engaged buddhism and political activism

On my way to New York yesterday for the People's climate march I fell into a very productive facebook hole that led me to an article someone had posted about Thich Nhat Hanh's perspective on climate change 


'The 86-year-old Vietnamese monk, who has hundreds of thousands of followers around the world, believes the reason most people are not responding to the threat of global warming, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, is that they are unable to save themselves from their own personal suffering, never mind worry about the plight of Mother Earth.'

The timing was perfect.  I was going to the march because I believe that we need to change the way we live on this planet, to protect our trees, our air and our water. Yet I had become a little jaded about the effect of protests and petitions against the seemingly all-powerful corporate monoliths who continue to treat the planet with a disrespect and disregard that I can't comprehend. And honestly, I had become increasingly frustrated and angry with the corporate and political structures that continued to operate in ways that harm the planet or obstruct efforts to protect it. 

This article helped me recognize that my compassion for the planet, my feeling of connection to it, was causing me to take a side in a way that was actually NOT compassionate because it fostered an 'us versus them' attitude. My compassion was very focused, to the point where it lost sight of the basic principle of compassion - that we are all connected. And if we are all connected, then we are all connected to the people who are harming the planet. 

There are many elements of Buddhist philosophy to study and meditate on but I always come back to compassion. It is a mirror and a teacher in so many ways. 
It's a struggle to feel compassion for someone who we feel is acting violently against us and those we feel connected to. 



In the past six months or so, I had begun to feel very overwhelmed by violence in the world. Violence on a global level, violence against the planet, as well as violence at home.
On a local level, two gay men were savagely beaten in Philadelphia while walking to get pizza. The people who beat them up, a group of young men and women, did so simply because they were gay. In the week after the attack, the city's citizens used social media as an outlet for their anger against this group of attackers as well as a means to help the police identify them. In the midst of facebook posts calling for these people to be locked up forever,tarred and feathered, etc., my roommate and I sat in our kitchen and talked about it. As a gay man, he had personally never experienced anything like this attack and he struggled to understand the mindset of these people who would do such a thing. Yet neither of us felt this sense of violence in response to the attackers that was peppering our facebook feeds, just a profound confusion and sadness.

With these events weighing heavily on my heart and a growing uncertainty about how my buddhist perspective could be acted upon in these situations, this reminder about compassion again comes in handy. It also reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Bob Dylan. When offered a peace prize in the 60s, his acceptance speech was met with boos and later, a request that he return the award. The reason for this was that he tried to express a sentiment that was very unpopular with the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee who had given him the award. In a poetic sorry/not sorry letter, he explained his point of view -

"yes  if there's violence in the times then
there must be violence in me
I am not a perfect mute.
I hear the thunder an I cant avoid hearin it
once this is straight between us, it's then an
only then that we can say "we" an really mean
it... an go on from there t do something about
it"
-Bob Dylan

This is the tricky thing to remember. That if there's violence in the times, there's violence in me. And only if my 'we' includes everyone, can something really change. Only if my 'we' includes everyone am I really acting from compassion. 

What makes me hopeful about the planet is that 400,000 people marched in New York yesterday and did so with an affirmative sense of connection to the earth and to those around them and to everyone on the planet who would be affected by climate change. 

What makes me hopeful about Philadelphia is that so many people of all sexual orientations spoke out in defense of those two men. Local politicians are making efforts to change the state law to categorize attacks like this as a hate crime and a rally is scheduled this week that is titled 'love over hate.' 

From a buddhist point of view, I see these events overall as being steps toward connection over disconnection. We can only do violence to something or someone that we are disconnected from. When we see the planet and others as connected to ourselves, we  act with compassion.  Their problems are our problems, their suffering our suffering. 

The struggle is to keep expanding who we include in our 'we' - Which leads me again to a piece of writing by Thich Nhat Hanh -

Call Me by My True Names
Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
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,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
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 in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs 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.
Thich Nhat Hanh

Presence

'If you love someone, the greatest gift you can give them is your presence.'
-Thich Nhat Hanh

A few months ago I heard about Marina Abramovic's retrospective at the MOMA, called 'The Artist Is Present'. For three months, she sat in a chair in the museum and wordlessly kept eye contact with anyone who sat down in the chair across from her. Many people had intense reactions to this experience, sometimes even crying. When I heard about these reactions, it seemed quite natural to me that people would respond so strongly to the profound experience of simply sitting and looking at someone who was simply sitting and looking at them.

