It’s cold here in Oakland. I am a hot-weather person. But it’s all good: I’m snuggled up under some blankets, and feeling especially cozy and glad because I get to share two lovely new blogspaces with you!
The first one a lot of folks are already excited about. It’s a blog for the Clear View Project, an engaged Buddhism org led by the totally rad Hozan Alan Senauke, vice-abbot at the Berkeley Zen Center. (Which, incidentally, is just a ways down from my new apartment. hey, neighbor.)
Just barely out the gate, Alan’s blog is already shining. Current events (national and international); incredible music (DAMN!); and personal/political reporting on the ongoing hearing of author, Buddhist, and death row prisoner Jarvis Masters — with whom Alan has cultivated a friendship for nearly 14 years. At Alan’s invitation on the blog, I joined supporters for part of the first day of Jarvis’ hearings in Marin. As someone who particularly appreciates blogs that bridge the online/offline divide, I’m so grateful that the CVP’s very first post was an offering for prison-support action. Dope, dope, dope. And the icing on the cake: Alan’s a superb writer. Clear View Blog: check it out, if you haven’t already.
And the second new blog, like most of the sites on my blogroll, is by a longtime friend and fellow young status-quo-questioner (who chooses to remain anonymous). The first few postings on handful of earth are personal and insightful, with the kind of sweet storytelling that, when you’re finished reading, makes you want to go on with your day a little differently; a little better. I especially love this dharma-infused reflection on a daily commute ritual with a stranger, commenting on the connection between generosity and joy.
There it is — two brand-new cybergems. Here’s to sharing freely online, while we still have the chance.
Via cnekez, keeper of the beautiful blogspace to live (def):.
Interviewer: Isn’t love a union between two people? Or does Eartha fall in love with herself?
Eartha Kitt: [Smiles] I think, if you want to think about it in terms of analyzing … Yes. I fall in love with myself … and I want someone to share it with me. I want someone to share me with me.
Seems to me that Eartha Kitt (a singer, dancer, and actress) is talking about falling in love with the whole world. Even with the interviewer — asking those leading, loaded questions.
She cuts right through his seeming innocence (or cluelessness?), mocking the true misogynistic subtext: that a woman is incomplete without a man (hello, heterosexism), and that in order to make love ‘work’, women have to ‘compromise.’ (And in this sexist, racist society, we know what that means, y’all.)
To me, this scene is a profound display of pitch-perfect compassion. As Khandro Rinpoche says, “Compassion is not about kindness. Compassion is about awareness.” She is on some next-level shit here. And she is sharing it.
What does it mean to fall in love with oneself (“for the right reason; for the right purpose”)?
Started reading a book yesterday, borrowed from my friend Anastasia, called Detroit: I Do Mind Dying — A Study In Urban Revolution.Remembering that this year’s U.S. Social Forum (with its defensive hodgepodge of Lefty traditions) was hosted in Motor City, I’m especially interested in learning about the particularly radical, revolutionary history of the place.
Just began, so don’t have much to comment on yet, but the history of one legal case struck me something serious.
It’s a retelling — an entire prologue — of the amazing case of James Johnson: a Black auto plant worker who, in the summer of 1970, after being suspended for refusing to cooperate in a work speed-up, shot and killed a Black foreman, a white foreman, and a white job setter on the factory floor.
Remarkably, “the jury found James Johnson not responsible for his actions.”
Hey friends! Thank you for the rich discussion in the last post, on communicating with our elders. I’m always so humbled and grateful for the open, honest reflections that people share in this space. And that’s part of why this weekly practice of blogging continues.
Speaking of practices, I’m on a mission to cultivate more traditions and rituals in my life. Little anchors and measuring sticks for relating to change, and the passage of time, in a slightly different way. (Note: I love the weekly butcher-shop ritual described in this gorgeous essay by a dynamic/post-/questioning vegan; link via Napaquetzalli and Ernesto.)
One ritual that I’ve been recalling lately dates back to 2008/early 2009, when I lived in Central Square, back in Cambridge. My friend Jen turned me on to this weekly program on an independent radio station. “The Secret Spot.” Old-school and R&B jams: from Erykah Badu to Teddy Pendergrass, D’Angelo, Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Lauryn Hill, Al Green. I LOVED The Secret Spot. And on Saturday nights, I would light some candles in the living room, turn down the lights, cozy up with a blanket in my favorite armchair, and listen. Sing along, too, if the apartment was empty (which it often was — this being Saturday night, when my fellow twentysomething housemates were typically engaged in more age-appropriate activities).
