Firehorse

Recent work, life, struggle...

2011-06-12T18:03:00.001+07:00

Indonesian youth celebrate diversity with Peace Torch

Youth from different faiths, together lift the peace torch and wish for peace in Archipelago.
Photo: AFSC Staff

For 15 years, Protestant Church leaders in Kupang, West Timor, Indonesia have organized an Easter Parade the day after Easter Sunday. The parade which includes floats, singing and dancing, has become both a local celebration and a tourist attraction. Thanks to the energetic and creative organizing of young people, this year’s parade was unique.

In response to religious violence and rising community tensions during the past year, youth of different religious backgrounds in West Timor initiated a Peace Torch feature, transforming the parade into an ecumenical celebration with prominent participation of minority religious groups in West Timor.

The idea for the Peace Torch arose from the AFSC sponsored Youth Pluralism workshop held in February in Yogyakarta. The workshop brought together forty youth activists from all over Indonesia to share their experiences with pluralism and to discuss how they could facilitate youth activism around pluralism. Despite a long history of religious tolerance, Indonesia recently has been plagued by outbreaks of religious violence. AFSC has been working with all groups to promote peaceful exchanges.

A group of sixteen interfaith youth played key roles in planning the Peace Torch event. Before the parade, they participated in a radio talk show which highlighted the importance of peace between religions. The Peace Torch also was announced in Sunday services at all Protestant congregations in Kupang in the weeks preceding the Easter Parade. On parade day, the torch lighting ceremony included the Mayor of Kupang and other civic and political leaders, and the recitation of the peace pledge. Youth vowed not to be provoked into discriminatory actions and made a solemn commitment to prevent conflicts through nonviolent dialogue.
They then took their place at the head of the parade and took turns bearing the Peace Torch through the streets of Kupang. When they reached the Muslim village of Solor, residents clapped their hands and spontaneously shouted, “We love peace, we want peace.”

In media interviews, youth organizers stressed that Kupang was only the first stop for the Peace Torch. At the end of May, the torch, again carried by a group of interfaith youth, made its way to Menado, South Sulawesi, at the request of the governor for the national celebration of Pancasila, Indonesia’s national identity. AFSC youth partners in Jogjakarta and in Aceh are also making plans for the Peace Torch to come to their area, and word of the Peace Torch is spreading to other parts of Indonesia.

Now AFSC Indonesia is working closely with the interfaith youth leaders to formulate a nonviolence curriculum which draws on the wisdom and traditions of all Indonesia’s faith groups to protect and promote diversity and tolerance. This curriculum will be piloted in West Timor and then shared to other areas where the Peace Torch has traveled.

link

Dhammadipa Arama

2011-01-29T12:52:00.003+07:00

Dhammadipa Arama is a Buddhist monastery and college in Batu-Malang, East Java where 50 monk/nuns in training come to stay for 4 years without going home. During the school breaks they all go on Vipassana retreat. Its also where lay people like myself can come to study Vipassana with Bhante Khantidharo, who is almost80 and studied with Mahasi and U Pandita in Myannmar. Having previously attended 2 retreats at Dhamma Java, the Goenka retreat center here in Indonesia, this was my first extended experience with walking meditation, noting and following the breath from the stomach rather than the nostrils. I was on retreat there for 14 days and it a pretty intense experience, very challenging, inspiring and rewarding.. I became very intimate with pain as enemy, teacher, companion.

Below are some observations I wrote for Ines, my wonderful online teacher from IMC that I have continued to work with since taking the online course (highly recommended)

General Observations:

Dhammadipa Arama is a monastery and a Buddhist college housing @50 monk/nun candidates. They stay there for 4 years, don’t go home and during school “holidays” do Vipassana retreats.
The head monk and founder – Bhante Khantidharo is almost 80 and studied with Mahasi and U Pandita in Myannmar.
Bhante emphasized continuity of mindfulness too – walking from place to place was done like walking meditation and eating was also done mindfully.
Watching Bhante bow was very inspiring – he looked totally absorbed and mindful.
Students had interviews every other day with dharma talks on the other days.
Bhante (understandably) is a traditionalist with a monk/lay dichotomy. Lay people’s duty is to support the monks/nuns through dana and don’t have the opportunity to do good deeds like monks/nuns do since they have families to support.
Bhante emphasized the Kalamma Sutta – not believing but finding out for yourself thru experience. Yet for me the whole Buddhist cosmology seemed to be based on belief and not something verifiable through meditation.
Bhante emphasized urgency and effort since death is always near and inevitable.

Personal Observations:

Initially I wasn’t able to sit for 1 hour w/o moving. I had difficulty doing so at the Goenka retreats. This was very frustrating and I couldn’t sleep the first night.
The next day I could differentiate pain into distinct and separate sensations which could also be separated from our negative reaction the pain. This realization was really inspiring. From there I had the experience of pain as a sensation being totally neutral – without any inherent “pain” and being entirely separate from my reaction to it. When I reacted I could feel the “pain” starting to hurt and when I controlled my reaction the hurt would recede. Then later I had the experience of tuning in or out the pain sensations by increasing focus on the object of concentration – breath. Amazing…
Dukkha. From pain I discovered that dukkha is my reaction to pain or to any other sense stimuli. React and there is clinging, suffering, and pain. “Noting” I could neutralize and prevent a reaction or thoughts from arising by quickly returning to the breath. At a certain point I was able to do this smoothly – time passed effortlessly, I felt light and free.
Acceptance. From dukkha I had the realization – although not a new understanding, that accepting what is without wanting/hoping for anything else is freedom. Not freedom to do anything, eat anything or move position but to accept as fully as possible what is.
Fear and no self. The Bhante talked about anhatta but I was afraid to let go more. If I let go of thought – who would I be? I had this discomfort/suffering and had a realization that I should just let go, there was no me, that “I” am a process like everything else unfolding around me. I felt great relief and freedom.
From there I had the short and difficult to explain realization that I didn’t have to even focus on sensation/reaction or self/no self, I could focus on nothingness. It felt black and negation. This did not last long though and did not repeat.
Bhante had me doing 2 step walking meditation and then pausing, noting and returning to the breath. This needed a lot of patience and at times I had strong rejection/aversion but also felt great acceptance.
Strange experiences. About 1/3 into the retreat while sitting I felt my arms break into fragments and become gaseous, then intense tingling and heat. The pulse in the back of my head and between my eyes was throbbing and thunderous. Strong sensations in body and head – like a storm. These sensations continued with some variation while sitting and then while walking I felt like I was really light, floating, colors intense, field of vision shaking and being off balance. Strong sensations in arms – tingling then stiff and hard. Later while sitting I would feel footsteps, tugging on my sleeve even though no one was there. I saw a white object out of my peripheral vision which moved to center and disappeared. I often had very loud ringing in my ears. Once I sat almost 2 hours and my left arm started shaking uncontrollably and very strong contractions up my neck to the top of my head. I saw red then everything went pitch black as if every bit of light had been sucked away. Wracking sobs emerged and after awhile everything passed. I didn’t open my eyes or move my arms/legs and after finishing I felt very light. Bhante was dismissive of all of this saying they were “noda” or stains.
The last third of the retreat the strange experiences went away except for the tingling and heat and ringing. What was left was observing the breath and accepting.
At times I felt able to very precisely focus on the breath as the object of concentration even feeling my intestines all too clearly. Very clear and penetrating. Other times fuzzy and slippery despite attempt after attempt to latch on. Mostly concentration through strength – determined to focus. Other times I could take a softer approach being more discerning but often felt in danger of losing focus.
I also had the feeling of extreme fragility of life – only breath to breath, nothing more. No guarantees that the end of one breath will be continued with a new breath.
I had the sense of fruition – of understandings ripening and maturing and dropping from the tree when they were ready. I felt vastly increased confidence in the “path” and that I am on it. I felt inspired and energized and a deep sense of commitment. I felt really scientific – like the body is the laboratory and that I could verify things directly and experimentally. Tremendously inspiring and exciting.
My noting is still less than gentle and if thinking felt like a shout of warning – THINKING, THINKING, THINKING rather than a label.

Below are some photos of the place, my little hut, the drum they beat to wake us up at 2:30am, the different meditation halls and the Bhante and me... I usually meditated in the wood structure shaped like an octagon in the middle of the lily flower pool.... It has no walls and the water birds would sometimes climb up and walk around, other times it would rain and be very windy.

Teenager in Training

2010-03-18T17:47:00.001+07:00

Not quite sure what is going on here either...

Lying Meditation

2010-03-18T17:40:00.000+07:00

Not quite sure what is going on here.
The last time I remember falling asleep in parks was in high school...

WE SHARE THE MOON

2010-03-18T17:21:00.002+07:00

WE SHARE THE MOON
I look up at the moon,
and my heart feels you,
although a million miles away,
watching this same moon.

from a card I gave someone long, long ago but more recently from: http://www.travelerstales.com/carpet/show-one-carpet.tcl?id=31

"Precious" and reflections on sameness and difference

2010-03-18T14:43:00.000+07:00

These past 2 days I have been home sick with the flu and watched dvds to entertain myself. One was the movie “Precious” which was pretty disturbing. It reminded me of when I had been a community organizer in the Bronx for a couple of years way back in the very early 90’s before coming to Indonesia.

1921 Morris Ave was one of the first buildings I was given to organize. It was a city owned building which meant that due to extreme neglect or debt the city had taken ownership of the building from the owner. At first it was just an address on a folder in a stack of folders I had been given. Inside the folders were very sparse notes on building conditions and some tenant meeting attendance sheets.

I was acutely self-conscious walking on the side streets of the neighborhood. At nighttime I was more anonymous but honestly I was scared sh*tless seeing people lined up to buy drugs and the flashy sports cars zooming up and down the streets with the cops choosing to stay on the main streets unless they came in force to surround and raid a particular location. The “good” people in the neighborhood I knew just would not be out on the streets at night.

Following community organizing principles I “doorknocked” all the doors in the building which meant introducing myself as a new organizer from the neighborhood organization, trying to get a sense of what people felt were the important issues and try to get them to commit to attend a tenants’ meeting in the lobby later that week. I met a lot of people since many of them were not working. There were a lot of single mothers and also a number of people who were obviously crack addicts. Knocking on each door I could hear what was going on inside and the reaction to me coming. Loud music, yelling, strange and strong smells were amplified by my fear, discomfort and desire to prove something, that I could organize and move these people towards change.

The first meeting was surprisingly well attended. I was excited to see so many people young and old, African American, Latino, and even one white lady. I felt the possibility of unity and change in the air.

I tried to pull out the issues that were on people’s minds and make connections to the general situation in the building, hoping to build a common agenda. But the meeting quickly spiraled out of control. Some people were high, others had brought bottles to the meeting, they were exhilarated with the opportunity to vent, and then suddenly they were angry, unfocused, and ranting. In the midst of this chaos this little old Irish woman came up to me, hit and started scratching me. She thought I was a representative of the landlord and went on this 10 minute diatribe denouncing me and the landlord. Everyone thought this was pretty funny and the atmosphere simultaneously sobered and lightened up.