When you think about our daily interactions, even with those who are close to us, they are usually filled with conversation, activity, individual thoughts about the past or plans for the future, not to mention the endless checking-in with social media. It is incredibly difficult to do what Abramovic did - just be present.

There is a such a strong impulse to fill the space between ourselves and others. And it can be an incredibly vulnerable experience when there is nothing to distract us.

And an incredibly powerful experience.

Metta meditation

Of all the different types of meditation practices, Metta meditation is my favorite.

"The Pali word metta is a multi-significant term meaning loving-kindness, friendliness, goodwill, benevolence, fellowship, amity, concord, inoffensiveness and non-violence. The Pali commentators define metta as the strong wish for the welfare and happiness of others (parahita-parasukha-kamana). Essentially metta is an altruistic attitude of love and friendliness as distinguished from mere amiability based on self-interest."
-Metta, the philosophy and practice of universal love


While this concept of Metta is lovely, it may seem hard to access on a daily basis when we are caught up in our daily stresses and worries. The method of Metta meditation is very simple and I've always found it incredibly effective. Even at my most selfish, ego-ridden and closed-hearted moments, when I take fifteen minutes to practice this meditation, I am always struck at how I am able to open my heart and how much more comfortable and happy I am when I do. It begins by offering Metta to ourselves, then a loved one, then a person we feel neutrally about, then someone we feel hostile toward, then all sentient beings.

The method is simple. Begin in a comfortable position and breathe calmly for a few minutes, letting the mind rest and thoughts come and go. When you feel settled, bring your awareness to your heart center.  (I imagine that I am breathing through my heart chakra, that each inhale brings energy into my heart and each exhale releases energy from my heart.)
When you are ready offer yourself metta by saying the following:
May I be happy
May I be peaceful
May I live with ease of heart

When you feel ready to move on, bring to mind someone you love and offer them metta:
May you be happy
May you be peaceful
May you live with ease of heart.

Now move on to someone you feel neutrally about and offer them metta:
May you be happy
May you be peaceful
May you live with ease of heart.

At this point in the meditation, we imagine someone that we have had some difficulty with. At first, it doesn't have to be someone who has hurt you very deeply, it can be someone you find irritating or someone with whom you've had hostile interactions or arguments with in the past. Building from the metta you have offered to yourself, a loved one, and a stranger, bring this 'difficult' person to mind and offer them metta.
May you be happy
May you be peaceful
May you live with ease of heart

Now imagine the entire world and all sentient beings. (I always find that it's incredibly easy to offer metta to the whole world after facing the hurdle of offering it to someone I find difficult :)
Offer them metta:
May all sentient beings be happy
May all sentient beings be peaceful
May all sentient beings live with ease of heart

Remain in this stage until you feel ready to end your meditation. 

When I'm finished with this meditation I always find it refreshing and it grounds me in the nature of the heart, which says 'Of course I wish all sentient beings are happy, peaceful and live with ease of heart.' It costs me absolutely nothing to wish it and yet the nature of the ego and our daily fears and stresses can make it seem like a concession to wish well for others.

the common language

I found my cafe the first week I was here. It just happened to be around the corner from the grocery store so I sat down. The waiter was really friendly and corrected my french in the best possible way - laughingly. Now that I'm a regular, I don’t even have to practice the french necessary to order the coffee. I sit down and two minutes later - a cafe creme appears on my table. Yet, I seem to understand and speak more French at this cafe than any other place in the city.
I write a little while and watch the people walk by.
The cafe is across from L’hotel de Sully and bike tours drive by and stop occasionally. The other day the tour guide said something in English to the group while pointing to the building and a man walked by and yelled ‘C’est pas vrai!’ (It’s not true!) and chuckled to himself mischievously.
One guy is my favorite. His job appears to be taking free newspapers and handing them out like they’re Christmas presents. The first time I noticed him he strode out of the cafe and shouted to a woman pushing a toddler in a stroller. ‘Salut! Ma petite copine!’ A tiny hand shot out of the stroller and he handed the little girl a paper. She clutched it like a prize on her lap and as she was pushed away, she turned to him and piped out ‘Salut!’
This morning at the cafe, I practiced my French with the waiter. Topics included the holiday (Toussaint), a particularly charming dog at the table next to mine, and our respective moods. The newspaper guy walked into the cafe and was given a rousing standing ovation. I couldn’t hear what they were applauding him for but I agreed. Well done, sir.

