Some of you have probably heard of Ani Tenzin Palmo — a Britisher who left home at age 20 to spend the next quarter-century practicing Tibetan Buddhism as a nun in India. Twelve of those years she spent living in a cave, with walls and a door built onto it, in the valley of Lahoul in northern India. Kind of her bad-ass claim to faim — though the way she tells it, she just wanted some real solitude and was tremendously happy there: plus the cave was actually warmer than the traditional mud-wall houses everyone else lived in.
Anyhow, this paragraph from one of her books, Reflections On A Mountain Lake, caught my eye:
Many people ask how to get rid of anger, because it is an uncomfortable feeling. We don’t like feeling angry. We don’t like feeling hatred. But nobody has ever asked me, “How can I deal with my desire and my greed?” Yet greed and desire, along with ignorance, keep us trapped in samsara. But greed and desire are not really regarded as negative emotions in the West. After all, what would our consumer society be if we didn’t have desire? On the whole, desire is regarded as a positive thing, especially if you can satisfy it. Desire is seen as a motivating force. It propels people to go out and buy more and more and more, and that keeps the economy churning. This is the idea behind all this.
Imagine living in an economy based on contentment, compassion, and generosity, rather than desire.
This song — and this particular performance — has stuck in my mind for over a year now. The lyrics actually evoke, for me, a delicious physical feeling of awareness, attention, and anticipation. “People get ready/ There’s a train a-comin’.”
$600 for tuition, breakfast, and lunch. Dinner and lodging not included. (Not to mention the cost for me to travel to Massachusetts.)
Six hundred dollars? Probably closer to a thousand, all told? Now where’s the social engagement in that?
Of course, this is not a dilemma unique to the Zen Peacemakers. As nathan and I have been discussing lately, it’s a huge challenge to make a sangha’s economy reflect its philosophies. And when I called the ZPs to inquire about a sliding scale or some other option, it was clear that they were at least considering the contradiction between the symposium’s mission and its prohibitive costs. Within a couple of months, they had designed and posted a volunteer application, which would cover the cost of tuition — though still leaving the problem of travel and lodging. My new friend Ari, ZP assistant to Bernie Glassman, says they’re also pursuing possibilities for free places to stay: either camping on the property or staying with local sangha members. If you’re interested in attending, hit up the volunteer app! (Unless, of course, you can afford to pay — in which case you’d be helping make things more affordable for the rest of us.)
It’s important to keep in mind, I think, that the point of keeping entry costs low isn’t only a matter of accessibility. Of course, we want to make teachings and community-building events available to poor and working-class folks. But for a group explicitly interested in social justice or “social engagement,” there is also the problem of reproducing oppressive, class-based structures. Inclusion is not enough: we need transformation.
For example: what does it mean when social justice -oriented sanghas establish endowment funds, which invest donors’ contributions into the financial market, strengthening the capitalist structures that exploit and crush workers?
We don’t need to rely on this model. Check out this definition of a “dana economy” from the rad-sounding Eco-Dharma Center:
All our events are offered in the spirit of dana, a Sanskrit/pali term meaning giving and gift. The ethical practice of generosity expresses the transcendence of separate selfhood and constitutes a basic ethos at the heart of creative community. The economic forms of consumerism and capitalism highly condition our relationships in the world – encouraging us to experience ourselves as discrete subjective entities, producers or consumers, insulated from responsive engagement with others. Rather than emulate this, it is our intention to support economic relationships which contribute towards a culture of sharing.
We do not intend to enter into relationship with you as the providers of a service for a consumer. We intend to enter into a wholehearted human relationship with you, as co-producers and collaborators in the transformation of ourselves and our world. To support this intention we ask for contributions to make this work possible, rather than offering our work as a service to be bought. The basic principle of the Dana Economy is, “give what you can, take what you need”.
The suggested donations in our programme reflect the very basic income required to make the events viable. We do not have any independent means of financing the events and we do need that those attending offer financial support to make the events financially viable. If you can offer more, please do. If the incoming donations for an event are insufficient we will be unable to give them freely. So, please look at the suggested contributions and enter into the spirit of this approach by giving what you can. We are also willing to discuss donations in the form of skill sharing and offers of work to support the project.