Of the four commonly-cited inescapable sufferings (birth, old age, sickness, and death — sidenote: why puberty-slash-adolescence didn’t make the list, I don’t know), lately I’ve been getting acquainted with the latter three. Dad has veered sharply and suddenly toward death in the past four months. (Thankfully, after this most recent spinal surgery a week ago, he’s recovering well.) And during our time in Nicaragua, I saw more closely than ever the way that my boss, teacher, friend, and a co-founder of the Faithful Fools, Kay Jorgenson, is living with her advanced and intensifying Parkinson’s.
It’s common knowledge that us kids these days in the States are generally lousy at caring for, and living with, those who are aging, whose faculties are deteriorating, and who are nearing their death. As products of a youth-worshiping and death-denying environment, we perpetuate and acquiesce to behavioral and institutional forms of elder isolation, shaming, and neglect — from expressing disgust toward the sexuality of the old (particularly women), to casually off-loading Grandma into the iconic nursing home, eager to get on with business.
So how can we, as young feminists and/or students of dhamma, create and reclaim healthier practices for relating to elders? It’s too big a question to cover right here, but I wanted to approach one small slice of the issue: communication around diminishing abilities, and growing needs for assistance.
A common example is driving. We think Opa shouldn’t be getting behind the wheel anymore. He feels otherwise. How do we navigate this?
Hola cariñ@s! Last night we of the Faithful Fools (my work/home community center in SF) returned from the annual 2-week trip to our sister group in Nicaragua. Thus ends the Kloncke 2-year anniversary retrospective series, which I hope wasn’t too boring and redundant!
From the moment we hit the landing runway at 5pm, seems like I haven’t stopped to rest. (Evidenced in part by the fact that I’m still wearing the same clothes I was wearing last night). Doesn’t feel too hectic or neurotic, just a fast-moving stream of strange, luminous moments.
Seeing a show at a bar last night, the lead singer of which was my partner’s ex-girlfriend from high school (I think that among the attendees of this little concert, we had something like a hexagon of exes going on…).
Practicing Thich Nhat Hanh’s guides for loving conflict resolution via 2am text message.
Due to a BART subway delay, running late to a Fools zen sitting for which it was especially important to be punctual (and reflecting on cultural and mental meanings around lateness).
Assembling an outfit from my closet for a friend who lives on the streets and got kicked out of a showering facility literally mid-stream. At that very moment she happened to run into another friend of the Fools, who called me and brought over the naked girl, wrapped in a sheet, her wet hair still warm as she sat down in our living room.
I could go on. But it’s getting late, and I’m beyond exhausted. So in a bit of a non sequitur, I’ll leave you with a shard of a poem that blew me away recently, and has stayed with me over the past two weeks. It was the second line, in particular, that made something inside me sit bolt upright. Wonder what you think.
Those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness,
Like they who lick the honey from a razor’s edge.
At different times in my life, I’ve been inclined to sit up straight, and I’ve been inclined to slouch. Maybe the same is true for you.
Unsurprisingly, at the times when my default is to sit up straight, I’m usually active in dance, yoga, or some sort of regular exercise that both strengthens my back and brings awareness to my bodily experience. This is kind of the mechanical explanation for posture: practice makes perfect. Just do it.
But recently a book helped me to re-member another, subtler aspect of sitting up.
It takes some courage.
Really. When I’m sitting erect and alert, I feel more permeable. I am not hiding. My body feels sturdy, in a way, but also fragile and exposed.
I think it’s possible to experience this fragility, openness, and permeable vulnerability even with a crooked spine. But for me, the straight spine is quite an effective jump-starter. It’s something I can control* that has a noticeable, positive (though sometimes challenging) effect on my mental state.
The act of sitting up automatically invites non-cognizing awareness. I’m not thinking, Okay, now shift the right hip 3 centimeters forward, raise the upper back 30 degrees… The awareness encourages the movement, and the movement encourages awareness.
This kind of awareness, or mindfulness, can feel pleasant, but it also contains a dark undertone. It is frightening to open awareness to painful sensations. Painful realities. Especially when I can’t control them with my thinking. I can’t think my way out of a sensory experience: an unpleasant smell, a twinge, a wave of nausea. And at the same time, burying them under mental chatter, while it may provide some temporary respite, does not make the unpleasantness disappear.
Why does this matter?
Maybe it doesn’t. But for me, returning to a straight back is like a small homecoming. In fact, regardless of whether I’m sitting straight or not, simply noticing where I’m at with my posture brings a different, brighter quality to my experience.
This is all dhamma stuff, in a way, and at the same time it’s non-sectarian, and not self-improvement. Straighten up, or don’t.
Here’s part of the chapter on Sitting from the abovementioned book, Sensory Awareness: The Rediscovery of Experiencing, which I checked out of the library on the urging of my friend David, a regular at Interfaith Bible Study at the Faithful Fools.
Now let us try coming to actual sitting. We leave the back of the chair for good, sensing the readjustments throughout our structure as the support is given up, feeling how we come more and more into the vertical, simultaneously reaching down to the seat of the chair and rising up from it.
