Fruits of the Practice
Month: July 2010
Last Night
*Trigger warning: depictions of state violence, discussion of intimate abuse.*
Associated Press video and some photos of mine from last night in downtown Oakland, after Mehserle was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
New To The Blogroll
Check out two dope thinkers, writers, artists, community builders, system challengers, and dear friends of mine:
cnekez at to live (def):
and Crunch at …or does it explode?
Read, relish, engage, and benefit. And have a good Thursday, y’all.
Thanks, Ivan
Last time we saw each other, my friend Ivan and I had a looooong and energetic discussion sparked by the question, “What is capitalism, anyway?”
Few days ago he emails me this cartoon, with the subject line: “pretty sure we had this conversation once.”
Don’t know where the piece is from, but it made me smile. Thanks, friend!
Oscar Grant, Audre Lorde, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the question of loving our enemies.
Cross-posted at Feministe. As the verdict approaches, I find myself thinking more and more about the relationships between state violence and intimate violence. In what ways our focus on state violence, and mechanisms for resisting it, jive and don’t jive with methods for dealing with intimate violence. Aaron Tanaka made a wonderful comment on the original post — as always, Aaron, I’m truly grateful for your insights and questions, and their organic connection to the great work you do.
Just yesterday, only 20 minutes after a conversation about police alternatives, as my friend Noa was dropping me off at home, we found ourselves in an impromptu cop watch. Four officers were arresting three men on my block — two of whom I recognized as regulars on the corner, and one with whom I’ve tossed a football across Hyde Street traffic. When I saw the cops lining the men up against the fence, I just stepped out of Noa’s car onto the sidewalk and inserted myself. After one of the officers attempted to intimidate Noa by calling in her plate number (we’d been stopped and talking in the car inside a red parking zone), she drove around the block, parked, came back and joined me for the next half hour as we watched these three men get yelled at, cuffed, and loaded into a police van.
I’ll maybe write up a full summary tomorrow, because the effect of our intervention on the cops’ behavior was pretty interesting, as well as the conversation we struck up with two male officers. For now, here’s my Feministe piece from Sunday.
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(Tech) Independence Day
Shooting stars, camping out, mosquito-bite constellations, redwood cathedrals, waterfalls, 85 degrees, epic vistas, winding roads, meditation. Partnership.
And independence from the tyrannical rule of gadget addictions. ;)
When Blogging, Just Blog.*
[Cross-posted at Feministe.]
To say that blogging can be dhammic is not to claim that it can substitute for formal techniques of spiritual practice. Those techniques are designed to help bring us face-to-face with the hard lessons — otherwise, it becomes just another feel-good affair (or, as I once heard Mary Ann Brussat call it, “salad-bar spirituality”). Still, with any spiritual teaching, it’s easy to get too wrapped up in literalism and formalism. So we have to remember to engage creatively with the mundane — the materials already before us. Whether that’s blogging or boxing or BDSM roleplaying.
Yesterday I talked a bit about how sexism keeps us from taking journal blogging seriously. Today, 5 reasons the medium suits dhamma practice terrifically, with particular advantages as a new form of spiritual autobiography.
Kloncke 