Month: November 2010

On the Day of Mehserle’s Sentencing: A Feminist Vow

kloncke17 Comments

[Today, former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle was sentenced to 2 years in prison, with 146 days already served, for the involuntary manslaughter of Oscar Grant. The Grant case marked the first time in California’s history that a peace officer was tried for murder.]

 

Whereas

We as women, transgender people, two-spirit people, queers, gender-oppressed people, and allies of the Bay Area mourn the loss of Oscar Grant;

Whereas we recognize that this young man was just one of countless victims of police violence;

Whereas we understand and experience police repression, particularly in poor, queer, and working-class communities of color;

Whereas we know that police violence both enables and enacts rape, brutalization, and degradation;

Whereas police violence compounds the dangers we face in domestic violence, sex trafficking, and homophobic and transphobic hate crimes;

Whereas police enforce the criminalization of our disabilities, addictions, and mental illnesses;

Whereas police enforce the criminalization of our skin color, sexualities, style of dress and speech, gender identities, religious practices, and nations of origin;

Whereas police violently enforce our subservience to an economy that enriches elites, while slaughtering, starving, sickening, and stealing from us as workers, child-rearers, and culture creators;

Whereas the rich and influential deploy police to violently crush our efforts toward self-determination, from queer social spaces to workplace strikes;

Whereas the rich and influential deploy police to kill or capture our leaders and heroes, like the recently deceased political prisoner Marilyn Buck;

Whereas police are employed to do as they are ordered;

Whereas police violence comes 10% from individual bigotry and improper training, and 90% from a capitalist state system designed to protect property, not people;

Whereas such a property-focused police system, controlled by the rich and influential, enacts and supports gender-based and sexual violence;

And Whereas such a system can never be adequately reformed, based as it is in the fundamental inequality borne of a patriarchal capitalist system:

We maintain compassion for individual police officers who both experience and inflict suffering; who face and enforce mortal danger.

We vow, in the effort to end sexist violence throughout the world, to eradicate the police system of the United States as we know it; and to transcend the misogynist capitalist system that demands this type of policing.

We undertake this mission with no hatred in our hearts toward individual police officers or those who support the police system.

We accept this responsibility out of love for all people, and the unquenchable desire for universal freedom and equality.

In the service of this calling, we will sing, strike, fuck, fight, rest, write, rebel, and rebuild until we achieve liberation for all beings.

My Top 5 Dhamma Books

kloncke9 Comments

For a long time now, I’ve avoided giving book recommendations on dhamma.  “Avoided” is too weak a word, really.  There’s been some sort of block.  It’s like I’ve been mentally and physically incapable of suggesting reading.

Part of this has to do with an awful experience I had with intellectualized Buddhism.  When I got to Harvard as an eager, wide-eyed freshman, the very first elective class I took was a seminar on Indo-Tibetan Buddhism.

Dry, dry, dry, dry, dry.

I never read another word on dhamma for the next four years.

On the flip side of things, as a bibliophile and generally thinking-trapped individual, I’m acutely aware of how easily one can become fascinated and hypnotized by Buddhist philosophy, without ever really putting any of it into practice.  So it sometimes feels false or misleading to recommend books, rather than just accompany someone in learning basic dhammic meditation training.

Bodhidharma, credited with bringing Zen Buddhism from Northern India to China. Dude is said to have cut his own eyelids off to stop himself from falling asleep while meditating.

But the truth is, even when people who are trained and do practice ask me for books, I’ve been slow and reluctant.  So today is an effort to shift that.

A couple words about this short list.  One, as you may notice, there is a lot of Mahayana, even though I’m down with the Hinayana.  What can I say?  When it comes to reading, I like what I like.  Two, there are no suttas or canonic/original texts.  Looking forward to diving into those in 2011.  Three, the significance of these books in my life has had less to do with intellectual edification, and more to do with flat-out inspiring me to practice.  There are many more fascinating Buddhist works, scholarship, biographies, etc. that have helped and educated me, but these are more along the lines of altering my worldview and day-to-day spiritual engagement.

So here we go: my top 5 dharma books, in chronological order of when I read them.

0.  Entering the Stream: An Introduction to the Buddha and His Teachings

Edited by Samuel Bercholz and Sherab Chödzin Kohn

A wonderful and diverse collection of essays and excerpts that got me psyched on both reading and sitting practice.

Includes work by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (“Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” – classic), Bhikku Bodhi (with whom I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge last week; amazing), and other greats.

 

 

Continue reading →

Oh, Blogging, Today You Are Difficult

kloncke6 Comments

And all I want to do is read and eat pesto soba noodles.

So I will quote extensively from Pema Chödrön (recent celebrated guest teacher in San Francisco) in one of her famous books, When Things Fall Apart.

These piece in particular helped me considerably during the street retreat last week.

It’s as if you just looked at yourself in the mirror, and you saw a gorilla.  The mirror’s there; it’s showing you, and what you see looks bad.  You try to angle the mirror so you will look a little better, but no matter what you do, you still look like a gorilla.  That’s being nailed by life, the place where you have no choice except to embrace what’s happening or push it away.

Most of us do not take these situations as teachings.  We automatically hate them.  We run like crazy.  We use all kinds of ways to escape—all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and just can’t stand it.  We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.  In fact, the rampant materialism that we see in the world stems from this moment.  There are so many ways that have been dreamt up to entertain us away from the moment, soften its hard edge, deaden it so we don’t have to feel the full impact of the pain that arises when we cannot manipulate the situation to make us come out looking fine. [13]

So many times, even in one single day, the situation is not the way I would like it to be.  I do not act or appear the way I would like to.  How do I respond in those moments?

I remain amazed at how much the pillars of (a) everyday metta practice and (b) sitting meditation help me to greet these gorillas, these frustrations and disappointments, with patience, curiosity, and more friendliness.  Not to excuse them, or take them out on other people, but just to hang out with them for a while.

Feelings of fraudulence.

Inconvenient sexual tension.

Restlessness.

Irritation.

Wanting political struggle in the Bay Area to be something other than it is.

Fearing being wrong more than I fear causing harm.

Realizing this.

Quite the gorilla.