Soka Gakki, the Catholic Church, and Human Power Abuse

While the newspapers are filled with daily revelations that are either "petty gossip" or grave power abuses of the Catholic Church, some members of the Buddhist community continue to debate the merits and/or demerits of the controversial Buddhist organization Soka Gakki. Barbara over at her Buddhist blog posted the following about a recent monetary offer to help pay for work on a park in San Francisco:

I defend Soka Gakkai International (SGI) from accusations that it is a cult whenever I see them. I sincerely do not think it is a cult, and SGI members I have met do not seem to me to be brainwashed. But news stories like this don't make defending SGI easier.

SGI has offered to give $180,000 to the city of San Francisco in exchange for naming a gate to Franklin Square Park after SGI President Daisaku Ikeda. The gate would include a plaque to Ikeda's mentors. According to the city's Recreation and Park's Department, $80,000 would be used for construction and landscaping of the gate, and $100,000 would go to the Recreation and Park Department for "general operating support."

Yesterday the offer was on the agenda of a Recreation and Park Commission public meeting , but I don't yet know if the city has decided to accept or reject it. Given the economic crisis in California, that much money would be hard to turn down, I would think.

What little local reaction I have seen has been negative, however. President Ikeda has no connection to the park, which makes the proposed dedication of the gate an act of transparent vanity.

This post is followed by nearly 30 comments that delve into cults, Ikeda's leadership, and other power issues. It's a different version of the discussion about the Catholic Church in my opinion.

I don't feel like I know enough about SGI to make any conclusive statements on their organization's power structure. However, it's well known as the most racially and class diverse Buddhist group (in North America at least). And their members seem actively engaged in social justice work around the world, which in my book is a big positive.

It's interesting to me that spiritual groups with charismatic leaders tend to be lightning rods no matter what they do. Maybe SGI is littered with corruption; I don't really know. But would they're be so much criticism of them if Ikeda was just a dull figurehead, and they were just another large religious organization with a lot of money coming in the doors? Clearly, there are plenty of mega evangelical Christian churches here in the U.S. - bringing in millions of dollars behind breathy preachers who exude confidence in their message. However, it's only the Rick Warrens and Ted Haggards of the world (and their churches) that get thrust into the spotlight.

Does anyone really think the smaller (but still sizable) evangelical communities out there are free of scandal? Or us smaller zen communities? Or any smaller spiritual group out there?

How much of this angst towards the Catholic Church, or Soka Gakki, is simply finding an easy target for the struggles with power that occur all over, and which we seem, as humans, to have no easy answers for?

*photo of my friend Colin hiding behind a fence the day before the 2008 Republican National Convention

"None of Them Preach Terrorism"

I found this interesting news article about inter-religious dialogues going on along the Idaho/Oregon border thanks to Arun over at Angry Asian Buddhist. The article focuses in on Christians who have been attending open house introductory talks at various religious institutions in their area. Here is a section of the article:

While the Toneys said they believe in a soul as Christians, they also found similarities between Christianity and Buddhism — and the other religions the Lifelong Learners group has explored.

“Out of all the religions we’ve studied, none of them preach terrorism,” Dave Toney said. “They all preach the same way. ‘Do unto others’ in a different way.”

Payette Church of the Nazarene Secretary Judy Goff said she was surprised to learn that Buddhists don’t actually worship the historical Buddha — Siddhartha Gautama, the prince born in India who established the religion — but rather focus on his teachings.

“The idea of Buddhism and the balance of wisdom and compassion — there’s nothing wrong with that at all,” Goff said. “I think if more Christians practiced more wisdom and compassion, there would be a lot less hate in the world.”

Reducing ignorance is such an important step to peace in the world. The people participating in these dialogues are getting an opportunity to check their assumptions and open up their awareness, both huge positives.

The model of religious institutions collectively opening their doors, and offering presentations to the public, not to covert, but simply to promote awareness and understanding is one that is worth serious consideration everywhere.

At the same time, I do wonder about the overall impact of such work. Do these open houses only attract people who are already fairly open, but just don't understand the specifics of the various traditions? And will these people turn around and share what they have learned with others they know who are more fearful and threatened by religious diversity? Are these open houses spawning deeper relationships and cross-religious connections, or are they ending up being one shot deals?

Anyway, the particular open house talk being focused on in the article occurred at the Idaho OregonBuddhist Temple. A Shin Buddhist community, the temple is led by Reverend Joshin Dennis Fujimoto, who recounted the following wonderful story in a dharma talk a few years ago:

Rev. Taitsu Imai was a minister at the Tacoma Buddhist Temple. In one Dharma talk, he relayed a story of an elderly couple. The wife was born and raised by a family which was devoted to listening to the Dharma. As she became an adult, she also came to enjoy the Shin Buddhist life of listening to the Dharma. She came to the temple regularly, and tried not to miss opportunities to hear the Dharma.