On the way home after more than a few beers of my own I had the chance to reflect. Being young, idealistic and thickheaded I told myself it was a great experience while in my gut I dreaded going back. But go back I did. Almost every day I went back and doorknocked each apartment in each of my buildings getting to know the residents.

My leaders in 1921 Morris turned out to include “Dimples” who was taller and larger than Precious but with one leg somewhat withered and bent making her gait fragile and lopsided, highlighting an unexpected vulnerability in someone so big. I asked her why people called her Dimples and she broke out a wide, sweet smile complete with a surprisingly adorable dimple.

There was “Wanda” who stuttered uncontrollably, always reeked of alcohol and usually had a 40 oz bottle of malt liquor nearby. Wanda’s apartment was a mess and her two young boys seemed sullen and lost and she would berate them fiercely for seemingly small infractions. The other residents told me that the boys’ father had frequently and severely beaten Wanda and that’s why she stuttered. Sometimes she would be so incredibly lucid, present and beautiful. Other times she would be lost in worlds I could only guess at.

There was “B.K.” a Latina lesbian living with her partner and two boys. B.K. was a former heroin addict who was taking methadone. She was hard to keep up with and I don't know how well I knew her past a certain level. She would seemingly nonstop watch pirated VHS horror movies and ask me to watch with her. Since she was quickly elected the president of the tenants’ association I would often keep her company and sit in her kitchen as she brewed and drank strong coffee and we discussed recent developments, strategy etc. We'd also gossip and she'd share stories of past relationships. I'd share my long distance relationship woes which meant intermittent and at times sustained celibacy.

I would spend a lot time with all my tenant leaders but with these women from 1921 Morris Ave. I developed close relationships. I’d come with a yellow pad full of notes about what I wanted to talk about, the prep work for an upcoming building meeting, trying to make connections to issues in other city owned buildings, neighborhood meetings on crime etc. But looking back what these women really wanted was someone to talk to, someone to just be there and listen. I think they attended at least half of the meetings to humor me, so that I would feel good, like I was getting something done. Believing in the possibility of change was something that would not come easy to them. The greatest help I could give was to be present. To listen and hear their stories of the lives they had lived, the struggles and difficulties. Surprisingly accompanying their stories was much laughter, lightness and openness. Sometimes I would come in the middle of some household drama and hear yelling and banging from outside the door but they would still invite me inside and after sitting for awhile some incredibly complex and tragic story would emerge. I was shocked by the tenderness and intimacy in their stories and the sudden anger or rage that would emerge if a child did the wrong thing or asked for attention.

But I have come to realize that there was no action that Dimples, B.K., Wanda or anyone else in that neighborhood did that I am also not capable of. No feeling, no anger, rage, pain, blame towards self and loved ones that I am also not capable of feeling or manifesting. The transparent self justification, running from pain, denial, and addiction is part of the sameness we share as human beings. Oppressor/oppressed, victim/abuser, exploited/exploited all inseparable turning in on each other and transforming into the other like some yin yang of suffering. Along with the light there is the capacity for darkness and we share this equally without exception. The older I get and the deeper I look inside myself the truer this is.

Tenants would often offer me food but I really didn’t feel comfortable accepting because I knew their resources were limited. Sometimes though they would bring over food to the office when they knew I was there working late. This I gladly could not refuse. In one building – 1985 Creston Ave., we had a really successful rent strike and during the height of the conflict I was like a celebrity. People would often bring food or snacks to the office. This was in a building that was mostly Latino and my Spanish was minimal. There were more intact families here and the men played a more visible and stable role in families and the tenant association. There were also far fewer drug apartments with open sales of drugs than in 1921 Morris. The first tenant meeting there were only four people. I remember translating what I wanted to say into Spanish and reading off my yellow pad in their lobby. But persistence made up for lack of skills and I kept coming back and kept talking about tenants’ rights in incoherent Spanish. I would doorknock for every meeting and eventually some more people started coming. Then someone even started translating for me which I took as a sign that they actually wanted to hear what I was saying. Then folks started talking to each other, in rapidfire Spanish, passionately and at length. About what I had no idea. Next thing you know the rent strike was on. Since the landlord refused to come to any meetings we found out where he lived in Westchester, N.Y. and a whole bunch of tenants went to picket in front of his house and flyer his neighborhood. We got the city to take the landlord to court and the judge took away control of the building and gave it to a not for profit housing company to bring it up to code. The landlord was written up as one of the 10 worst landlords in that year’s Village Voice and I was quoted in the article. Heady stuff for a young organizer set on changing the world.

But it was like living and working in a pressure cooker. The problems were horrific and relentless. Without meditation I had no way to deal with everything and had no way to separate work from the rest of my life. I was constantly caught between how things were and how I wanted them to do be. I was frustrated seeing how elusive tangible change was. Where was the revolution? In the 2 years I was there I had become one of the senior organizers in the coalition of neighborhood associations and was supposed to be heading an area wide effort to organize city owned buildings. I had seen tens of staff come and go and this included young, white college educated idealists, as well as African Americans and Latinos from the neighborhood or similar neighborhoods and young college educated and idealistic people of color like me. I had very close and strong relationships with my tenant leaders and had started to bring them onto the board of the neighborhood association of which I was the lead organizer and staff director. But I was young, my blood was hot and I decided to leave.

A sense of sadness and immediate distance is what my closest tenant leaders greeted my news about leaving with. I promised I would still come visit them and for awhile I did and sitting in their kitchens or living rooms it quickly felt like old times. But soon I was on to the next great adventure – Indonesia. I left because I wanted to and with a good education and no family responsibilities at the time I could.

After a few years while visiting the U.S., I came back to visit the old neighborhood and my old friends at 1921 Morris Ave. With me were 2 friends, husband and wife, white, very decent people from the program with which I had gone to Indonesia with. The neighborhood had changed quite a bit, become more stable and cleaner. Yet I felt the need to establish how dangerous the neighborhood had been as if my “street credibility” was in question. 1921 Morris was totally different too and I tried to find someone I still knew. B.K. was there. She told me Wanda was gone, someone else's daughter had been shot to death and Dimples had died of AIDS. B.K. took a look at my white friends and immediately asked me why I had come back, if I wanted to show off to my friends, as if this was some tourist sight. Cutting words that wounded me, but revealing more than a little truth.

Reflecting and remembering I feel a lot of sadness and regret. Not that I left but how my leaving exposed how fundamentally different our fates and lives could be. The priceless freedom of choice, to decide to leave and do something else, to shape my life the way I wanted it to be. That difference was an unbridgeable one.

May Dimples know she was loved

May Wanda and her boys have found a better place in life

May B.K. and her loved ones be happy

May I always cherish what they shared with me

May I remember our essential sameness no matter how different our lives may be

here's an article from the NYT on The Obesity - Hunger Paradox in places like the Bronx. Surprising but true and not only in the Bronx. Indonesia's poorer neighborhoods have a similar phenomenon.

I would like to acknowledge inspiration for this post from a post by Erica at Urban Refuge: http://urbanrefuge.ning.com/profiles/blogs/not-a-cholo and another post by Maia at Jizo Chronicles: http://jizochronicles.wordpress.com/2010/03/14/harmony-of-difference-and-sameness/ as well as influence from numerous others from the surprisingly vibrant and lively Buddhist blogger community. Thank you!

Please Call Me by My True Names

2010-03-18T13:35:00.002+07:00

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow --
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his "debt of blood" to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

1989

-- from Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh, by Thich Nhat Hanh

from: http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/H/HanhThichNha/PleaseCallMe.htm

The Wrong Kind of Green

2010-03-17T08:24:00.002+07:00

Johann Hari, The Nation

Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests--and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic," as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big Coal?

At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups like Conservation International are among the most trusted "brands" in America, pledged to protect and defend nature. Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters--and burying science-based environmentalism in return. Sometimes the corruption is subtle; sometimes it is blatant. In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.

Johann Hari's piece "The Wrong Kind of Green" takes mainstream environmental groups to task for selling out their principles, often in exchange for money from the worst polluters.

Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100322/hari

Gaylon Ferguson on “Community: Extending the View of Sangha

2010-03-12T17:03:00.002+07:00

Gaylon Fergusonfrom: http://www.shambhalasun.com/sunspace/?p=15163

Following on our online discussion about practicing Buddhism without a formal group affiliation, Gaylon Ferguson here writes about the real meaning of community among Buddhists.

You’ll also find this article in the “Going It Alone: Making it Work as an Unaffiliated Buddhist” section of the new, Spring 2010 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly, but you can read it online here and now.

We are human beings walking a path of liberation, and the value of community is linked to our fundamental humanity. As Suzuki Roshi said, “Buddhanature is just another name for our human nature.” As human beings, we are strongly affected by those around us: we share in their joys and sorrows, and we look at what is happening in our immediate environment and feel discouraged or inspired. Nowadays, evolutionary scientists tell us we are “hardwired” as social beings; it is human nature to be influenced by our association with family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, the communities we work and live in. The English word “influenza” comes from the same root, and the view here is that awakening is positively contagious: we catch each other’s wisdom and compassion, because wakeful examples resonate so strongly with our own innate nature.

In the various Buddhist traditions, “sangha” sometimes means, primarily, the community of nuns and monks walking the path, but more generally it includes all those committed to waking up. So we could extend this view of practicing in community: let us receive inspiration from the examples of basic goodness we encounter around us, from the people who are manifesting bravery and compassion in everyday life. Whether they are religiously affiliated or not, surely these are spiritual warriors, and our own commitment to cultivating fearlessness is strengthened by their shining examples.

When we appreciate the kindness of a co-worker or the thoughtfulness of a neighbor, we enter a virtuous gathering—whether we are in a zendo, temple, or meditation center at that moment or not. So, finding the noble community of the wakeful is in part a matter of perception. In this wider sense, traditional teachings on the supreme value of Noble Sangha are part of a “lion’s roar” proclaiming the fundamental goodness of all beings, encouraging our appreciation of the sanity and warmth in the diverse communities around us.

Yet what about the neurotic confusion, the selfishness, and greed we also see in our social environments? These too act as a mirror for us, reminding us of the strength of our own habitual patterns of delusion. There is something uncomfortably familiar in seeing others’ acts of stupidity and aggression. Inner mindfulness is sparked to take note of our own thoughts, speech, and actions—and their harmful or helpful effects. As Jamgon Kongtrul the Great wrote: “Seeing bad qualities in others is like looking in the mirror at the dirt on one’s own face.” We are all engaged in a learning process together, and the feedback we receive from others (even if not always egolessly pure) can be very valuable in guiding our journey.

So the path here is to value our existing connections, whether it’s as part of an environmental action group or hanging out with others after a strenuous yoga class. Our individual spiritual practice bears fruit in these collective human interactions.

