Feminism

Dangers Of Compassion

kloncke34 Comments
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Last night, at a Berkeley fundraiser for the East Bay Meditation Center, prominent Insight meditation teacher Joseph Goldstein gave a general talk on Buddhism, and as he spoke in his gentle, warm, candid, funny, luminously clever way, I felt a familiar tightening in my stomach.

The talk started out like this.  There is tremendous suffering in the world.  It’s not hard to see.  War, oppression and destruction.  But if we look closely, we find that the root of that suffering is in the mind.  Greed, fear, and hatred.  And it’s not just “other people” who have this greed, fear, and hatred; it’s us, too.  Therefore, using Buddhist teachings, we turn our attention inward toward the mind/heart, healing suffering from the inside out.

Later, when asked whether his Buddhist practice could be formulated into a plan for social change, Goldstein said Yes: through  compassion.  Not a simplistic type of compassion, but a compassion that is born out of nearness to suffering.  This is more difficult than it sounds, he noted, because our deeply ingrained habit pattern is to try to push suffering away from ourselves.  Get rid of it.  But in order to have strong, profound compassion, we need to go toward suffering.  Without romanticizing it, but seeing it for what it is.

Now, I like Joseph Goldstein.  I saw him speak once before at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center, and he’s hilarious and wise and a gifted storyteller.  And on one level, I agree with what he said last night.

The problem, for me, was what went unsaid.

As Buddhists and dhamma practitioners, I would love to see us having more conversations about what compassion and social change actually look like: locally, on the ground, in practice.  Because it’s too easy for us to invoke these words — compassion, inner work, social change — and assume that everyone is on the same page.

The truth is, we’re not all on the same page.  And it’s not until after the event is over, on the subway ride home, when a gaggle of us start discussing in detail the relationship between inner and outer work, that these fundamental differences emerge, sharp and cold, like mountain peaks, from the soothing golden fog of Buddhist unity.

Here are a few of my disagreements with what I hear as spiritual liberalism, coming from my friends in dhamma.  Again, even as we all work toward developing compassion and reducing global suffering, we have tremendously divergent views on what this means.

1.  Mystified Mechanism. When we start doing the inner work of developing compassion and insight, our outer social justice work will automatically get good.

How?  Sometimes folks talk about spirituality helping to reduce burnout, or converting the motivation of anger into the motivation of compassion.  But while both are wonderful benefits, neither speaks to the testable effectiveness of the particular outer work itself.

2. Healing As (Total) Resistance. Smiling at strangers on the subway is resisting militarism.

Well, I disagree.  Our healing work, spiritual work, and structural resistance work ought to inform each other, but they are not interchangeable substitutes.  Mandela didn’t inspire a movement and challenge the status quo just by praying compassionately for the liberation of the oppressor. (Though he did that, too.)

3. Social Change Relativism. Together, a growing movement is working for peace and justice in the world.  From green business to prison meditation to high-school conflict resolution programs on MTV, signs of hope and change abound.

Are all forms of progressive activism equally useful?  No.  But the shorthand of social change frequently obscures this fact.  Coupled with a feel-good engagement paradigm, the ‘every little bit helps’ idea makes it very difficult to hold each other accountable for our political work and its actual outcomes.

4. Root vs. Radical. Radical political agendas fail to grasp the root cause of oppression: dualism.  And ultimately, the best ways of overcoming dualism are through meditation and small-scale, intimate, interpersonal, compassion-building exercises.

Even if dualism is the “root cause” of oppression, that doesn’t make it the best or most actionable point for resistance, always.  Besides: why is this idea of dualism so pervasive and tenacious, anyway?  In large part because of the political and material structures (i.e. schools, economies, hierarchical religious institutions) that train human beings.  Without changing the power relations governing those material structures, there’s little hope of giving non-dualistic living, and appreciation for inter-being, a real shot on a global scale.      