I know we need to be realistic, and as Ari reminded me, most sanghas do not dedicate themselves exclusively to offering retreats, a la Goenkaji’s Vipassana centers, so that’s not a viable model for everyone. And I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to guilt-trip anybody. Rather, I’m eager to talk more, and more openly, about the real costs of maintaining sanghas, and how we can reproduce and sustain radical dana economies: economies of insight and generosity. I’d love to hear y’all’s thoughts.
In addition to volunteering in order to earn my way at the Symposium, I’m hoping to host a workshop on using the Internet as a tool of dharma. So wish me luck! Seems like it’s a popularsubject these days, and I’m psyched to hear how others are theorizing it.
Meanwhile, here’s a bit of info on the ZP’s newsletter — for which they often solicit contributions. I checked out the issue on prison meditation this month, and there were a number of really solid articles. (Also made me that much more eager to see Dhamma Brothers: a documentary on the introduction of a Goenka-style 10-day silent Vipassana course into an Alabama prison.)
Take care, y’all!
— — — — —
Zen Master Bernie Glassman and the Zen Peacemakers invite you to enjoy
The Zen Peacemakers founder, Bernie Glassman has created the a clearinghouse on Socially Engaged Buddhism in the West. We are pleased to invite you to receive our FREE monthly online publication.
You will learn about:
· Who?: Profiles, links and articles on the individuals and groups practicing service and working for social justice as Buddhist practice
· What?: Emerging service projects and social actions, including opportunities to train and get involved
· Why?: The history, ethical bases and philosophies that inspire the global movement of Buddhist communities towards social engagement
It’s been a lovely Wednesday. Bánh mì sandwiches and reading in Golden Gate Park with Ryan; trees and sun and tea and vegan coffee-whiskey-fudge gelato. Plus, I finished Jan Willis’ memoir, Dreaming Me (wisely re-subtitled, I think, in a later version: Black, Baptist And Buddhist — One Woman’s Spiritual Journey).
It’s well past my grandmotherly bedtime and I’m too tired to get into the autobio too much, but I will say it spoke to me, and I enjoyed it. Raised in the 1950’s in a Klan-rife Alabama town, Willis attended Cornell as one of the first waves of black Ivy League students. (She and my dad, apparently, likely rubbed shoulders during the Straight Takeover — in which an armed Black Students Association occupied the student union in the spring of ’69, protesting a local cross burning and demanding an Africana Studies department.) After graduating, she faced a soul-rattling decision between joining the Black Panther Party (the obligation, she believed, of “any thinking black person” in the U.S. at the time) or traveling to Nepal to study Buddhism. Gotta love choices like that.
One of my favorite passages:
Of course, the next day things would return to normal and I’d find myself again in a divided camp, with whites on one side and blacks on the other. This spiritual connection with all things did not erase the racism of the everyday world I inhabited.
Yup. And:
Talking with the Dalai Lama brought this truth home again. Buddhism was a process; one did not need to delude oneself or pretend to be other than oneself, and one did not have to become completely passive in order to embrace the notion of peace. Choosing peace did not mean rolling over and becoming a doormat. Pacifism did not mean passivism. Still, patience and clarity were essential.
And finally:
[Baptists] knew that misery and joy can stand side by side. Indeed, it is this very knowledge that black people call “the blues.”
…
The teachings, at least as interpreted by these African-Americans, were about overcoming suffering, about patience, strength, and the cultivation of true love. And they were delivered with compassion.
Having used the literary concept of “magical realism” on a few occasions to describe my experience at Goddard, I’ve lately begun exploring an idea of “spiritual realism.” It’s a phrase that speaks to many of my experiences in the last two years, and to my spiritual philosophy in general. I’m interested in the spirituality of everyday life, in the most mundane places — ugly, resplendent, boring, and everything in between. I’m especially drawn to spiritual practices that address the suffering inherent in social oppression. That’s why I practice Vipassana meditation at donation-based centers; that’s why I sit with a sangha led by and for people of color and queer folks (also on a donation basis); that’s why I live and work with the Faithful Fools, a street ministry in the Tenderloin of San Francisco.