If we are now really to relate to what we sit on, we must become much more awake than usual in the region of us directly in contact. Let us rise a little from the seat, pause, and gently find our way back without using hands or eyes. Can we find it? Ah! There is a definite meeting. Our nerves are as good down there as anywhere.
The question comes up: are we just padding down there where our sitting originates, as we may have always imagined? By no means! We begin to feel a definite structure, possibly as firm as the chair itself. To explore it let us raise one buttock and slip a hand underneath. Somewhat gingerly, we sit now on our own hand. Something in our bottom is not just firm but hard. Can we raise the other buttock, to sit on both hands at once? Ouch! We had not dreamed there would be such hardness. With relief, we divide our weight between our two hands, so as not to crush either. What is so hard in there? Even our heels do not seem so hard.
Cautiously, buttock by buttock, we leave our hands and return to the unprotesting seat. It becomes clear that, whatever the singular nomenclature for our bottom, sitting is actually divided between two sitting-bones. We can allow an equal or unequal distribution of weight, for more or less pressure on the seat, and of course on our own tissues. We can also “walk” with these sitting-bones. With a little experimentation, we find we can walk here and there on the seat until we are quite familiar with it, perhaps discovering a very agreeable perceptiveness in our own pelvis. Finally we may perch ourselves on the very edge of the chair, where our thighs no longer rest on anything, but bridge out into space. By this time our whole pelvis may be wide awake. [83-84]
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*Even as I typed that sentence, my back slowly unfurled and straightened up in front of the computer! Ha! Now, we can’t always control our posture, or make our spine erect. I’ve been reminded of this over the last couple of months, watching my dad recover from a terrible spinal infection that initially made sitting up on his own impossible. Slowly, with agonizing pain, tremendous patience, and a lot of assistance, he regained the ability to sit up, to hermit-crab around the rehab center in a wheelchair, to stand, and now to walk, with a walker. What a gift, to be able to sit up straighter and straighter with less and less pain.
Saturday I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge to spend the day (and overnight) at San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm with my friends Michaela and Sarah. Michaela, a newly ordained priest, has lived on the farm for the last 5 years, and since ordination in September, will undergo 4 more years of training before becoming … a more official priest! Or something. I’m not quite sure how the Zen works. And Sarah, who has taken her lay vows, is not only the executive director of Buddhist Peace Fellowship, but also a true SFZC baby, raised by Zen teacher parents among its three campuses: Green Gulch, Tassajara, and City Center.
Anyhow, the two of them go way back, and it was a delight to spend a while walking, joking, thinking out loud, and generally hangin out with these amazing, brilliant, passionate dharma sisters. And the setting, while old-hat to them in some ways, for me was … well. Green Gulch — a functioning subsistence-plus-sales farm, as well as a practice center, located in one of the wealthiest counties in the US — has its issues, is evolving, is imperfect. And has its gorgeousness, my, my.
Protesters are arrested in Oakland. Note the giant gun in the officer’s hand on the left. Image from The Hindu.
Paramis, or Paramitas, also called the Ten Perfections, are qualities that dhammic practitioners try to cultivate on the path to enlightenment.
I found myself thinking about the Paramis throughout a long Friday night and Saturday, when I was arrested, along with 152 others, for “unlawful assembly”: marching in the streets of Oakland to protest police violence and impunity. I was held in custody for about 20 hours; some people still haven’t been released. (Please consider donating to legal aid for protester defense.)
A concrete detention cell might seem like a strange setting for reflecting on the attributes leading to Buddhahood. A far cry from the bucolic campuses of well-funded meditation centers. On the other hand, many people have famously developed their spiritual practice while incarcerated, or even while being tortured. I’m not saying that every setting is equally optimal for developing every part of dhammic practice. But once you’ve learned some of the basics in a more controlled, safe environment, it’s interesting to see how they can manifest in non-stereotypical situations.
Generosity (dana)
He straps on a second backpack, belonging to his friend, who doesn’t have papers, to afford more mobility for avoiding arrest.
They trade jokes and soggy jail cookies. They offer room for one another on the concrete benches of the cramped holding cell.
Lawyers work for free to get the protesters out of jail. The work can take months, for folks facing trumped-up charges.
FIRST PRECEPT
Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.
SECOND PRECEPT
Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I vow to cultivate loving kindness and learn ways to work for the well-being of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I vow to practice generosity by sharing my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in real need. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others. I will respect the property of others, but I will prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on Earth.
Renunciation (nekkhamma)
In jail, they give us plasticized bologna and surprisingly good oranges. Over twelve hours later, they’ve given nothing else. We practice responding to this harm without suffering. We practice fasting. We explore the limits of our basic needs.