5. Buddhopian Visions. Gandhi said it best: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Often, this gets construed to mean: build the best alternative society you can, and slowly it will change the entire society.  Especially in Buddhist communities that prize extended retreat time, a decade of study with a realized Asian master, and this sort of removal from everyday householder affairs, there’s a danger of trying to build our sanghas into utopias, and assuming that they will automatically radiate peace and well-being into the world.  Might be true on an individual or small-group level, but why should we believe that we can scale up well-being from personal transformation to world peace, without specific strategies for tackling enormous material systems?

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Compassion lies at the core of the dhamma, one of its most beautiful and powerful dimensions.  But when we treat it as self-evident in conversations about social liberation, putting it at the end of the sentence instead of the beginning, I fear we do great injustice to its meaning.

Looking forward to finding and contributing to a radical sangha in the Bay Area whose work extends beyond the healing, service, electoral-political and identity realms.  (Where dhammic folks are already great and strong.)  Any leads?

“To the lumpen mass…” From Deluche

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Just a comment I wrote on a cross-post thread over on Advance The Struggle.  Original post at …or does it explode?

It’s worth reading the entire A/S thread, but I thought I’d copy my piece here since it speaks to my 9-month experience at the Faithful Fools.  (Damn, that long already?)  A truly wonderful, radically humanist group, rare among non-profits in terms of the depth of its sustained connection to individuals in a community.

Ever since I started living and working here, I’ve wondered what kind of political organizing might take shape in the TL.  In San Francisco lately there’s been some solid direct action around occupying empty buildings on behalf of eviction victims and homeless folks.  At the same time, most people I see here are basically just struggling to survive and heal.  Which, as I say in the comment below, deserves respect and recognition.

Thanks for posting this here — and thanks to Deluche for writing it.

I’m appreciating all the analysis from Icarus and a comrade. Much to think about.

Apart from the political-economic analysis, another current I was seeing in the original post is some attention to the lived experience of tremendous suffering that is happening in “surplus populations” within US urban ghettos, and their overlap with the working class.

Like Deluche says, without blaming or taking out anger on individuals within surplus populations, we can see the ways that being forced to live outside of a formal, legal economy — chronically unemployed, corralled, imprisoned — would (a) foster desperation and (b) support self-medicating addictions, both of which extend a chain of violence.

I don’t know enough about proper definitions of “lumpenproletariat” or surplus populations to comment on Icarus’ objection to an overly narrow focus on drug dealers and sex workers. But to speak just on my own experience living and working in the Tenderloin neighborhood of SF with a homeless community: criminalized addiction, exploitative sex work (amplified by transphobia), and stigmatized mental illness are definitely major factors dominating the scene around here.

At the same time, along with this enormous suffering and harm is the potential for astonishing healing. I haven’t even been working here that long (9 months), and already I’ve seen some incredible, long-time-coming shifts. Folks choosing to move forward in addiction recovery, dealing with depression and PTSD, making beautiful art, showing great generosity to others, and getting their feet on the ground — largely because a group of people stood by them and for years showed committed care, love, and faith in the face of an entire society that tells them they’re worthless and, yes, “parasitic.”

This kind of healing, even on an individual or small community level, is quite inspiring. Can we allow it to inform revolutionary organizing? Can we allow it to illuminate the healing work already taking place (often un-compensated and un-heralded) within the working-class itself, buttressing its power for economic and social transformation?

Seems to me that it’s easier for folks to dis those with no labor-power leverage when we take revolution of capitalism as the sole redemptive struggle in life. In truth, revolutionaries interested in building a better society for humans, animals, and the earth might benefit from learning about the inter-related struggles and healing among the ‘lumpen.’

B-Sprout Bachata

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One weekend highlight: Saturday night, when clubbing plans fell through, Ryan and I did a little online digging and came up with a one-hour, five-dollar, group bachata lesson near Lake Merritt. In a senior activity center, as we discovered on arrival. Talk about a score.

Let me just say: a lot of these elders can dance. I find it so inspiring. And many of the most optimistic, vivacious old folks I know are deeply musical people who actively dance, sing, or play instruments. So when Ryan and I learn bachata, I really feel like we’re investing in a long and happy life.