The great Tibetan meditation master Patrul Rinpoche often greeted his students this way: “Has your heart been kind?” How we are with others is a revealing mirror. We should be somewhat suspicious of any developing sense of “personal awakening” that does not show up as increased compassion and care for others’ well-being. Wisdom shows its smiling face in the spontaneous joy of being with others.

Appreciating spiritual companionship means associating with any wakeful groups dedicated to compassionate activity. If slander and sarcasm are the daily bread of our communal meals, the determination to awaken gradually weakens and grows dim. Basic confidence and life-force energy decline. In a chapter in Ruling Your World called “Hanging Out with the Right Crowd,” Sakyong Mipham asks: “Life is precious. Whom are we going to spend it with?”

Gaylon Ferguson is the author of Natural Wakefulness: Discovering the Sanity We Are Born With. He teaches religious and interdisciplinary studies at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and is a senior teacher (acharya) in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition.

Metta Sutta Part 2

2010-03-09T21:29:00.004+07:00

I have really been into reciting the metta sutta to my kids when they go to sleep. One night I was reciting:

To reach the state of peace
Those skilled in the Good
Should be
Capable and upright,
Straightforward and easy to speak to,
Gentle and not proud,
Contented and easily supported,
Living lightly and with few duties,

when my son interrupts and asks incredulously,
"Dad why are you talking about doodies?"

It hasn't been the same since...

Last Mother's Day breakfast

2010-03-09T21:08:00.001+07:00

This is the omelet my kids and I made for my wife for last Mother's Day. It had a little of everything from our fridge and cupboards including tuna fish from a can. The potatoes were from our garden and so were the flowers!

Fear, aversion, work and a path with heart

2010-03-09T20:26:00.005+07:00

I often feel overworked, overcommitted, and overwhelmed in situations of my own making verging on being out of control, in imminent danger of bringing myself and the organization I helped start come crashing down in flames.

Yes somewhat dramatic but I often lie awake or am awakened at night by feelings of panic. What if we don’t find the funding we need for next year? Or to buy land we need? What if we can’t find the staff we need to run the program? What is happening to the youth we are trying to help? How are we going to get the reporting due to so many different donors with different formats done? How are we going to make the new programs work? What if things don’t work out? What if, what if, what if?

Yet somehow things always do work out and more than five years later the program has steadily progressed, expanded in scope, and gained support. At times it feels like this has happened in spite of my stress and worry, not because of it.

Last week I had a phone interview with Ines, my wise teacher from the online IMC course I recently participated in. After I conveyed what I have been feeling, she asked me, “So what if you did fail?” and this question gave me immediate perspective and clarity. Yes so what if I did fail? It would not be the end of the world. And why should I expect or hope to be free of failure? Isn’t that part of the vicissitudes of life? Praise and blame, gain and loss, joy and sorrow and what else? Despite meditation and intentionally trying to cultivate awareness of annica, why in my heart of hearts do I still expect to be immune?

This fear of failure and the mental gyrations I have been doing around those feelings have been part of the suffering I have heaped on myself. This is the type of insight that once realized, we are amazed that we have been blind to it for so long…

Another thing she pointed out to me was that the reason I have difficulty concentrating on my administrative tasks is because I am experiencing aversion. Duh! It’s so obvious now but I have been beating myself endlessly with my inability to bear down and concentrate on getting all the financial and programmatic reporting done on time. Yes aversion. Makes total sense now but again up to now I had been totally blind to this. Amazing how blind we can be to our own problems and correspondingly perceptive about the problems of others...

Ines also said that this was a good place to be. This meaning realizing that I have aversion and now having the opportunity to start applying mindfulness to it.

Work is a really tough place for me in general though. It’s a job and organization entirely of my own making from the initial concept, to the board of trustees, the donors, the staff, the curriculum etc. We do really meaningful work – training drop outs, unemployed youth, street youth in organic farming, life skills and entrepreneurship in a residential program. We also work with local farmers on the border of the national park – training them in organic farming, agro-forestry and conservation. We will soon be installing biogas, solar panels and windmills for renewable energy generation. We just received a grant to work with alumni so they can further develop and train others in their communities. We are involved in a large project to provide life skills training and organic farming curriculum to organizations who will be training thousands of former child workers who are being returned to their homes and put back in school. We are in discussions to open an organic gardening and sustainable living learning center in the largest entertainment park in Indonesia.

Yet I complain, gripe, stress, moan and worry all the time. I often fantasize about leaving and getting some cushy job or a very simple job or even better yet a cushy, simple job, any of which in reality would make me extremely unhappy. I fantasize about winning the lottery, having some anonymous benefactor or longlost distant relative give me millions or about finding precious jewels or a bagful of money lying on the street. Other times I think about just getting up and walking away from it all, without any explanation and never coming back. I would walk barefoot across Java without any help or money until I reached the sea.

Conceptually, theoretically I realize that these feelings are where my practice is or should be. Being aware of and applying mindfulness to intense and ongoing feelings of aversion and fear. Fear of failure, fear of the additional work and responsibility success brings, fear of not doing something significant. Aversion to the parts of the work I don’t like, fear of not doing what I should be doing and so not being present and not enjoying the many blessings involved in nurturing disadvantaged youth to care about themselves, other people and nature. A path with heart has embraced me, and shaped my life, yet I am still busy judging myself and finding myself wanting…

My response up to now has been to seek refuge in meditation as a way to get distance, calm down and try to create separation so I can somewhat leave fear and aversion at work. Now it seems like its time to use meditation and the tools as skillful means to engage and explore these feelings.

Sounds like a plan…

Great Martial Arts Movie Characters

2010-03-06T14:46:00.004+07:00

#1 Po from Kung Fu Panda: The first time I saw this movie in the theater with my kids it was great and I willingly went back again for a second viewing. The third time I noted reluctance and faint aversion. Then the kids got the DVD (pirated) and continued to watch it over and over again, without seeming to lose enthusiasm. When I would just fall sleep, my kids would happily use me as backrest or even stretch out and lie on top of me horizontally as if I was a mattress.

Po is adorable - and besides Jack Black's great voice, Po points to many lessons for us on the path.

#2 Aang from Avatar: Aang the hero is the last Airbender and has a very graceful movement style. He is a vegetarian and does not want to hurt anyone else. A very interesting dilemma he faces is how to save the world from the destruction of the Fire Nation but without having to kill the Fire Lord or anyone else. Actually a lot of substance here in terms of morality, power, friendship, personal and spiritual development. Pretty cool for a 12 year old kid who is expected to save the world. My kids and I are bummed out about the whole movie thing though...Sad and strange this is still an issue decades after David Carradine was chosen over Bruce Lee for Kung Fu.

#3 Uncle Iroh: Despite appearances, Iroh is no slouch and besides being able to kick butt with style is also down to earth, wise, patient and modest in appearance and behavior, things we can all aspire to be. He likes tea, playing Pai Shō and the simple pleasures in life. When we talk about who in our family resembles which Avatar character, this is who my kids say I am but unfortunately I think they are referring to physical appearance rather than character.

#4 Jet Li as Wong Fei Hong in Once Upon A Time In China: This movie was like magic when I first saw it from the dramatic opening music and panorama to Jet Li's grace, finesse and restraint and the acrobatic finale. Loved the cinematography and fascinating historical backdrop of China starting to be influenced by the West and the struggle between tradition and the drive to modernize.

#5 Donnie Yen as Ip Man: This movie was a lot of fun and the choreography was great too. Highlighting the positioning and timing of the throws was a personal favorite. Lots of humor too. My kids love to rewind and watch over and over the part where the guy gets his pants pulled down. Some parts were too brutal and not suitable for viewing by children but pretty much standard for this genre - complete with anti-Japanese rivalry and wounded Chinese nationalism and honor in need of avenging.

#6 Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon: Bruce Lee was my gateway into martial arts and martial arts movies. Spent way too much time with nunchakas as a teenager... In many ways he was the original or forerunner of MMA that is so popular today. Bruce Lee was disdainful of tradition and wanted martial arts to be based on effectiveness and efficiency, something of a similar debate to that in Buddhism today between Asian Buddhism and Western Buddhism.

Not really sure where I stand on either debate and not sure that it matters. I have often chafed under the limitations and restrictions of tradition and in general tend towards "pragmatism" but as I get older there is much more appreciation for tradition and style as the vehicle or container for preserving science or knowledge whether martial or spiritual. There is something comforting and rooting knowing that you stand as a very small point in a long continuum. Perhaps its not an "either or" question, a debate that doesn't need to be resolved. It is the discussion itself that is of use to all involved. Tradition exists in a context and is inherently dynamic, reinterpreted and reapplied with the passing of time. Often self proclaimed, most "conservative" movements have the most radical reinterpretation or analysis given how much society has changed since their historical referents.

Beginner's Mind

2010-03-04T06:03:00.003+07:00

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." - Suzuki Roshi

One of the many wonderful things about having children is watching them experience the world with “beginner’s minds” unencumbered by the burdens we adults carry.

Having a family was what finally and irrevocably brought my path to Buddhism. Seeing how directly the influence of who I am and what I do on my children was powerful motivation to do delve deeper, to start to come to grips with my own suffering and self-destructive ways of being in the world.

For me the driving question was as a father – what was the legacy I wanted to leave my children with? The answer was light, joy and happiness. But these are not things we can give to other people but rather must embrace ourselves before we can share them with others.

This means not striving for perfection or measuring oneself against a standard of what should be. For me it has meant willingly and lovingly making time for telling simple and silly stories, falling asleep while watching cartoons, turning on a light in a dark room, and assembling Legos. It means creating and sharing a world where stuffed animals, imaginary friends and dogs, live and talk, act out and reflect, giving us the opportunity to share our true selves with those we love!

Another wonderful manifestation of beginner's mind is how I appreciate my relationship with my partner. She seems wiser, more caring, loving and attentive. Sometimes she talks and I find myself thinking admiringly - wow that was a pearl of wisdom, where did that come from? Or she will say something and I'll think - that's Buddhism! Or I find myself with this sneaking suspicion she has secretly been listening to my Gil Fronsdal talks from Audio Dharma while I have been sleeping... How is it that she has changed while I am the one who gets up early every morning to meditate?! And is it really so? Or is it that I am more able to appreciate and see her true self? Or is it that somehow our paths are intertwined and mutually supporting? She is a natural Bodhisattva. Wisdom and learning does not always need to be named.

How strange and wonderful to find that while my partner and children haven't taken to meditation, that we are partners, fellow seekers on the path! That they are my teachers in ways big and small.

It is a tender almost heart bursting joy when they come in to kiss my cheek while I meditate. Or cover my legs with a blanket. It seems like this is what it means to be truly human.

May we always embrace our beginner's mind!

May we open our hearts and minds to find teachers and friends in unexpected places, forms and guises,

Real and imaginary,

Human and animal,

Big and small,

To accompany us on the path!