Absolutes and the shared reality

I arrived in Paris a few days ago and will be staying for a few months. I've written before about my experiences in France, especially in regard to language and trying to find a balanced way to share a reality.

My experience so far has been different from the one I described in my last post. This is probably partially because I have been jetlagged like crazy. I'm walking around the city and my main reaction is that it is comfortable and accessible and natural. I may get lost and not know the best route to get where I'm going, but that's not a big deal.

I'm also speaking French for the smaller exchanges - buying a coffee, baguette or groceries. In these exchanges, I try to answer questions instead of just caving and saying I don't understand. Like the day I arrived. I had slept 2 hours when I first arrived in Paris, then I woke up with a completely unwanted second wind that was entirely related to daylight and had nothing to do with my mind or body being ready to interact with the world, let alone in a different language.

But I went out anyway. Because the weather was nice and I had missed Paris since my last visit. I stopped in a coffeeshop to get a coffee and asked for an iced cafe latte, adding 'it's possible?' because ice is not common over here. The barista assured me it was possible and then asked if I wanted ______ in my latte. I don't like any extra stuff in my latte so I said no. And he looked at me, very curiously and kindly. Eventually, he appeared to make an executive decision and began making my coffee. It was very good. Only later did it occur to me that he may have been asking me what kind of milk I wanted in my latte.

The difference between this time and the last couple times I've been here, is I feel like I have time to figure things out. Time to learn. Time to figure out how and what I want to say. Time to figure out what is being said around me.

The thing that always caused me stress was when I felt like I was supposed to speak perfectly right away. I was supposed to be able to understand everything that was said to me. And this pressure that I put on myself made it so that I felt I couldn't say anything, couldn't understand anything. If I was dealing with absolutes of language, I was definitely leaning toward the lower end of the scale.

That's the problem with absolutes. If we are thinking in this way, we feel we have to identify with one absolute or another, when our reality is actually somewhere in the middle. When I recognize my capacity in speaking and understanding, I can start from there and work at getting better. If I fall into absolute thinking, I have to ascribe to 'understanding nothing' and I will just rely on what has always worked for me in the past (English) and not try to find a different way to interact.

And beyond the absolute thinking that I need to speak fluent French to be understood, there was the absolute thinking that language was the only way to be connected. I was actually thinking this way despite many experiences where I felt very connected to people who don't speak my language. Connected through feeling, humor or shared experiences.

The other night I was at a small party, the only native english speaker in a room full of French people. I laughed harder than I have in a long time. It is possible that I spoke only five or six french words all night. It is also possible that they were all curse words.

Bravery

In 2007, I was traveling in Europe and planned to meet the German Sangha in Hamburg for a week-long teaching by the Dalai Lama. I spent a week at an organic farm in Normandy and then went to Paris for a night before taking the train to Hamburg.

When I arrived in Hamburg I wandered around the city for a few hours before figuring out how to get to the school where the sangha was staying. I had researched the location a little bit before leaving the states and I had a pretty good map of Hamburg so I found it without difficulty. When I got to the school it was empty, everyone was at the public teaching. So I dropped my bags off and wandered around Hamburg some more. When I was walking back to the school, I met the Sangha on the street, walking to the subway to go to a dharma talk at a University. I joined them and talked with some of my American friends, who are monks. On the subway platform, I met my teacher and spoke to him for a little while. He asked where I had come from. This was a reasonable question, considering I am an American and I just kind of appeared on a subway platform in Hamburg. I told him about my travels and how I had gotten to Hamburg. A woman in the sangha that I had met a few times before overheard me and exclaimed "You did all this traveling by yourself!? You are so brave!"
In typical zen master fashion, my teacher smiled silently at me and I laughed. 'No, Anna, that part wasn't brave. This part here, this is me being brave.'