Bonus: practicing our moves while we roast a big pan of carrots, cauliflower, and b-sprouts.

Dhamma As Gender Violence Healer, Informant Repellent

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A sunset basketball game outside St. Mary's, volunteer headquarters for Common Ground Collective, Summer 2006

New Orleans, nine months post-Katrina. Within days of my wide-eyed arrival at the volunteer headquarters of Common Ground Collective, housed in an abandoned three-story school in the Upper 9th Ward, I learned that alongside all the vibrant, sun-browned enthusiasm for “solidarity, not charity,” and in addition to the haunted feeling of the classrooms — stopped clocks and wrecked bulletin boards; cots and duffel bags where desks and backpacks used to be — something was wrong.

For months, there had been a spate of sexual assaults against volunteers.

I joined a small ad hoc group of women to develop a policy for response and accountability. Didn’t really go anywhere.

For one thing, we were told (by male leaders) that “this is a war zone” and “we have more serious problems to deal with,” like Black men being rounded up or killed by state police. For another, we were advised (by male leaders) that the best way to deal with sexual assault was to tighten up security around the school. Not allow strangers on the premises. Issue makeshift ID cards to all registered volunteers. In other words, beware of random locals roaming in off the streets for a free meal, company, or a drink of water. This even though the vast majority of reported sexual assaults were white-on-white, volunteer-on-volunteer.

In a terrific article originally published in make/shift magazine, Courtney Desiree Morris cites this very same Common Ground conflict as an example not only of inadequate response to intimate violence in activist communities, but of dangerously fertile ground for informants and informant-style behavior.

Self portrait in St. Mary's

Informants are sent by the state (FBI, CIA, etc.) to infiltrate radical political groups, gather information, and stir up trouble from the inside. (Case in point, Morris writes: white activist Brandon Darby, whose exposure as an FBI informant I remember particularly well, since he had worked closely with some of my friends at Common Ground before moving on to Austin.)

And in some respects, gender oppression acts like a miner’s canary for infiltration, signaling danger to the entire group.

Because of the pre-existing social terrain, Morris observes, if infiltrators are going to disrupt, poison, and commandeer, chances are they’ll do it in ways that intentionally or unintentionally reinforce heterosexist culture. Ways that are anti-woman, anti-queer, domineering and transphobic. Even if that’s not their primary goal, it comes with the territory — thanks to the patriarchal leadership styles, both stark and subtle, pervading much of Leftist culture. Sexist, racist harm is an almost inevitable byproduct of any serious state attempt to corrode radical communities from the inside out.

Besides, even if they’re not employed by the state, when people enact gender violence in revolutionary communities they are achieving the state’s objectives all the same. As Morris puts it,

Most of those guys probably weren’t informants. Which is a pity because it means they are not getting paid a dime for all the destructive work they do. We might think of these misogynists as inadvertent agents of the state. Regardless of whether they are actually informants or not, the work that they do supports the state’s ongoing campaign of terror against social movements and the people who create them. When queer organizers are humiliated and their political struggles sidelined, that is part of an ongoing state project of violence against radicals. When women are knowingly given STIs, physically abused, dismissed in meetings, pushed aside, and forced out of radical organizing spaces while our allies defend known misogynists, organizers collude in the state’s efforts to destroy us.

So what’s the solution?

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Oscar Grant, Audre Lorde, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the question of loving our enemies.

kloncke11 Comments

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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Good Conversation

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feministe screen grab

Phew — things have been busy over at Feministe!  In a good way.  A really good way.  Folks are asking really great questions and giving awesome insights.  If you head over to read my first 2 posts (here and here), definitely don’t miss the comment sections.

I did manage to take some time out this morning for a gorgeous hike with Ryan along a reservoir waterfall in Marin.  Didn’t take many photos (Too busy climbing endlessly!  Waterfalls are so tall!  Every few seconds we were both like, Uh, how much longer?), but if any of them turned out well, I’ll share them Friday.