May we all be happy!

Love

2010-02-26T05:57:00.003+07:00

from:

peace is every step

2010-02-26T05:50:00.005+07:00

from:

random home and heart photos

2010-02-25T13:02:00.008+07:00

This is Mount Gede as seen from our front porch, one of two volcanoes that are connected. Looking at it is very calming and centering. Centuries ago Indonesia was once Buddhist but somehow religion and even naming does not seem relevant when immersed in nature.

Closer look...

Morning sun, flower, me, inter-are...

The view to one side of our front porch.

Bamboo and metal wind chimes call,

evoke, remind and reconnect.

This is a "village" rose. Here "village" has a derogatory connotation meaning narrow-minded but it can also mean hardy like this rose bush which is easy to take care of and has lots of gorgeous flowers!

This flower is common here and not sold but we have not figured out how it reproduces...

This wood Buddha statue is from Bali. I had a very strong affinity for it the first time I saw it. I love polishing it with teak oil and seeing the wood darken in color. I haven't been able to identify the mudra, but more importantly the hands are perfectly placed to hold hibiscus flowers which is my offering to myself and those who see it...

Pair of statues from Cambodia...

Loyal and good friends are very important on the path!!!

perspective/reflection

2010-02-23T11:47:00.007+07:00

This is the view from our living room windows. A good friend took this picture last week while visiting with his family. Ten years ago we were both single guys on the loose acting out a second adolescence and now are both married with kids... Time.. flies...

Early in the morning and on clear days on the right a huge volcano is visible which is part of a national park. Every time I see it, its still like - wow that's big! It provides perspective for us, people, of time and nature as something that vastly exceeds our human life spans. Speaking personally sometimes its easy to forget this.

Years ago I learned about farming, walking and working barefoot on foothills below the volcano on land across from my martial arts school's training center. In the afternoon the earth would be so warm from the sun or during rainy season muddy and slippery in a very elemental way. Surprising how much one can feel through the soles of one's feet! One day I remember standing barefoot feeling rooted in a very good spot, watching bamboo sway and plants vibrate with the wind and sun and suddenly there was the thought, "the earth is alive and I am part of it". There was something both incredibly finite and infinite about that moment, the sense of being part of something vast and complex, yet alive, vibrant and immediate. Its the same feeling but different scale as holding a handful of seeds and feeling the energy, the potential for growth and expression, some powerful and ancient dance that we are part of yet only slightly understand. Human agency seems irrelevant in this context, our job seems to be to witness, to experience and wonder.

Watching the fog on the hills or cover the landscape and blow right over our porch is pretty cool.

Early morning I love watching the sky turn from dark blue black to pink and orange and then the sun crest over the hills. Unfortunately if I am watching it, that means I am late with my morning meditation but I guess everything has a tradeoff...

May my eyes, heart and soles of my feet always be open to these joys!

May clouds, flowers and mountains always inspire and excite!

May good friends continue to grace and share our lives!

May my children continue to grow and learn with respect and wonder!

May I gain in wisdom, insight and humility.

Race, Diversity and Buddhism: Thoughts and a Proposal

2010-02-21T21:41:00.004+07:00

Although I have been an activist for a long time and during my college years helped lead a student protest movement for diversity, to this day I dread discussions about race, the feelings they bring up in myself and others, the conflict that arises, and the ultimate and inescapable dissatisfaction with the ways things end. But recently I've been stirred and inspired by Arun at Angry Asian Buddhist, and even more recently by posts and comments by Nathan at Dangerous Harvests, and Katie at Kloncke.

At the same time I am concerned by the generally unsatisfactory discussion about race and diversity on many Buddhist blogs. These discussions have been full of misunderstanding, misrepresentation, hurt feelings all around, blanket statements, and a general lack of compassion or insight. Its often as if we don't really hear what others are saying but are separately instead engaged in a discussion with ghosts from previous discussions with all the accumulated baggage. At times we shout past each other, selectively hearing and cherry picking what is said for more fuel to add to the fire. It is even more regrettable when these discussions involve Buddhists because there is just extra arrow added on top of extra arrow, increasing suffering and seemingly disdaining the skillful means we as Buddhists should be developing and practicing.

Why have or participate in these discussions then? For me personally at a certain level there really is no choice. From a very young age, standing up to racism or asserting myself in a forum with racial overtones was part of an existential struggle. I felt like if I didn't speak out, stand up and fight back, I would not exist as a person and any risk was worth taking to prevent that. Those times I was silent or didn't fight back, I would torture myself again and again remembering my failure, cowardice and humiliation and despising myself for my weakness.

With meditation I have started to realize that the cost of anger is a steep one - the loss of personal balance and objectifying the focus of my anger which in other words is dehumanization and doing to someone else the very thing I don't want to happen to me. That's not to say I still don't get angry but the intensity has lessened and its not as all consuming. There is the awareness on some sort of fundamental level that the anger is not me and I am more than just the anger. I can be somewhat objective and watch it as an observer.

Also there is the realization that not every battle has to be joined, not every comment answered. We can choose not to accept those "gifts" as Goenkaji calls them (reminded of this by a post on Kloncke). There is something powerful in standing up for oneself and fighting back. There is also something powerful about restraint, abstaining, taking the time and space to just be.

What comes next after the fighting and then the restraint and abstaining? How about a try for the middle way? I have been listening and working on Gil Fronsdal's Concentration series at Audio Dharma. At one point he describes concentration meditation like fishing - too much slack and the fish gets away, too forceful and the line will break. Perhaps these discussions on race needs to be the same - enough creative tension to get people thinking outside of their normal assumptions but not some much as to make them defensive. Easier said than done but adding compassion, trying out equanimity and remembering we are all in this together could help. What if at the point where someone says something that brings on very strong feelings of aversion and rejection - we try and label these feelings and then watch them with non reactive awareness? What would happen if we could get angry at someone else's limited and seemingly bigoted perspective but then put that feeling in a "larger container" and watch its power fade?

What if we could listen to each other for what lies behind our words?

Could there be a simple and shared desire to be heard, acknowledged and appreciated?

Would this premise be worth testing? How about a Buddhist bloggers' roundtable or panel discussion on different topics related to race, diversity and Buddhism? But the goal would not be to show how someone is wrong or convert others to your viewpoint, it would be to practice what Katie calls "mindful blogging" and do it in the challenging context of a dialogue about race, diversity and Buddhism.

Sooo... Anybody game? I guess this is somewhat presumptuous since it assumes people are actually reading my ramblings...Is anybody out there?

ps - just in case someone is out there, I want to again acknowledge influence and inspiration from Kloncke and Dangerous Harvests for this line of thought - thanks!

Transformation!

2010-02-21T09:33:00.003+07:00

When we look deeply into ourselves,

we see both flowers and garbage...
In the way that a gardener knows how
to transform compost into flowers, we
can learn the art of transforming anger,
depression and racial discrimination
into love and understanding.

Thich Nhat Hanh from: Touching Peace

Satyagraha Special Section: Blueprints of Freedom

2010-02-20T15:28:00.004+07:00

How Martin Luther King, Jr., brought satyagraha to the U.S. and revolutionized the civil rights movement.

By Charles Johnson

In Atlanta SCLC office, 1966

FAR FROM THE police dogs, jail cells, and hostile crowds, Martin Luther King, Jr., stands in his office with his arms crossed in front of a portrait of Mohandas Gandhi. The juxtaposition of these two spiritual titans in this photograph reminds me that Gandhi’s “experiment with truth” was at the heart of King’s work for justice and equality. For King as well as Gandhi, the methods of satyagraha, far from being neutral tools devoid of cultural values, contained precise, challenging blueprints for leading a moral life.

King first publicly declared his admiration for the father of modern India during the Montgomery bus boycott, proclaiming, “Christ gave us the goals and Mahatma Gandhi the tactics.” Those tactics were tested in an American context for the first time during King’s fourteen-year career as the nation’s most preeminent minister and Socratic gadfly of the state. King was at a meeting during the Montgomery bus boycott, when segregationists bombed his house. He rushed back and found his wife Coretta and their baby Yolanda unharmed. Outside his damaged home, an angry, armed black crowd confronted the white policemen at the scene. The situation was edging toward violence when King raised one hand to quiet the crowd. “I want you to go home and put down your weapons,” he said. “We cannot solve this problem through retaliatory violence. We must meet violence with nonviolence.… We must meet hate with love.” According to the white policemen there that night, King’s calming words in the heat of racial violence saved their lives. King’s use of skillful means (upaya kushala) brought something uniquely redemptive to the struggle for black liberation in America; he established the actions of the Civil Rights movement as morally superior to those of its opposition. However, King never sought to humiliate his opponents. A practitioner of satyagraha endeavors to respect his opponent, retain him as friend, and provide him with a way to save face during their encounter so that he can maintain his dignity and join the ranks of the enlightened.

The electrifying Birmingham, Alabama campaign, infused with the spirit of satyagraha, brought segregation to its knees. “We shall wear you down by our capacity to suffer,” King announced, merging the passion of Christ and Gandhi’s doctrine in his belief that suffering, loss of property, and even physical pain were worthwhile means to a spiritual end. King and his lieutenants filled the jails with peaceful protesters, children as well as adults. 2,500 demonstrators marched on Birmingham’s streets. Racist Police Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor responded to the nonviolent protests with fire hoses and police dogs. His actions, captured in news footage and broadcast worldwide, backfired by alerting American citizens and the international community to the horrible conditions faced by black people in the South.

This brutality sickened the Birmingham firemen, too. On May 5, 1963, hundreds of blacks held a prayer meeting near the city jail. Enraged, Connor ordered his firemen to turn on the hoses. But the firemen fell back as if mesmerized, some of them weeping, and allowed the protesters to continue. This remarkable event proved yet again the

power of satyagraha, or “soul force,” in winning over the hearts and minds of one’s opponents. That victory was surely helped by the ten points of the “Commitment Blank,” a kind of activist’s version of the bodhisattva vows, signed by the leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and their followers during the Birmingham campaign:

COMMANDMENTS FOR THE VOLUNTEERS
I hereby pledge myself—my person and my body—to the nonviolent movement. Therefore I will keep the following commandments:
Meditate daily on the teachings and life of Jesus.
Remember always that the nonviolent movement seeks justice and reconciliation—not victory.
Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love.
Pray daily to be used by God in order that all men might be free.
Sacrifice personal wishes in order that all men might be free.
Observe with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy.
Seek to perform regular service for others and for the world.
Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart.
Strive to be in good spiritual and bodily health.
Follow the directions of the movement and of the captain on a demonstration.

When practicing soul force, activists were urged to work for change in the world and in themselves simultaneously. These “moral experiments” were intended to be performed in their daily lives as scientists might test their theories. Such an approach is in perfect accord with satyagraha’s insistence that it is futile to implement ideas in the public realm if we fail to practice them in our personal lives. Dharma teacher and mendicant monk Claude AnShin Thomas understood this well when he said, “As a Buddhist, I cannot think myself into a new way of living, I have to live myself into a new way of thinking.” If we hope to end war and violence, Thomas noted, “we must simply stop the endless wars that rage within.”