In jail, when we ask at 5am how much longer they think we’ll be here, we are told: Ask me how much longer, and I’ll hold you here an extra hour. Ask me again, and I’ll hold you two more hours. We practice responding to this harm without suffering. We practice abiding. We explore the limits of our basic needs.
Knowing the risks, we have nevertheless stood up for what we believe. Some of us are better accustomed to making do in these conditions. All of us are being reminded that we are more than our comforts.
Wisdom (pañña)
This is a complex one. Can we understand the nature of impermanence, egolessness, and unsatisfactoriness of phenomena? Can we respond to the relative world of material harm, while still practicing diligently on our inner liberation from needless suffering?
As the zip-tie handcuffs cut off circulation and my shoulders begin to ache and tingle, I summon my meditation practice, explore the pain, and try my best to observe the present moment with equanimity. After three hours or so, the handcuffs are cut off.
Effort/Strength (viriya)
As we are blocked in by riot police, some with machine guns, on a residential Oakland street, we keep chanting:
WE ARE ALL OSCAR GRANT!
As we are handcuffed and lined up seated on the pavement, we keep chanting:
WE ARE ALL OSCAR GRANT!
As my 20-hour family sits in our women’s holding cell, hour after long hour, we cheer and applaud as each individual is released. The cops try to intimidate us, say they’ll keep us there longer if we keep up the noise. Same for the adjacent women’s cell, where we can hear them yelling. We all keep on celebrating. And together we chant:
WE ARE ALL OSCAR GRANT!
Patience (khanti)
Patience is best when combined with sound strategy. Do I hope to move beyond marches? Yes. Do I want to help grow the movement against police violence, proliferating it in different sectors with the power to disrupt the economy in big ways? Yep. Do I want to simultaneously develop community-based safety systems that are actually accountable, healthy, and responsive to the needs of participants? Hell yes. Will all this take time? You bet. Waiting it out in jail is only one small part of the process.
Truthfulness (sacca)
Bearing witness directly is a wonderful antidote to media spin and misinformation. Contrary to sensationalist reporting, this was not a violent, roaming mob. We were trying to march to the Fruitvale station where Oscar Grant was killed, and menacing riot police hemmed us in at every turn, so we improvised the route. This is not marauding; it is a snake march. Which authorities don’t like very much, because they are not in total control of it.
Again, contrary to reporting, the purpose of our demonstration was not to wreak havoc. The super, super, nearly total majority of people, including every single person I knew, damaged no property. And even those who may have, engaged in no violence that I saw. Property destruction is very different from violence. And even though I don’t support the former in this case, I don’t want it irresponsibly conflated with the latter, the way the mainstream media consistently has in its coverage of the Oscar Grant case.
You know what’s violent? Denying a woman in custody access to her chemotherapy treatment. She was only one of many people I witnessed being denied medical attention — to antidepressants, to necessary medications. And when the woman who was ill from missing her chemo finally got transferred to a cell with a pay phone, called the National Lawyers Guild to tell them what was happening, and half an hour later the cell door rolled open . . . the cops berated her for “costing them a lot of time and money,” and informed her that because of what she’d done, they would delay her release.
Another interesting element around truth: When they had us cornered, just before they arrested us, the police declared a crime scene and instructed everyone from the press to disperse, while still preventing the rest of us (who wanted to go peacefully) from leaving. Nearly all the professional journalists crossed the police line to depart. Kind of chilling, given that the event that catalyzed all this was documentation of an act of police violence against an unresisting, restrained person.
A final truth: From what I saw, and this is only my own personal impression, many of these cops appear to be deeply scarred people. The one who kept me in line on the arrest scene before we boarded the paddy wagons wouldn’t even look me in the eye at first. The internal damage and delusion of a jailer is cyclical: one must already be suffering in order to lock someone up and deny them food or medicine for twelve hours (whether the denial is polite and bureaucratic or spiteful and direct is largely irrelevant). And participating in that process itself produces more delusion, more scarring, more habit patterns.
But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” . . . Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
Lovingkindness (metta)
Much gratitude to all my fellow detainees who made my time in custody human and even fun.
Much gratitude to all who have offered their support from the outside.
Much gratitude to all those who continue to oppose oppression, even when doing so is unpopular.
May all beings be safe. May no human be trapped in a cage. May no human be psychologically conditioned to harm others in an effort to make themselves feel more powerful and secure. May we abolish prisons and end policing as we know it, replacing them with participatory processes that care for people and treat all living beings with dignity.
May you be safe. May you be happy. May you be free.
[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.
I think it’s possible to experience this fragility, openness, and permeable vulnerability even with a crooked spine. But for me, the straight spine is quite an effective jump-starter. It’s something I can control* that has a noticeable, positive (though sometimes challenging) effect on my mental state.
Kloncke 