But I understood where she was coming from. To her it was natural to be grounded in a community, to feel comforted, safe and supported by a group. So the idea of traveling alone seemed brave to her. Yet I am the opposite so my independent traveling isn't brave, it's my nature - what comes naturally to me. What is difficult for me is to balance my natural state of autonomy within a group dynamic.

Thinking about this exchange made me look up the definition of bravery, which led to the definition of courage - "the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear"

In the above definition of courage (by way of bravery), I don't know that absence of fear is always accurate. It's natural to be afraid of a situation we see as potentially difficult. Yet when we recognize the value of going through that experience and choose to put ourselves in a potentially uncomfortable situation to experience a perceived benefit, perhaps the fear is overcome.

It strikes me that we don't always know when someone is being brave. Unless we know someone well, we can't know what situations they might interpret as potentially difficult, dangerous or painful. Like Anna, we might see them doing something that we find daring, yet sometimes it's the subtler bravery that isn't apparent. Staying with a large group of people for a week, I not only had to face my habits of autonomy and introversion, I also had to face my perception that I am powerless to navigate the emotional currents in a group dynamic. I often feel overpowered by them and tangled up. To someone like Anna, my discomfort might seem completely ridiculous and so it would never occur to her that bravery might be necessary for me to spend a lot of time with a group of people I care about.

The thing is, when I think about traveling, I don't think of it as being difficult or dangerous. Navigating a foreign city is thrilling to me because there are no emotional stakes, which are the ones I worry about the most. The worst that could happen is I get lost. And I have a lot of confidence in my ability to figure that out. When traveling alone there is no need to temper my autonomy, in fact - that autonomy is a strength!

During that week I was able to strike a balance between myself and others. There were times when I felt overwhelmed by the group or overwhelmed by being in a crowd of 20,000 people listening to the Dalai Lama. The trick I found was to be compassionate to my fear yet try not to lose sight of the benefit of facing it. To find a middle ground that was comfortable to me.

Because the teaching was in Tibetan, almost everyone was given a personal radio with different channels for each translated language. When I felt like I needed a little space, I would go out to the area around the stadium and lay on the grass, under a tree, listening to the teaching on the headset. At the lunchbreak, I often joined some of my friends in the sangha for an ice cream cone at a nearby shop. Having recognized my fear and faced it compassionately, I was able to experience the benefit of the group dynamic that I usually perceive as difficult.

And this is the benefit of bravery - to experience something new, something that answers fear with another possible reality.

Faith

When I was ten or eleven years old, while driving in his car, I had a conversation with my dad that had a big impact on my spiritual curiosity. I had been thinking a lot about death and more importantly, what happens after we die. In Catholic School we had been taught about heaven, hell and purgatory but they seemed so abstract. I asked him what he thought happened after we died. He said something along the lines of 'I don't know. Either there's a heaven and we go there or else there's nothing and that's it - that's the end.' This answer blew my mind. Not because it was something I hadn't already considered, but because he was saying it instead of just handing me the usual Catholic rhetoric that we both had been raised by. This lack of certainty was jarring at first. I said 'But isn't that scary, that we could die and just stop existing?' he said, with typical levity I attribute to his Irish ancestry, 'If we don't exist anymore, we won't be there to be bothered by that.'
(It strikes me as I remember this that some of the best conversations I've had with my dad have occurred while driving somewhere.)
After the initial shock of this statement wore off, I found his answer kind of liberating. Not in the idea that I would have have a reprieve from existential questions when I no longer existed, but that there wasn't one fixed idea I was supposed to comply with. I felt freed to question and consider other possibilities than those offered by the Catholic faith. Which was good, because it had always been my natural tendency. The summer before, I had stayed awake at night, literally giving myself vertigo trying to understand the concept of infinity.

Recently I encountered the work of a poet I was immediately struck with, Arundhati Subramanium. While searching for her books online, I discovered that she had written a book about Buddha. Intrigued, I bought it and enjoyed her approach to the Buddha's life - a mixture of myths and history, her personal experience with Buddhism and an analysis of Buddhist philosophy. Then, I hit a passage that stopped me. She mentioned faith in connection to Buddhism. (I would quote the passage, but I can't seem to find it, even after skimming the book again twice.) My mind balked.