BEFORE HIS DEATH at the age of thirty-nine, King would receive fifty assassination threats and the wrath of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI; live with a $30,000 bounty on his head; be stabbed, stoned, bombed, and repeatedly arrested and jailed. All this only reinforced King’s conviction that “civilization and violence are antithetical concepts.” In a short space of time, King revolutionized the civil rights movement, and his efforts took a heavy personal toll: after his death, an autopsy found that he had the heart of a sixty-year-old man. Although his life, like Gandhi’s, was cut tragically short, his powerful legacy endures. He reminds nonviolent activists that brotherhood is our goal, love our method, generosity and forgiveness our rule. King summarized the principle of satyagraha in language as simple as the purity of the ideal: “Strangely enough, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.” King devoted his life to helping Americans be what we ought.

Charles Johnson is a professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle as well as an award-winning author. His most recent book, Mine Eyes Have Seen: Bearing Witness to the Civil Rights Struggle, a collaboration with civil rights photographer Bob Adelman, was published in November 2007.

images: top: © Bob Fitch photo, bottom: © Bettmann/Corbis

from Tricycle:
http://www.tricycle.com/special-section/satyagraha-special-section-blueprints-freedom?offer=dharma

A Path With Heart chapter 4: Necessary Healing

2010-02-20T09:06:00.002+07:00

"True maturation on the spiritual path requires that we discover the depth of our wounds. As Achaan Chah put it, 'If you haven't cried a number of times, your meditation hasn't really begun."

At the end of my first 10 day retreat, before we broke Noble Silence, we were taught metta or lovingkindness. It was if a dam broke. I started crying, at first desperately trying to stop or at least slow it down or do it silently, then was totally overwhelmed as huge wracking sobs repeatedly washed over and through me in waves. The last time I had really cried was as a high school student more than 20 years before that and even then under very difficult circumstances. Since that retreat, I get teared up quite easily... The scene in the Gandhi movie where all the non violent protesters are beaten and massacred... Seeing Martin Luther King, Jr. giving a speech... Hearing about the progress of youth who graduated from the organic farming and life skills program I helped start and still run... But it has been more than just crying. Having spontaneous feelings of metta arise for others come up even in conflict situations... Acknowledging and embracing the heart, feeling the softening and melting, the tenderness and vulnerability of being human... Being present and compassionate for the small moments with one's children... A wonderful and immeasurable blessing!

"Unhealed pain and rage, unhealed traumas from childhood abuse or abandonment, become powerful unconscious forces in our lives. Until we are able to bring awareness and understanding to our old wounds, we find ourselves repeating their patterns of unfulfilled desire, anger, and confusion over and over again."

Wounds, pain and rage... I have spent much of my life wounding myself and others... expressing pain and rage... I used to love playing football with ferocity and reckless disregard for bodily health and safety. If there was a cocky white boy playing, I would try and break him. Blocking, hitting, tackling so hard and relentlessly, chasing him all over the field until he would start to avoid me. Sometimes he would fall down as I approached rather than have me tackle. Aggression and domination. It was both euphoric and addicting.

For a period of time I was an honors student in high school. There were very few students of color in these classes. I remember feeling invisible, inadequate and that the other students were smarter and better than me. I remember sitting in class wishing I wasn't Asian, that my skin was not dark, my eyes not slanted, my hair not black and straight. Eventually I started not to care and then even verbally harass and intimidate the other students and then stopped going to classes altogether. I would spend my time with friends vandalizing the school, making and getting into trouble. Outside of school we got into fights, vandalized buildings, parks, offices, "borrowed" cars, broke open tens of parking meters. After a few close calls, we wound up in the police station. My parents were at a dinner party with other Asian American parents who were bragging about their kids' various achievements when the police called them to come get me... At the time I had a bowl cut and the police thought I had fallen in with the wrong crowd and let me go. In one semester I went from honors student to being asked to leave school.

For years, I would throw my sparring partners as hard as I could, sometimes as if I were trying to throw them through the floor. Double leg throws with the other person airborne and then crashing to the floor. Slamming, booming throws from which people would not get up right away or have to stop. I would feel victorious, glad, sick, disgusted and self loathing all at the same time...

"The first area of healing comes when we develop a relationship of trust with a teacher"

One day my martial teacher in the middle of class told me something to the effect that I was afraid of my sparring partner. This was someone that I routinely put a serious hurting on and I couldn't believe it. My friends ribbed me about this and as time went by I continued to dominate and slam this guy around and mentally disregarded what my teacher had told me. Yet a seed was planted. What was fear? And what was its relationship to domination and aggression? Could it be that domination and aggression was a way of covering up and not facing fear? What would be an alternative? Soft throws are not just technically harder since rather than strength they rely more on positioning and timing but also demand we be more open to someone else's energy rather than imposing our own.

Helped by meditation I have started to see the whole process differently. Sparring does not have to be oppositional. Our real opponent is our own fears, desires, egos. But then even these are not our enemies. Awareness of my feelings not necessarily being me and occurring in a larger container. Watching - oh there is ego, there is aggression... Seeing these feelings come and then go without having to engage or manifest them.

Most recently I started to have feelings of care and even tenderness towards my partners. There is an immediacy and intimacy in letting others in, putting yourself in a vulnerable position and letting others throw you. Who throws and who is being thrown? There is joy, grace and interconnectedness in this mutual dance... What a wonderful thing to be alive for! What a wonderful gift! I am thankful to my martial arts teacher, meditation teacher and those who have shared the path with me as fellow seekers, learners and teachers!

May we continue to learn and grow and express our humanness together!

Racial Diversity and Buddhism in the U.S. (2006)

2010-02-19T12:43:00.003+07:00

When we speak of Buddhism in the United States, we are speaking of a cultural movement that has brought to this continent ancient Indian, East and Southeast Asian, and Tibetan spiritual teachings and practices. For the first time in history, these teachings have arrived in a land that is racially heterogeneous. At the same time, they are taking root in a society that was founded, by a white majority, on the unwholesome seeds of colonialism, genocide and slavery. In this meeting, the values of community, interdependence, and collaboration come face-to-face with the values of the pursuit of individualism, self-interest and competition. Deep bow meets handshake (1).

With these words, Hilda Guitiérrez Baldoquín, the editor of Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism, describes the historical and current diversity of Buddhism in America. In the almost one hundred and fifty year history of Buddhism in the U.S., racial diversity has been an ever-present concern. One of the challenges facing American Buddhism today is the need to fully recognize the experiences of Asian immigrants in the U.S., Asian Americans, European Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, as well as all other people of color who practice Buddhism.

People of color are negotiating spaces within predominantly European American sanghas (Buddhist communities). Buddhist centers across the country are starting to host people of color retreats and meditation groups. These efforts are led by Buddhist teachers of color whose work to reduce the isolation people of color have felt is starting to have an impact. They work in tandem with a handful of organizations for people of color to sustain these efforts beyond just one or two retreats. Additionally, White people active in Buddhist centers are working to understand racism in their own lives and communities. Together, these efforts are attempting to reshape American Buddhism into racially diverse and integrated communities.

This report provides snapshots of the work American Buddhists are doing to nurture racially diverse sanghas—it is not a comprehensive collection of these efforts. The research is based on journal articles, books, email and verbal conversations and interviews with several Buddhists of color in the U.S.

To download the full report as a Word document with hyperlinks, click here.
To download the full report as a .pdf without hyperlinks, click here.

Endnotes:

(1) Baldoquín, Hilda Gutiérrez, ed. Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2004: 18.

http://pluralism.org/reports/view/36

Oprah Talks to Thich Nhat Hanh

2010-02-17T17:30:00.002+07:00

http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Oprah-Talks-to-Thich-Nhat-Hanh

In the Lineage of Sister Mary

2010-02-17T16:36:00.004+07:00

Dharma teacher RALPH STEELE’s journey from speaking Gullah as a child in the South to the teachings of the Pali Canon

http://www.tricycle.com/feature/in-lineage-sister-mary?offer=dharma

Questions For Henry Louis Gates Jr. After the Beer Summit

2010-02-16T13:54:00.000+07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14fob-q4-t.html

I like that after all or at least most of the headlines have faded, these two men did get together for more beer...

For me the moral of the story is that decent people can get caught up in extraordinary circumstances that may not bring out the best in us but that there is still time for redemption, reconciliation and more beer...

Although the issues this incident raised were and are still important, fundamentally we are all trying to get by day by day... A little understanding and compassion can carry us a long way...

A Path With Heart chapter 3: Take the One Seat

2010-02-16T13:24:00.000+07:00

"Outwardly, it means selecting one practice and one teacher among all of the possibilities, and inwardly, it means having the determination to stick with that practice through whatever difficulties and doubts arise until you have come to true clarity and understanding."

I have been with one martial arts school for 25 years now... and one meditation style for 4 years... I have come to look at these practices as my craft, something to do, put my time in for, day in and day out, not to expect but just keep going. In my martial arts school there is a saying from the first grandmaster. "Jangan yakin akan kemajuan. Harus yakin akan disiplin." Which means don't be sure about advancement. You must be sure about disipline.

This is a difficult thing to do and it seems like the process is never complete. When do you come to true clarity and understanding? There is definitely something there - developing familiarity then intimacy with a practice, dealing with boredom, maxing out and finding a way to go further. But there is also at times frustration, feeling stagnant, doubting, wondering about other paths... And whatever level of advancement or achievement reached brings new doubts, frustration and boredom... I think this is where compassion for oneself is important along with a realization that these feelings are natural and part of the process.

For years I neglected to practice long movements or our equivalent of "kata" seriously. I couldn't see the direct martial application and preferred to spar, practice throwing and evasive blocks. Recently though I have really started to appreciate the poetry and self development aspects of daily polishing long movements. It really does feel like moving meditation. Sometimes I try and cultivate a global awareness and at other times a specific focused concentration. The energy and breath I watch without forcing or striving and see what manifests itself. Sometimes forceful and explosive and others subtle and nuanced. My job is to watch it all unfold. So much beauty, poetry and connection to now. For this I am grateful.

A Morning Reflection by Rev. Zenju Earthlyn Marselean Manuel

2010-02-06T07:28:00.001+07:00

I am not free. I am not free because I define myself by the Buddhist robe that was given to me. I define myself by titles like Reverend or Buddhist. I define myself by my dark skin color and its history. I define myself by my sexuality. I am not free because I am still angry about what has hurt me in life. I am not free because I want to be important. I want to be heard. I am not free because I have spent my life becoming, becoming, becoming. I am not free because I have completely abandoned my true nature to be prosperous. So, I have mounted a campaign of freedom for Zenju and for those of us who are trapped like me in the clothes that were given to us.

