax 2012). As we continue to confront the fractures in our neighbourhoods and communities, perhaps it is in these quiet moments of interbeing that we find the strength to heal. In embracing a compassionate awareness, we begin to reimagine what unity and action can look like.
Sacred activism, in its stillness, holds the power to transform, to build a world that is as much about love as it is about justice. Here, I am reminded of the sense of relief and replenishment I experienced in the weeks following our sessions of interbeing in Denmark. Like carefully packed provisions, it was dense and made to last – a bundle of bread baked with nuts, seeds, and fruit. And I wonder… Through the energy left over from such bursts of unity, might our expansions of “us” become bolder still? Can we not only resist but rebuild, with mindfulness and love at the heart of our collective struggle?
References:
- Arendt, H. 2014. Love and Saint Augustine. University of Chicago Press.
- Breytenbach, B. 1970. Lotus. Johannesburg: Buren.
- Ewuoso, C., and S. Hall. 2019. 'Core Aspects of Ubuntu: A Systematic Review'. South African Journal of Bioethics and Law 12(2):93–103.
- Halifax, J. 2012. ‘A Heuristic Model of Enactive Compassion’. Current Opinion in Supportive and Palliative Care 6:228–35.
- Nhat Hanh, T. 2005. Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems. Parallax Press.
- l-Ojeili, C. 2019. ‘Reflecting on Post-Fascism: Utopia and Fear’. Critical Sociology 45(7–8):1149–66.
- Seppälä, E., Simon-Thomas, E., Brown, SL., Worline, MC., Cameron, CD. and Doty, JR. 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science. Oxford University Press.
- Trevor-Roper, H. R. 1968. ‘The Phenomenon of Fascism’. Fascism in Europe. Routledge.
Octavia Roodt l Represented by ESCAP3 Gallery, South Africa
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