Spiritual realism is the antidote, the flip-side, to the “spiritual materialism” against which Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche warns us.
I’ve got a lot of thoughts on it, but for now I want to share one of its proximate inspirations, left as a gift on my Facebook wall. Too good not to pass along: especially, I think, for those of us working for justice in some way. The goals can seem so urgent that it’s easy to overlook the larger realities — the importance of process. Thanks for the reminder, bk!
Yesterday, during a haven’t-seen-you-in-a-year reunion adventure (involving a puppy, a car, a gorgeous hike, and a gas station clusterfuck), my friend Ivan called me out as only he can.
I was recounting my experience outing myself as “a blogger” at Goddard. That’s where you made your mistake, he said. You’re not a blogger; you’re a writer who happens to self-publish online.
Our friendly ensuing debate and the questions it raised have stuck with me. Are there significant structural factors that differentiate bloggers from journalists, essayists, or memoirists? Why do I call myself a mindful blogger? And, conversely, why don’t I call myself a writer? Why is it that, in the past six years, I’ve never really pursued publishing my own writing in any forms other than blogs? What is that about? Preference for a certain form? Fear of rejection from more traditional, established publications? Too lazy to write a column? Or too enthusiastic to stop making posts and helping to shape online spaces?
There’s too much to sort through in one post, so I think this will become a theme of inquiry for the week. Maybe longer. One clue to the question of what distinguishes blogs as a literary medium came to me, a few days ago, through an unexpected messenger: a Buddhist quarterly magazine called Tricycle.
Zenshin Michael Haederle’s article “Dharma Wars” (illustrated with the delightful collage above) takes stock of the rocky dramas unfolding online in many American, mostly-convert Buddhist communities.
Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one,
Have ofttimes no connection. Knowledge dwells
In heads replete with thoughts of other men;
Wisdom, in minds attentive to their own.
Knowledge, a rude, unprofitable mass,
The mere materials with which wisdom builds,
Till smoothed, and squared, and fitted to its place,
Does but encumber whom it seems to enrich.
Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much;
Wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
Well, friends, it’s been a tremendously emotional 24 hours for me. This art school business really makes you take a look at some hard stuff. Reaches in and digs it right out of you. And last night and today, particularly, I’ve been encountering the legacy of Black American slavery again and again and again. Blues. Lynching. Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl — Written By Herself (1861).
There are so many ways to understand this multifaceted history, and new facts and visions keep emerging all the time. Besides which, as one faculty member, Gale Jackson, reminded us tonight, we continue to live the history through trope in so many respects, acknowledged and unacknowledged.
So for tonight, for my part, all I want to do is honor the Black bodhisattvas of that legacy. A bodhisattva, in certain Buddhist traditions, is one who has reached the cusp of enlightenment, but delays their own liberation in order to remain in the human realm and guide other people on the path. Harriet Tubman, Harriet Jacobs, and even Billie Holiday, to me, exemplify this courage and selflessness, putting themselves at risk for the sake of others.
To all those who reach the brink of freedom, turn right around and plunge back in to help the next person.
There’s a famous haiku by Matsuo Basho that I’ve seen quoted a few times recently.
The old pond.
A frog jumps in:
Plop!
The point of the poem, as Joseph Goldstein explains in The Experience Of Insight, is to illustrate the quality of mind called “bare attention,” which he describes as “the basis and foundation of spiritual discovery”:
Bare attention means observing things as they are, without choosing, without comparing, without evaluating, without laying our projections and expectations on to what is happening; cultivating instead a choiceless and non-interfering awareness . . . No dramatic description of the sunset and the peaceful evening sky over the pond and how beautiful it was. Just a crystal clear perception of what it was that happened . . . Bare attention: learning to see and observe, with simplicity and directness. Nothing extraneous. It is a powerfully penetrating quality of mind.
But even though insight is a practice in choicelessness, it still helps us to make better choices as needs arise. Kind of like training on a treadmill, going nowhere, in order to run longer distances outdoors.