Everyday from this day forward arouse within the true being. Be warmed and fed by fire, cleansed and hydrated by water, touch your feet to the earth, and speak from the bones. Grandmother says we could be beautiful if we could be true.

These things that we say we are only appear when we cannot see ourselves. Identification may be necessary for the compartments of our brain but it is not necessary for our freedom. Who breathes here is identified but goes beyond any identity. Free Zenju, I say to myself. Free Zenju. Svaha (and so it is)!

http://zenjuearthlynmanuel.com/

A Path With Heart chapter 2: Stopping the War

2010-02-05T21:50:00.001+07:00

“The unawakened mind tends to make war on the things are.”

I feel like this describes most of my life. From elementary school to high school, college, much of life has been spent doing just that – making war on the way things are. Rejection, aversion, rebellion, avoidance, but not a lot of acceptance much less wisdom. It’s the same plot with predictably unsatisfactory ending but with different characters, lines and locations.

“The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically through gradual training.”

Along with the war, this process of gradual training has been there too. Reading, looking to Taoism, Henry David Thoreau, MLK, Malcolm X, Gandhi and alternative education in high school seemed to be part of an innate process which has all been part of the path. But this was in the mind and part of the ongoing war was the contradiction between what the mind knew to be good and right and what manifested through the body and actions. This contradiction has often been very painful.

“When we let go of our battles and open our hearts to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice.”

Meditation can be a microcosm of this war. The physical pain of sitting, boredom, wanting to do something else, be something or somewhere else, conflicting emotions, memories, and thoughts all do war with the way things are.

“To stop the war and come into the present is to discover a greatness of our own heart that can include the happiness of all beings as inseparable from our own. When we let ourselves feel the fear, the discontent, the difficulties we have always avoided, our heart softens”

Goenkaji often says “Accept things as they are, not as you want them to be.”

It’s a saying that comes back over and over usually when I am not accepting things as they are but rather hoping they’ll be as I want them…

Listening to this, realizing what is going on but without reproach, brings about some softening, melting in the body, in the heart and at times even in action.

“As we allow the world to touch us deeply, we recognize that just as there is pain in our own lives, so there is pain in everyone else’s life.”

Yes, how true. Can we use our own pain as a gate to understanding and offering compassion to others? Perhaps at the start this is silent and from afar but with time, aspiration and more melting, this becomes action however modest.

METTA SUTTA Translated by Gil Fronsdal

2010-01-31T10:32:00.000+07:00

To reach the state of peace
Those skilled in the Good
Should be
Capable and upright,
Straightforward and easy to speak to,
Gentle and not proud,
Contented and easily supported,
Living lightly and with few duties,
Wise and with senses calmed,
Not arrogant and without greed for supporters,
And they should not do the least thing that the wise would criticize.
[They should reflect:]
"May all be happy and secure;
May all beings be happy at heart.
All living beings, whether weak or strong,
Tall, large, medium, or short,
Tiny or big,
Seen or unseen,
Near or distant,
Born or to be born,
May they all be happy."
Let no one deceive another
Or despise anyone anywhere;
Let no one through anger or aversion
Wish for others to suffer.

As a mother would risk her own life
To protect her child, her only child,
So toward all beings should one
Cultivate a boundless heart.
With loving-kindness for the whole world
Should one cultivate a boundless heart,
Above, below, and all around
Without obstruction, without hate and without ill-will.
Standing or walking, sitting or lying down,
As long as one is alert,
May one stay with this recollection.
This is called a sublime abiding, here and now.
Whoever is virtuous, endowed with vision,
Not taken by views,
And having overcome all greed for sensual pleasure
Will not be reborn again.

Translated by Gil Fronsdal
http://www.audiodharma.org/documents/MettaSutta.pdf

On race and Buddhism

2010-01-28T18:58:00.001+07:00

http://resistracism.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/on-race-and-buddhism/

Daily Meditation 01/25/10

2010-01-25T14:12:00.000+07:00

Today I somehow didn't set the timer properly and wound up going for 1 hr 20 min before I checked the clock. It was somewhat of a rough ride with me many times succumbing to the seductiveness of thought. I tried to be more muscular in my concentration but felt like I was clamping too tightly. I also tried breathing as if each breathe were my very last on this earth. This worked for awhile - present, aware and concentrated until some shiny attractive thought passed and then I was gone again... Other times I was lost in the trees and then all of a sudden found myself in a clearing... Open, spacious, and clear. Hard to maintain though and soon enough lost in the trees again. How wonderful it is to meditate... Even after a "tough" session everything seems right, as if I have bathed my mind and emerged refreshed. Later I found myself lost in the spaciousness outside - wind blowing and animating all it touched, leaves and flowers trembling, gentle ridges and clouds framing like eyebrows.

A Path With Heart chapter 1: Did I Love Well?

2010-01-25T00:20:00.000+07:00

A Path With Heart is one of a very few books that speaks directly to me, articulating what may have been half conscious or half buried, at the same time clarifying and elevating the internal discourse and my interactions in the world. Jack Kornfield’s gentle wisdom is always inspiring and I have found it to be a continual catalyst for transformation.

Chapter 1’s title “Did I Love Well?” is the question to ask. It is a question that frames effort, grounds ambition, nurtures humility and challenges us to do more.

“Does this path have a heart? If it does the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.”

The eyes read and the mind comprehends but these words imprint on my heart. Over and over again until I feel like I am there with Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda.

The meditation/reflection on ones death was also powerful. The simplicity and immediacy of real goodness. As a child I remember feeding stay cats and how it felt as they crunched on the dry food we gave them. In high school I remember helping out a few times as a teacher’s assistant for a class of learning disabled children. It was really tough and they often did not respond as one expected or thought they should. Last year I opened a door for an older woman. It was spontaneous. These acts are in contrast to what I do with TLF which is always in a larger context, planned with specific expectations and calculations. Not to say that it isn’t genuine but this reflection reminds me that I need to make an effort so I don’t lose immediacy, spontaneity and ultimately connection.

“In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.”

This I also have read and repeated over and over like a mantra. It sometimes comes to mind when I am lost in a cloud of administration, management and planning and one of the youth at TLF asks me something that doesn’t fit into these boxes. I am reminded to try and be present and answer simply. Or when my children want to be comforted or even just heard when I have work or existential burdens weighing me down. It’s in fact a blessing for oneself to remember Mother Theresa’s words. For all our grand plans and ambitions, in the end this is what really matters.

The lovingkindness meditation is one I practice almost every day at the end of my daily meditation. I learned it on the last day of the first 10 day retreat I did. I found myself crying uncontrollably and it felt like my heart had layers peeled off it. In the beginning it was hardest to feel loving kindness for oneself. Like trying to get water from a dry well. It’s an amazing thing to feel lovingkindness spontaneously arise or come up during a difficult situation where previously I would have been angry or vengeful. That’s not to say that I still don’t have negative feelings but somehow it’s different. I can forgo reproving myself, feeling guilty and get onto actually being present and start to do something. For this I am very grateful.

May we all be filled with lovingkindness
May we all be well
May we all be peaceful and at ease
May we all be happy

Never Give Up

2010-01-24T18:46:00.000+07:00

Wednesday 26 December 2007, by HH the XIV Dalai Lama

Never give up
No matter what is going on
Never give up

Develop the heart
Too much energy in your country
Is spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart
Develop the heart

Be compassionate

Not just with your friends
But with everyone

Be compassionate

Work for peace
In your heart
And in the world
Work for peace

And I say again
Never give up
No matter what is going on around you
Never give up

copyright©2003 His Holiness The Dalai Lama and Ron Whitehead
Message given by His Holiness The Dalai Lama to Ron Whitehead.
Longer message translated into this poem by Ron Whitehead.
Poem message blessed by His Holiness The Dalai Lama
with permission for Ron Whitehead to share with everyone.

from: http://www.tibetwrites.org/?Never-Give-Up

2010-01-24T18:17:00.000+07:00

"Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can."
— Dalai Lama XIV

Meditation and martial arts

2010-01-24T16:55:00.000+07:00

More than six years later I am still trying to feel my way thru having two major practices: meditation which has slowly become more of an embracing of Buddhism as a path and my martial arts practice which I have been doing on and off since 1984 and was the main reason I came to Indonesia in 1992. One thing is for sure, the amount of aggression I feel towards self and others has gone down. Fear, anger, aversion is something I can start to put in a "larger container" and look at with some degree of subjectivity. I also have started to gain understanding of how anger and aggression damages me. But I often feel out of sync with the vibe at my martial arts school even though to be accurate this feeling predates my meditation practice.

Daily meditation 01/24/10

2010-01-24T16:38:00.001+07:00

Still working on concentration series of talks by Gil Fronsdal series on Audiodharma. Still strange not to being doing Vipassana but today in my meditation at times I felt present, connected, whole, fresh and alive. A few times I could "see" a thought arise and recognize it as such. Other times I felt myself slip and without noticing give in to the seductiveness of thought. It was nice to note without blame or remorse and get back to the breath. I am so grateful for the Audiodharma recordings and Gil Fronsdal.

I need and enjoy my daily sittings so much. At some point I would like to look more deeply at my resistance to going back for a third 10 day retreat...

We have had some mice in our house and looking at my reluctance to have our dogs take care of them I see pity but also some dogmatic adherence to not killing. A bit of a comic scene with my wife on a chair screaming - just like a scene in some cartoon, my daughter locking herself in another room refusing to open the door, and the dogs busily sniffing, happy to be inside the house and finally proudly carrying out a very small mouse body.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dharma: Black Women Embrace Western Buddhism

2009-03-07T19:31:00.001+07:00

by Carol Cooper published: June 26, 2001

In the half-century since Buddhism re-entered American pop culture via the Beats (having first enjoyed a passing vogue during the 1890s), more and more black females—children of the civil rights movement, champions of black nationalism, feminist iconoclasts, and intellectuals—have been finding their way to Buddhist practice. Quietly, without much visibility or commercial fanfare, these women meditate daily, then take the insights they receive "on the cushion" into their lives as mothers, mates, social activists, and career women. From Tina Turner's autobiographical hat-tip to Nichiren Shoshu to bell hooks's describing her personal synthesis of Buddhist meditation, Christian prayer, and Sufi mysticism in 1999's Remembered Rapture to Alice Walker's outing of herself as a practitioner last year in The New York Times, black women have unwittingly become the world's most spontaneous lay Buddhist preachers.

The public face of convert Buddhism in America is predominantly white and male and middle-class. Historically, the presence of blacks and women within this developing scene has been largely glossed over or ignored, much like the black Beats that contemporary historians are always "forgetting" to include in new anthologies. Martin Baumann in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics estimated there were between 3 and 4 million American Buddhists as of 1997, and concluded that only 800,000 of them were "Euro-American." Lack of official representation belies the truth, and one of the central goals of this week's Tricycle conference in New York City on Buddhist practice and inquiry is to make American Buddhism more comfortable with its own inherent diversity.