A well-known Sensei was coming to speak at the temple, and she and her friends were looking forward to the day he would be here. She continued with her usual work and chores around the house, but she was anticipating the upcoming service. The night before the service, she said to her husband, "Tomorrow, there will be a well-known sensei visiting our temple. I will be attending to listen to his sermon with my friends. We all have been looking forward to his visit."

Her husband, who rarely attended the temple, replied, "That's good, but I have always wanted to ask you this question. You have been going to the temple to listen to many sermons for a long time...probably over thirty years on your own, and for many years before that with your parents. What have you been listening to all these years? Either you don't really listen, or you should have made it to the Pure Land by now. If you haven't made it by now, don't you think it is a waste of time? Why don't you just stop going?"

The wife kept silent and thought a little while. Finally, she said to her husband, "Every night I make dinner, and every night you have a drink with your meal. You have been drinking every single evening ever since we were married. Don't you think you've had enough of drinking? What good is it? You should have had enough of it by now."

The husband became angered, and told her, "Don't be a meddler. I work long hours...when I come home, my body and mind are both exhausted. When I have a drink with dinner, I am able to relax and enjoy the evening. I feel better, and I am ready for the next day."

The wife smiled, and told her husband, "That is the same reason I enjoy listening to the Dharma. Listening is much the same as eating meals. We eat meals three times a day. Also, you drink at dinner to help you from your fatigue. Even though we eat today, we still need to eat tomorrow. With each meal, we gain energy and feel refreshed to face what comes next in life. No matter how many long years we listen, no matter how we think we understand, we need to listen to the Dharma constantly so that we will be reminded of life and how to live with awareness and meaning."

*Photo is of an Obon Odori dance performed at the Idaho Oregon Buddhist Temple.

Buddhist "Green" Network

A member of the excellent Buddhist of Color and Allies network Urban Refuge, Ananda Leeke, has had another Buddhist social network going for awhile which I just discovered.

Go Green Sangha is "for people who practice mindfulness, green living, creativity, diversity, the healing arts, innerpreneuralism & service." Go check it out!

Tough Shit! The Challenges of Giving Yourself Permission to Make Mistakes

For a variety of reasons, the following from a post over at Yoga Journeys struck me:

One of the hats I wear is that of ESL teacher. Last week in class, my students were struggling with a difficult listening exercise, and I found myself saying I give you permission to be wrong. I wonder if that shifted anyone's world the way it shifted mine. I give you permission to be wrong. How often do we explicitly receive or grant ourselves this permission? It's true that we are often told that it is OK to make mistakes as long as we learn from them, but in fact I think the overarching lesson of our society is that to be wrong is a terrible thing.

Giving yourself permission to be wrong is the first step down a path to unknown discoveries. It is the first step to learning, exploring, discovering and growing as a person. By not only walking that path fearlessly but also explicitly giving others the permission to be wrong, we can give the world a great gift.

Even after several years of Zen practice and even longer with yoga practice, I still get hooked pretty easily by mistakes. Sure, I think I can say that little mistakes, like bowing at the wrong time or forgetting to make enough copies at work, don't get to me too much anymore. But I sometimes find myself mired in fear of larger mistakes, larger wrongs that might occur. Being uninsured brings up a lot of this. There's the mistake of staying put in a job that doesn't offer heath insurance in the first place. And the mistake of being in the wrong place or doing the wrong thing and getting injured. And also the mistake of not getting some kind of medical help and getting sicker in the process. This is just one set of examples of potential trouble spots in life - difficult to "correct" mistakes and wrongs that society forgives poorly, if at all.

When I'm trapped in this kind of mindset, life is heavy and miserable. And I become more passive, more willing to believe all the bullshit our culture puts out about being self-sufficient and in control of your life at all times. People who know me know that when it comes to finances, and trying to be self-sufficient with not a lot, I'm near the top of the class. And yet, for all my frugalness, I'm still one step away from bankruptcy and yet another "burden" to the "taxpayers." The reality of that there's no way to be fully self-sufficient precisely because we don't live in a vacuum. In addition, there's no way to go through life without mistakes, including maybe some big ones that make things messy.

However, even knowing that, I still sometimes have a hard time giving myself permission to let go, live 100% alive, and maybe screw up a few things in the process. And why is that? Partly because I still can be a mirror of our wider society, terribly unforgiving, and relentlessly striving for perfection at the cost of my wellbeing.