The word faith itself made me uncomfortable. In my mind, it was associated with a kind of lobotomy, a negation of the intellect, a naive submission to some invisible authority.  And that wasn't at all how I related to Buddhism. I took a break from the book for a bit. I wanted to swim around in my idea of faith - to feel what my concept of it was before I returned to her point of view.

I had always believed that Buddhism was the spiritual path that worked for me because it didn't demand faith. I've always looked at the spiritual side of my life as being a personal thing, like my favorite color or food preferences. When I meet people who don't consider themselves spiritual, that makes sense to me in the same way it does that I don't like pasta but most people do. We're just different. Different things work for us. I don't have any faith in the color blue. I just like it. It resonates with me so I'm comfortable when I'm wearing it.

I once had a conversation with a friend of mine who is an athiest. It was a really interesting conversation in that it gave us each the space to explain our point of view, our experiences and preferences without feeling we had to convince the other. He said that to him, we're all like toasters and when we're plugged in, we function. When we're unplugged/die, we don't work anymore. We're just a toaster. Having had this conversation in a different sense at the age of ten/eleven, I found that my own perspective had changed. I said 'I don't think we're the toaster, I think we're the electricity.'

This perspective came in part from the Buddhist philosophy but more directly, from experiences I've had throughout my life, especially receiving and giving energywork like Reiki or IET. Yet I understood that his point was valid as well. That my perspective was valid to me based on my experiences and interpretation of those experiences and he, not sharing those experiences/interpreting the same way, was perfectly reasonable to assume we are toasters.

Obviously, because I teach energywork I believe in its power. And because I participated in a refuge ceremony to become a Buddhist, I believe in that spiritual path. I don't do these things lightly or with an idea that they'll prove themselves later and I'll be rewarded for my faith in them. I do them because they resonate with me and feel valid on a deep level, on a personal level.

Still a bit rattled by the pairing of the words 'faith' and 'buddhism', I did some research.

Faith (saddha/sraddha) is an important Buddha's teaching element in both the Theravada and Mahayana traditions. The Sanskrit word sraddha is translated as faith; the original word has trust, perseverance, humility and steady effort connotations. In contrast to Western notions of faith, sraddha implies thorough reasoning and accumulated experience.

That last sentence eased my mind. Further:

saddhā , ( Pāli: “faith”: ) Sanskrit Śrāddha,  in Buddhism, the initial acceptance of the Buddha’s teachings, prior to the acquisition of right understanding and right thought. Buddhism does not rely on supernatural authority or the word of the Buddha but claims rather that its teachings can all be experientially verified. The act of entering onto the Eightfold Path (the Buddhist system of spiritual progress) involves, however, a provisional acceptance, through faith, of the Buddha and his teachings that is later confirmed by direct experience. 

Ok, this I could agree with. My concept of faith was as an ending point, a place where questioning is no longer possible or tolerated. This idea of faith being necessary as a 'provisional acceptance'...sure, I can get behind that.

Returning to 'The Book of Buddha' I found several passages which illustrated this definition.

The Buddha speaks to us because he tells us what we know intuitively to be true. At the same time he does not ask you to drown your rational mind either. There is nothing anti-intellectual about the buddha's stance. (.... )he does not ask for our unswerving obedience or any extravagant act of undying faith. He does not ask for blind faith in scripture, uncritical allegiance to tradition, or self-abnegating devotion to a master. He simply never stretches the limits of our credulity.
 
...Significantly Buddha does not sideline the role of the intellect or demand blind faith from the seeker. Buddhist thought describes three graded levels of understanding that broadly seem to correspond to the distinction between information, knowledge and wisdom. The first stage is the understanding that is the result of hearing, the second is understanding through cognition and the loftiest stage is wisdom through experience.(...)a complete internalization of the idea, when metaphysics has become part of the marrow, understanding a matter of the gut.

Reading this, I felt an echo of the liberation I felt as a kid in the car with my dad. My truth is that in many ways I am straddling the line between information and knowledge, in a few places I've made forays into wisdom. As much as I might have wanted some definitive answer as a kid, I would have still questioned and felt that curiosity threatened by a pressure to have faith, to believe someone else's definitive answer. I prefer this path - a provisional acceptance from which I attempt my own direct experience.