From Friday, June 29, through Sunday, July 1, Buddhists from around the world will gather at the Marriott World Trade Center to tackle the secular and esoteric concerns of those clinical psychiatrists, Harvard professors, theoretical physicists, and other contemplative types who subscribe to the abstruse doctrines formulated some 2500 years ago by a Nepalese prince-turned-itinerant-philosopher. (The term Buddha is an honorific title not unlike Christos, and simply means one who has awakened from confusion into clarity.) Among the 40 experts Tricycle's editor in chief, Helen Tworkov, has recruited will be bell hooks and Dr. Jan Willis: two African American scholar-practitioners who each have at least 30 years of Buddhist praxis. Yet Willis and hooks hardly represent the entire scope of black involvement with the dharma (or "wisdom teachings"), and they'd be the first to point out how suspiciously slow Western-convert Buddhists usually are to recognize potential or genius among the black dharma students in their midst.

"I have been fascinated in general," hooks observes wryly, "[by the fact] that white folks have shown themselves willing to follow men of color from Tibet and other places—who barely speak English—but I don't think that white people in America have shown themselves willing to follow any black guru."

Willis, a tenured professor of religion at Wesleyan University, includes issues of class as a factor in this odd reluctance: "I think all of us are affected by our backgrounds, and I think it doesn't occur to people of privilege that they should extend themselves to other people. And I don't think you can really expect that Buddhist sanghas ["communities"] are going to be any different than the people who comprise them."

Although hooks has lectured at Naropa University and Willis gives guest teachings by request, neither woman is yet a formally recognized dharma teacher with a school and/or disciples of her own—unlike a majority of the conference panelists. Traditionally, teachers are expected to anoint their successors—in other words to tell students when they're ready to teach. Thus far no high-profile white lama, guru, or sensei (with established financial resources and pedagogic influence) has chosen a black dharma heir. "I think that people are disturbed," says hooks, "not by a black presence, but by a black presence that seeks to revolutionize" and democratize the power structure of American Buddhism.

Positioned somewhere between philosophy, religion, and psychotherapy, Buddhist practice can be very slow and difficult going. Depending on the school or style of practice you choose, there can be mantras to memorize, mudras to learn, and complex mental pictures to visualize. Not to mention the demanding discipline of sitting-meditation, which leads to a depth of introspection that can be by turns painful, tedious, or exhilarating. Choosing among a plethora of schools and styles—from the austere rigor of Zen to the straightforward efficacy of Vipassana to the seductive complexity of Tibetan tantra—highly motivated black female Buddhists instinctively develop syncretic meditation exercises prompted by the same impulse that made black pianists turn classical music into ragtime.

Willis has been teaching Tibetan visualization techniques to inmates of the all-female York Correctional Institute and has found them as eager and able to benefit from these empowering tools as anyone—anointed or otherwise. "For me the issue is accessibility. So I take it to places where it wouldn't ordinarily go."

Angel Kyodo Williams is a thirtysomething New York-based student at the Village Zendo, studying under its white, female founder, Pat Enkyo O'Hara. Williams adores her teacher and her sangha, but feels neither can adequately support her desire to spread the dharma into the black community. She recently published Being Black: Zen and the Art of Living With Fearlessness and Grace (Viking Compass), her own introduction to the practical aspects of Zen thought for the curious but unconverted. Written in the unpretentious, conversational tone black people tend to use among themselves, Being Black is no more informal or "irreverent" than many books white Buddhists write to attract new people to the religion. Yet little things like Williams's calling the "Four Noble Truths" the "Four Simple Truths" to minimize the aura of elitism that hovers around an archaic term like "noble" in the 21st century makes conservative elements within American Buddhism reject her presentation as heretical. Many Buddhist bookstores have already refused to stock it, claiming "it's a black book, it's not a Buddhist book."

"I think we need interpreters, communicators," Williams says about her style of teaching Buddha dharma. "I thought of building a bridge, but it's not a bridge into the practice of how white Americans practice Buddhism, but a bridge into developing our own language around the practice."

As a young woman of the hip-hop generation whose first exposure to Asian philosophy (like thousands of blacks and Latinos since the '50s) came through the martial arts, Angel Williams is as conversant with Wu-Tang Clan as with the message of the Dalai Lama. She feels a strong connection to both and would love to use Buddhism's profoundly anti-elitist, anti-authoritarian, and antisectarian essence to revitalize black political activism in this country. "Before, when we joined a movement—be it SNCC, NOW, or Greenpeace—we were trying to dismantle something outside ourselves, when we really needed first to have a revolution from within." Later Williams adds, "What Buddhist practice does for black Americans is it solves the identity crisis for us. How? By slowly eliminating our need to be externally defined."

Although it's a fact that every people or nation that has embraced Buddhist thought has added something of its own to the teachings, not everyone can accept the notion that black folk might "jazz up" Buddhism. Nevertheless "black dharma"—for lack of a more descriptive term—is emerging from black practitioners whether the white Western Buddhist hegemony is ready or not.

Willis managed to sidestep the sense of alienation some black students have experienced with white teachers—or even with white-identified Asian teachers—by learning Sanskrit and Tibetan, then studying Buddhism with male Tibetan teachers in India and Nepal. Her memoir, Dreaming Me (Riverhead Books), centers around her "Baptist-Buddhist" conversion and chronicles Willis's hegira from her working-class origins in a KKK-plagued Alabama mining town, to a collegiate flirtation with the Black Panther Party, to her 15-year-long discipleship under a Tibetan lama. It is a contemporary namthar ("inspirational parable of enlightenment") that is no less "Buddhist" for its black American context.

Talk to any black female Buddhist long enough and you will get the sense that they see a straight line of evolution from the galvanizing power of the black Christian church during the civil rights movement to the dormant potential of an entire population of emotionally whole black Buddhists. Was it purely accidental that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. adopted the notion of ahimsa ("nonviolence") from a Hindu holy man or that he nominated the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize the year before he was assassinated? bell hooks, who frequently quotes both King and Hanh in her books, describes her ongoing friendship with Hanh as a communion of spiritual equals. "It was very deep when I met Thich Nhat Hanh. He embraced me as a fellow teacher, not as if 'Oh, you're coming to bow down to me.' He had no difficulty [giving me] that expansive sense of 'Your work has been doing the work of dharma, and I see that.' "

http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/165232

The Eight Vicissitudes

2009-03-07T00:55:00.000+07:00

According to the Buddha, we will experience these vicissitudes throughout our lives, no matter what our intentions or actions.

* Pleasure and pain
* Gain and loss
* Praise and blame
* Fame and disrepute

Someone suggested the image of these vicissitudes as winds that come and go. I like this because it says that like the winds, the coming and going of these vicissitudes have nothing to do with us as individuals. Imagine trying to stop the wind from coming or trying to make it come. This would only cause frustration. We just accept and try to adjust to the wind and so we should do the same to these vicissitudes (there has to be an easier word than this).

Reflections on growing up

2009-03-05T18:33:00.000+07:00

My mother told me that when I was in elementary school and we still lived in Queens, one day I ran home from school because all these kids were chasing me and making fun of me being Chinese. She said I ran into the apartment, grabbed a baseball bat and before she could say something, ran back out.

I don’t remember this happening, but I do remember many times where I fought kids who made fun of my Chinese ancestry. I had one consistent tormentor, Anthony. He was a kid from a neighbor’s family whom I had fought many times and he would still call me, “chink” even though he knew if he did, I would be waiting outside for him after school. The word “chink” would summon a rage so white hot that sometimes I would attack the other kid right there in class.

In fourth grade a friend taught me how to uppercut and the next time Anthony and I fought, I landed a couple of uppercuts right away. I could see he was very surprised by this change and also hurt. He clearly didn’t want to fight anymore. My friend was very excited, jumping up and down and telling me to hit him again, which I did. Anthony stopped fighting back and tried to leave but other kids blocked him since they were really into seeing someone getting beat up. I remember feeling sick to my stomach but I kept hitting him until a grown up broke up the circle of kids surrounding us and Anthony ran away.

This experience changed the equation and Anthony did not want to fight or call me names anymore. There was a cruelty in my heart though and rather than letting it go, I would follow him home from school while hitting and kicking him. This happened regularly until his older brother started to walk him home. I remember still following them trying to get at Anthony until his brother firmly pushed me away.

Victim/aggressor, how quickly that equation changes. From being hurt and wounded to hurting and wounding someone else. The line was so thin as to be imperceptible and unnoticed when I crossed it.

In high school a white friend got into a fight with a football jock over a girl. The jock had many of his buddies there and for some reason I went up to Chris, the biggest guy there and hit him. Probably because of his total surprise, I came off pretty well against a much bigger opponent. Some bystanders broke up the fights. Afterward though he was incensed and wanted to fight again. We were supposed to go outside to fight but he jumped me from behind, threw me down the stairs and then gave me a good beating. A teacher who saw what happened took his time stopping the pummeling and the school suspended me for a week while Chris got off with a warning. I was a troublemaker and hung out with a trouble making crowd. I had the feeling the school authorities were glad to see me get what they felt I had coming.

Afterward much of the football team would pick on me, taunting me with racial slurs and hitting me. Once about 15 of them hunted me in the halls since none of my friends were in school that day. I ran and eventually went home rather than face them. I remember the word “chink” would feel like a whiplash across my back.

Now when I do metta meditation, I cannot feel anything when I remember these people. No compassion, no loving kindness, no forgiveness.

Later in college when I was a different person, someone from my high school and only peripherally related to these football players showed up at a party. I saw him and without thinking I immediately threw him on the floor. Then I started stomping on him until I was pulled off. The rage was intense and so was the pleasure I felt as he collapsed and curled in a fetal ball. I followed him out into the night telling him to get a knife, get a bat, get a gun, anything but I was going to kill him. Later friends told me he hid in someone’s room until dawn and then left. I never explained to my friends what had set me off.

On Race & Buddhism by Rev. Alan Senauke

2009-03-04T19:33:00.000+07:00

On Race & Buddhism

Rev. Alan Senauke

Zen Master Dogen wrote "Gourd with its tendrils is entwined with gourd." This means we are all intimately bound up, wound up with each other. Truly inseparable. So this morning I would like to speak about the complexities of diversity, race, zen practice, and our community. Something we've been talking about at Buddhist Peace Fellowship, San Francisco Zen Center, here, and more and more around sanghas and centers in the United States. This is not just about "political correctness," it is about practice and awareness. I must confess that my own thoughts are not entirely clear, but I will try my best not to mislead you. If I sound critical, it is a voice of self-criticism. My own efforts have fallen short and I think we need to work on this together. So I will leave some time for discussion at the end.

After six years of practice, homeless among householders, wayseekers, and teachers, the Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree with the firm intention of awakening. After seven days of zazen he perceived the true nature of birth and death, the chain of causation and awakened to realization with the morning star. At that moment he spoke these words: "Wondrous! I now see that all beings everywhere have the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones, but because of misunderstandings and attachments they do not realize it."