Again, I’ll be pretty much wrapped up with the Feministe guest blogging for the next two weeks, so material here will be short and sweet.  But there’s always the archives, if you’re feeling curious!  ;)

love,

katie

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ps: Thanks again to the regulars here who’ve come over and commented at Feministe!  Very kind of you.

Badu In T Minus Seven Hours; Feministe In T Minus A Few More

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Guess what?  This lucky bug is heading to an Erykah Badu show tonight in Oakland!  With Ryan, Cat, and a friend of Cat’s (and I’m guessing we’ll run into a whole bunch of folks at the Paramount).  And Janelle Monáe is opening.  Looking forward to some amazing artistry and musicianship, and also to some marvelous audience engagement skills. (Video description and lyrics below the fold.)

janelle monae poster
erykah tour poster

(Random Sidenote: In order to stay up past my bedtime, I may need to treat myself to a rare favorite beverage: fresh-brewed soy chai with a shot of espresso. When I was in high school, my crew’s nighttime haunt, True Love Coffeehouse, used to call this concoction a “Jostled Gandhi.”)

And guess what else?  Starting Monday, I’ll be guest-blogging for two whole weeks over at Feministe, a feminist news-media-and pop-culture group blog that I’ve been following for years now.  Even wrote part of my college thesis about them.  Exciting stuff!

feministe screen grab

Since I’ll be devoting a lot of time to composing posts for Feministe, there probably won’t be too much regular Kloncking happening here.  But I’ll cross-post everything I write, so please feel welcome — and warmly invited — to comment either here or there.

Have a wonderful weekend!  Take care, everyone.

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Friday Words From The Wise

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Stuck right with me this week, these four:

Compassion is not about kindness.  Compassion is about awareness.

~Khandro Rinpoche

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Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

~ Karl Marx

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“But say a man does know.  He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all came about.  He watches the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today.  He sees America as a crazy house.  He sees how men have to rob their brothers in order to live.  He sees children starving and women working sixty hours a week to get to eat.  He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted.  He sees war coming.  He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them.  But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie.  And although it’s as plain as the shining sun — the don’t-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can’t see it.”

~ Jake Blount, local madman, in Carson McCullers’ novel The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter

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When you plant seeds in the garden, you don’t dig them up every day to see if they have sprouted yet.

~Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron.

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That’s all for now, friends. Take care; see you next week!

Vintage Reading

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To celebrate submitting my application to Goddard last fall, I went to a batting cage.

To celebrate completing my first semester at Goddard last week, I…read some fiction.

But not just any fiction!  This gorgeous copy of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, a 1946 edition: older than my own mother.

Isn’t she handsome? And I love the candor of the text on the back cover:

Born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1917, Carson McCullers has been writing since she was sixteen. For several years before that her main interest had been in music and her ambition to be a concert pianist. When she was seventeen she went to New York with the intention of studying at Columbia and Julliard. However, on the second day she lost her tuition money on the subway. Thereafter she was hired and fired from a variety of jobs, and went to school at night. “But the city and the snow (I had never seen snow before) so overwhelmed me that I did no studying at all.” The year after that Story bought two of her short stories and she settled down to writing in earnest. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940 and Reflections in a Golden Eye in 1941. The critics were amazed that works of such maturity should have been written by a twenty-two-year-old girl. Concerning the first book, Richard Wright remarked on “the astonishing humanity that enables a white writer, for the first time in Southern fiction, to handle Negro character [sic] with as much ease and justice as those of her own race.” Of the second book Louis Untermeyer said: “no literary ancestors, although there will be those who see in the powerful situations something of D. H. Lawrence and something of Dostoievsky.”

I’m only five chapters in or so, partly because McCullers’ prose is so marvelously simple and vivid and penetrating that it makes me want to close the book and go meditate.

Speaking of which, time to sit and go to sleep!  Night y’all, see you next week.