I also find though that there's a class element to all of this. If you are a poor person, perpetually on the edge - your big mistakes easily can be your undoing. In fact, over the course of my lifetime, a sizable chunk of the middle class now hovers just above those at the bottom economically, and we, too, now experience the real perils that mistakes can bring. You put your retirement money in the wrong mutual fund? Tough shit! No retirement for you. You son got pneumonia and had to stay in the hospital and now the insurance company denies you coverage? Don't you fucking dare ask the taxpayers to bail your ass out. (Never mind that you are a taxpayer, too.)

Actually, this post is starting to piss me off. When you reflect on it, the lack of compassion and genuine concern and support for others in this country can be so astounding that you wonder how the hell we've made it this far in one piece. And I sometimes mirror this lack of compassion, pick your self up by your bootstraps mentality, mostly towards myself, which makes it all the more painful.

"By not only walking that path fearlessly but also explicitly giving others the permission to be wrong, we can give the world a great gift." I think we have to learn simultaneously step into our fears about being wrong, and making mistakes, and we have to figure out ways to wear out of some of this collective shame and blame in our society. How? I don't know exactly. This is where we have to start.

Liminal Lines: Life, Death, and Art

Last Sunday, I visited a friend of a friend, who was in hospice with terminal cancer. I'd spent maybe half a dozen times with Brian and my friend Lois, joyfully eating late afternoon snacks, drinking white wine, and talking about the great questions of life. Brian was in seminary for some of that time, contemplating some of the wild cats of modern Christian theology - I remember a long conversation about John Shelby Spong, a favorite of my friend, who's argued that Christianity needs to radically change or it may just die off. It was always interesting to participate in these cross-religious dialogues, to consider Jesus as an outsider, and to have outsiders consider Zen and Buddhism with me.

During the visit, it was clear that Brian was fading. He tried to talk to us, but really couldn't muster the strength to say anything coherently. I remember looking into his eyes, and saying "I miss our talks" and I'm almost sure he tried to say to me "Maybe we'll have another." Well, we won't. He died Thursday. Not even 60 years old, he still left a small mark on the world by staying on his path, and doggedly pursuing the mysteries of this life (even with cancer ravaging his body, he stuck out his seminary studies longer than most would have).

The painting above is by another man who died young, but left a mark on the world. Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis was a Lithuanian painter and composer who, despite living only 35 years, composed nearly 250 pieces of music and completed almost 300 paintings. A contemporary of people like Kandinsky and Franz Marc, Ciurlionis was highly inspired by both spirituality and nature. His paintings, like the one above, are frequently bursting with intensity, while also almost being so liminal as to slide into abstraction. Some credit him with beating Kandinsky to the punch when it comes to modern abstract painting, although the American painter Arthur Dove also hangs in there as an early experimenter with 20th century abstraction.

Some of Ciurlionis' paintings are like Zen koans - images you cannot grab onto with your rational mind, like grains of sand sliding through your hands. At times, they contain reference points that might lead you to think "I've got it!" But then, as you take the image in a little more, you realize that you don't got it, and probably never will in the way you usually do. This guy seemed to always be on the border between this life and another, just as my friend has been over the past few years.

Really, we're all like this, don't you think? Maybe it's not in our face as much, or that we have to work a bit to keep the liminal alive in ways that Ciurlionis, Brian, and others out there didn't have to. But it's there regardless of how much you or I miss it - those little and great crossings between here and there (whatever "there" is), the footsteps we take between our many homes.

Right Action on the Streets

Here's an interesting post for you all to consider from Daishin, whose blog is also worth a deeper look.

The neighbourhood I live in has a high number of people begging in the street. Individuals and groups sit near stores and the pub. Each time I go by, I’m faced with a dilemma. How do I reconcile my desire (my vow!) to be of service, to practice compassion, to alleviate suffering, with the fact that no amount of money I give will make a dent. In addition, my critical voice notices cell phones, to-go coffee cups, and cigarettes in plain sight and, in many instances, alcohol and drugs not far behind. Sometimes I feel anger arising for being ‘made to feel’ un-generous and privileged.

I’ve watched myself react in different ways: avoiding certain corners altogether; crossing the street in anticipation; looking down as I pass the person; saying hello and gesturing sorry no change; giving a few coins; giving all the change in my pocket; picking up a muffin and offering it on the way back. None of these are satisfactory solutions; often the same person sits at the same spot each time I walk by and there are more people looking for a handout down the street.

I’m at a loss of what to do. How do you handle these situations? What would be ‘right action’ from a Buddhist perspective? I’d be grateful for your advice and insights.

Last spring, I dated a woman who worked with homeless folks. She was out on the streets everyday, doing what she could to help people find homes, social service resources, or to just be available to listen to people's stories. I deeply respected her easy-going attitude about all this, coupled with a sincere passion to make a dent in homelessness, and all the assorted problems attached to it.