The power of insight developed through meditation helps us to take action that is informed and intelligent, yet not overthought. It strengthens the basic clarity of perception that gives rise to truly creative processes. So when the need of the moment reveals itself, we see it for what it is, rather than immediately forcing it into our own familiar frameworks, categories, and concepts.
Not a bad faculty for allies in political struggle.
Insight, or bare attention, proves useful in many respects when we’re dealing with reality. (Different from memory, fantasy, imagination, theory, projection, etc.) One of its handy effects is paring down superfluous names, theorizations, and concepts for actually existing phenomena.
A recent post over on Advance The Struggle illustrates this well. (Read the whole thing — it’s worth it, I promise.)
Today I showed Karen* how to cook kale. Nothing fancy. She’d seen me whip up a pan of it to throw into a bowl of leftover minestrone soup for lunch. She watched me eat my strange mash-up and said, “Katie, you think if I ate healthy stuff like you that I might feel better and be more calm?”
It’s been a tough couple of weeks for Karen. After dropping out of her rehab program, she found herself back on the streets, cold, with nowhere to go. Having lost her husband to cancer this summer, she struggles to confront the agonies of grief, on top of mental illness, without turning to her crack or heroin habits for escape.
Karen’s full story is not mine to tell, and I won’t attempt it. But since it’s my door she shows up at when she’s hit bottom (because it is also the door of the street ministry where I live and work — with only one other staff person this month, while the rest are in Nicaragua), lately her life has intersected with mine in deep, complex, ways. So complex that in this, my third attempt to write about it, I still don’t really know what to say.
But I can start here, with a bowl of kale, and what it meant to me today. When Karen asked me to show her how to fix it, the request was partly a gesture of peace. In her misery, terror and desperation lately, she hasn’t always been kind to me, you know? Which is natural, and even helpful, in a way. Observing my own responses to the slights and blowups is some of the best meditative practice I can think of. Not easy. Very helpful. Especially learning when to check my own neurotic impulses to ‘offer wise advice,’ realizing instead that I’m just not the one she can hear it from at that moment. Someone else might be, but I’m not, and that’s okay. A practice like that allows me to (a) examine and (b) alleviate the pressure I put on myself to “help” or “perform” in particularly visible ways. Without that pressure, I am free to notice the “spaciousness” of the situation, as Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche would say. Which means more calm and more intelligence — unforced, fluid.
And, as today reminded me, I’m not the only one who benefits from this fluid intelligence. I’m beginning to get wise to a major role I can play here at the Faithful Fools (again, a street ministry): what I’ve dubbed a “stabilizer.” Someone who can absorb some of the trauma, tension, and stress without adding too much of their own into the mix. Remain sensitive but unruffled. Just be there. Listen. I suppose that some people might be loud, active stabilizers (not sure if, in practice, this is an oxymoron), but my style is definitely quiet. Unassuming. Just doing my own thing, participating earnestly without getting drawn into all the tangles. I do it for myself, certainly, as a well-being measure. And it might just be catching on, too. Slowly.
That’s another dimension of the cooking demo request: Karen sees something in me that she likes and wants for herself. I’m content, she says. I take care of myself. I feed myself good, healthy, scrumptious food. And while her interest is sweet and even flattering in a way, the best part is that it shows she values herself. She wants to take care of herself, to really learn how to do it. (Which is a long way from some of the extreme, ominous, grasping things she’s said in the last week.)
At the same time, I’m not trumpeting a triumph here. Frankly, a third reason Karen asked me to show her how to make kale is that she’s still so strung out that she needs to keep herself occupied, moving, at all times. Diversionary cooking may be healthy, but it’s still diversionary. Until she can learn to consistently turn to life-affirming supports during the hard times, Karen may stay stuck in her cycle of addiction, disillusioned over and over again. Plus, on my end of things, I’m still open to (at times, haunted by) the possibility that all this “stabilizer” talk is just so much self-justification, with no lasting beneficial effects. A false sense of progress. Perhaps.
But for now, a few things I can say.
No one at the Fools has given up on Karen or canceled her friendship, and no one will.
I am now able to face these crises with a greater sense of bounty, borne of the work of 2009 and meant to be shared.
Kloncke 