Allowing his understanding to ripen, allowing Bodhicitta, the mind of compassion to ripen, he took up the responsibilities of teaching, sharing his experience in a way that unlocked the mystery of our own experience. As the Buddha came to express it, "I simply teach about the nature of suffering and the end of suffering." This is a radical teaching, true to the meaning of radical, getting to the root. And his understanding that all beings everywhere have the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones leaves us with a great responsibility. As the wheel of Mahayana Dharma turned , our own Zen vehicle, that responsibility was further clarified by the Bodhisattva vow to save all beings. We constantly affirm this vow.

And yet this vow was there from the beginning. Why else did the Buddha rise from the comfort and joy of enlightenment and freedom to teach? Why else did he offer teachings like the Metta Sutta,where he says:

May all beings be happy.
May they be joyous and live in safety.
All living beings, whether weak or strong,
in high or middle or low realms
of existence, small or great, visible or invisible,
near or far, born or to be born,
Let no one deceive another, nor despise any being in any state;
Let none by anger or hatred wish harm to another.
Even as a mother at the risk of her life watches over
and protects her only child,
so with a boundless mind should one cherish all living things,
suffusing love over the entire world, above, below,
and all around, without limit;
so let one cultivate an infinite good will toward the whole world.

And true to that teaching, he offered refuge to everyone he met on the path. Kings and paupers, ascetics and householders, people of all castes, brahmins , outcasts, and criminals. After some strenuous convincing, he even offered refuge to women. That's a long story in itself, not unrelated to the issue at hand today, suggesting that patriarchy has deep roots running through many if not most cultures.

Taking refuge means committing your life to waking up, to taking on the problem of suffering and the end of suffering for all beings and ourselves. This is what zazen is about. Sitting upright in stillness to see oneself in complete interdependence with all beings, with the rocks and trees and ocean and sky. The emptiness we so often talk about is not some kind of negative space. It is total interdependence. "Gourd with its tendrils entwined with gourd." True reality is empty of any one thing, empty of self because all things, all people co-create each other.

Seeing through and beyond dualistic thinking is the direct experience of zazen. I undescore the word experience, because if it we are just caught by an idea or an idle wish, we slip back into the tide of duality. All of us have such experiences from moment to moment, time to time. A moment of merging with someone or something we love, a moment of doing something completely, a moment of losing oneself in just sitting. And at times in zazen we settle fully into the realm of nonduality and recognize that this is our true mind, our true state of being. All the great spiritual traditions express an understanding of this natural way of life.

But the way we often live, by habit we see a world thoroughly conditioned by duality. Driven by doubt and fear, by a lack of trust in our true Mind, we see things as self and objects, as us and them, as other. It seems so hard to recognize the truth that Tibetan Buddhists preach: that every being was at one time my own mother. The root of racism is denial of this truth. It is about seeing people as other in a systematic way that is such an entrenched habit we are not usually aware of. I would underscore the word systematic, because as ideas like a virus in society they have a power that goes beyond individual like and dislike. Racism is a system of domination that is economic and political as well as personal. It runs deep in the oppressor and the oppressed alike, though the damage caused is different.

Even though I have the privilege of a good education, middle class male upbringing, white skin, I find in myself deeply ingrained and systematic survival responses as someone born Jewish. Several years ago at a meeting of international Buddhist activists in Thailand I realized that in the first day I had figured out who (among the westerners) was Jewish. And even stranger I realized that all the Jews were doing the same thing and had "signified" to each other. We knew who each other was, and we were more comfortable for it. This, I am sure, is a pattern that goes back through centuries of being ghetto-ized, of being the other. It's not a genetic thing. I can remember my mother telling me how to watch out for myself. That some people would exclude and threaten me just for being Jewish. It's so deep that sometimes I find myself looking around the zendo and counting those I think are Jewish. Some of you may find yourself making a similar census. From talking with them, I know that people of color do this.

And yet, let's where our Buddhism come from. Our ancestors come from India, China, and Japan. In June I visited Suzuki-Roshi's temple, Rinso-in and I walked in the graveyard where the old priests of the temple were buried. How amazing it is for Zen to leap oceans and cultures and be so generously offered to us. We should accept it humbly, recognizing the price of suffering paid to plant the Dharma seed here. And we owe it to our teachers and ourselves to share this practice with the same generosity and openmindedness. Keeping in mind that most Buddhists even in America don't look like me. They are Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and so on. I come to Buddhism out of suffering. They come to Buddhism as a birthright.

So how does it feel to come to Zen practice as a person of color? And they will come; they do come. My friend Sala Steinbach says an African-American woman at SFZC says, "If it is about liberation, people of color will be interested." They are. The Dalai Lama draws stadiums full of people in Mexico. In South America there are Zen and Tibetan teachers with very strong lay sanghas. So I ask my Asian, and Latino, and African-American friends about how it feels to come here, to San Francisco Zen Center or Spirit Rock. And I ask myself what feelings come up. Dogen suggests we take a step back to turn one's light inward and illuminate oneself. What I see there in myself is then reflected back into the world.

The answer to how it feels to anyone largely depends on two further inter-related questions. First, does one feel safe and seen in the community? Are the conditions of your life acknowedged, welcomed, explored in the sangha? I suspect that this is sometimes yes, sometimes no. Thoughtless words can turn people from the temple and from the practice. I have seen this happen here and elsewhere. An offhand comment is made about the white, middle class makeup of the community with people of color sitting right there. Again, through the unintended eye of white supremacy (hard words, I know) people are made to feel invisible and uncounted. Maybe I should say something about white supremacy. It is a building block of racism, part of my blindness to my own privilege as a white man. It is at once personal and systematic. If one wants to see it, the practice of individual mindfulness, of turning our light inward needs to be blended dialogue with friends and sangha members who don't carry this very particular privilege.

The same kinds of painful things happen if you are homosexual, or if because of injury or fact of birth you can't get up the steps of the temple. These blindnesses hurt and turn people away. That's what it might feel like from one side.

On the other side, the Buddha's understanding is "all beings have the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones, but because of misunderstandings and attachments they do not realize it." This understanding is so precious that we are obligated to share it. I don't mean proselytizing, but keep in mind, the Buddha never stopped preaching Dharma. But now we have centers and institutions. To make zazen and Dharma available, we need to tell people they are welcome and invite them to practice with us. Already we are taking practice to jails and hospitals, to people who might not be able to come to us.

The next obvious step is to find ways to open our doors to those who can come to us. I hear that some San Francisco churches have created a kind of covenant of "open congregation." This means that in their literature and at their services, classes, and events they make it known that they welcome people of color, gays and lesbians, and so on. Being pro-active rather than passive on questions of diversity and inclusion.

This is necessary because in America, passivity means white supremacy. It's subtle and pervasive, conditioned by and conditioning our magazines, movies, tv, our clothing, all the things we buy. It is a virus infecting my mind as a person with so-called privilieges, and the mind of someone who might not have such privileges. Last week I was invited to talk about Buddhism and race to a diverse group of teenagers doing an interfaith social action internship in San Francisco. Now maybe I did a good job talking to them, but I was the first Buddhist choice that came to mind for the organizers. There is some irony in that. Buddhism in America gets defined as and by people like me. I have to watch myself carefully not to buy into this.

But the wondeful thing about what the Buddha taught, what we can experience in zazen, is that each of us can go beyond duality. It can't be done just by reason and talk. We have to get the reality of the world deep in our bones and then bring it back out again into the world. We must make a lot of mistakes. Maybe like this talk. Suzuki Roshi said giving a talk is making a mistake on purpose. Make our mistakes, learn the lessons and go back at it. bell hooks, the African American scholar/practitioner writes about this in "Buddhist Women on the Edge":

In a culture of domination, preoccupation with victimhood and identity is inevitable. I once believed that progressive people could analyze the dualities and dissolve them through a process of dialectical critical exchange. Yet globally the resurgence of notions of ethnic purity, white supremacy, have led marginalized groups to cling to dualisms as a means of resistance....The willingness to surrender to attachment to duality is present in such thinking. It merely inverts the dualistic thinking that supports and maintains domination.
Dualities serve their own interests. What's alarming to me is to see so many Americans returning to those simplistic choices. People of all persuasions are feeling that if they don't have dualism, they don't have anything to hold on to.
If we are concerned with dissolving these apparent dualities we have to identify anchors to hold on to in the midst of fragmentation, in the midst of a loss of grounding. My anchor is love....

I like to think that love and compassion are anchors of my practice. But they depend on mindfulness too. Zazen is rooted in mindfulness, breath after breath, thought after thought. This kind of training carries over into life outside the zendo. I try to uncover my own thought patterns. This is sometimes painful and embarrassing, but it is the essence of saving myself and all sentient beings. It is amazing to see the stories one can make up about other people, and how these stories are conditioned by race, or class, or privilege. Check it out for yourself. When you meet someone you consider different from yourself, do you think you know something about them? Would you think you know the same kinds of things about another white person or someone more like you? This is mindfulness practice, watching one's thoughts about race, or any kind of difference. And it is for our own sake. Not for the sake of political correctness. I think that this is where our personal practice begins.

Then we can take it further into our extended communities. Ask your friends of color how they experience the practice and the community. This is entering the realm of not knowing, a little risky, but ultimately necessary. In the wider Buddhist community, it might mean making some excursions and visits to Asian Buddhist temples. They are friendly places. The same Dharma resides there, though it may take some different forms. We think nothing of going to restaurants featuring Asian cuisine. This is just another form of basic nourishment.

Maybe when we have closely examined ourselves, and begun to look around and share our thoughts with others, then we have created the conditions for change. If our American society could take such steps, it would be the start of a wonderful, hopeful era. Could there be racial peace for the first time in history? This is no pipe dream. It is the Bodhisattva Vow, the working of our Way Seeking Mind.

If each of us and the sanghas we cherish could nurture this process of mindfulness, the change could come much quicker. Compassion and peace could blossom in very surprising ways. And zazen would be a golden wind blowing across a meadow of wildflowers. How can we take up this work together. I welcome your thoughts.

From a talk given at Berkeley Zen Center, Berkeley, California August 23, 1997

Rev. Alan Senauke (Soto-shu)
National Coordinator
Buddhist Peace Fellowship
Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.

From: http://www.bpf.org/tsangha/senaukerace.html
Photo from: http://www.upaya.org/about/bio/alan-senauke

put the flower into your heart...

2008-12-29T23:24:00.001+07:00

Flowers help me with loving kindness meditation. I visualize putting the flower into my heart and into other people's hearts. I feel the openness of the flower, its beauty and the warmth of the sun that infuses it. I feel the interconnectedness of hearts and beings.

I thank my martial arts teacher for giving me this meditation.

2008-12-29T23:03:00.000+07:00

Jack Kornfield quotes Albert Camus, “We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes, our ravages. Our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to transform them in ourselves.”