One thing I noticed for myself during the time I spent with her (about three months) was the variety of responses I had in regards to people I encountered begging on the streets. Often, it was sadly dependent on how I felt that day. If I was feeling open and generous, I'd smile or chat for a moment with someone. Maybe offer some change, or maybe not. If I felt closed, exhausted, or irritated, I'd either avoid the person completely, avoid eye contact, or simply rush to the judgment that they wanted money and I wasn't having any of that.

In this dog eat dog capitalist society we have, homelessness and poverty in general are simply givens. The whole house of cards is built on the fact that some people will simply be screwed no matter what they do. Certainly, some folks make a pile of decisions that aid in being the ones who are screwed, but others do everything they can and still are amongst the screwed. So, it's a deeply complicated pattern of personal decisions and social structures interacting within any person's life (yours, mine, people on the streets.) A few people even stay on the streets by choice, and really don't feel the need, for whatever reason, to have a steady roof over their heads or a steady job. Other people fake homelessness to get some extra cash for a habit, for rent, for food, any number of things really. So, what you see may not actually be what is. People like to indulge in righteous anger at these fakers, but the reality is they tend to be in trouble too. Most people don't choose to beg on the streets for shits and giggles.

The thing is, though, that for those of us who have steady jobs and steady roofs over our heads, we're terribly prone to reducing humans on the streets to caricatures.

There's the "transactional" image, where a person is simply a beggar of money who needs to be given to or not given to.

There's the "poor them" image, where the person is simply a victim.

The opposite of that one is the "too bad sucker" image, where the person is simply an irresponsible, lazy bum who made bad decisions and now is being punished.

And finally, there's the "poor me" imagine, where the person is simply an irritation or a burden for the other person or people passing them.

Daishin asks what "right action" is when it comes to interacting with people begging on the streets. Well, I don't think there's any fixed answer. One thing that comes to mind though is that to the degree any of us can look past assumptions and appearances, and simply engage what or who is in front of us, that to me seems to speak of how close or far we are from "right action." It's not about giving money or not. Or even talking to someone or not. It's much bigger than all of that, and yet contains those pairs as well.

Rumors You Can Trust

Rumors. The glue and dynamite of offices, family gatherings, sports fanatics, politicians, and yes, religious folks. Yesterday, I was told that perhaps someone who I work with won't be on the staff for too much longer. The specifics aren't important to mention here, only that the rumor got my inner injustice radar spinning quickly into righteousness. How dare they! If it happens, I'm going to quit on the spot! I won't work for such a place! And on and on it goes. These days, it doesn't take much for me to feel such things about my workplace. However, it's becoming all the more clearer how useless these little dramas are, and how they glue us together in skewed, unhealthy ways.

Searching for a definition of the word online, I found the extended one over at Wikipedia most interesting:

A rumor or rumour (see spelling differences), is often viewed as "an unverified account or explanation of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in public concern" (33)[1] However, a review of the research on rumor conducted by Pendleton in 1998 found that research across sociology, psychology, and communication studies had widely varying definitions of rumor.[2] Thus, rumor is a concept that lacks a particular definition in the social sciences. But most theories agree that rumor involves some kind of a statement whose veracity is not quickly or ever confirmed. In addition, some scholars have identified rumor as a subset of propaganda, the latter another notoriously difficult concept to define.

Propaganda - yes, that makes sense to me as well. Think of the ways in which John McCain was smeared by rumors during the 2000 Presidential Campaign, or the myriad of ways in which current President Obama has been smeared by rumors over the past three years. Much of what was said about either man turned out to be false, and that which was true was spread solely as a way to scare people, or inflame people, so they wouldn't support the candidate. So, what's interesting here is that the account of something could be factual, but the explanation completely false or skewed.

For some reason, many years back, I became interested in sports rumors. Who's going to be traded to what team. Who might retire. What team might change coaches. All that kind of crap. Living in Minnesota over the past year, we've been inundated with rumors about the status of a Mr. Brett Favre, football Quarterback extraordinaire. Is he coming back? Is he retiring? Will the MN Vikings get another quarterback? It's an endless source of reportage for bored sports reporters who are trying keep the bucks coming in to their various news outlets. And for fans, it's an endless way to check out of the struggles of daily life, and live in an imaginary land of what if? for awhile.

I'm starting to think that part of the problem is that we don't know how to enjoy our lives anymore. Adults especially. We've bought into a story about being responsible, sacrificing every last dream so we can have a fancy vacation once a year and some "cool" toys to fritter away our free time with. Negative rumors of all sorts have replaced the beautiful dreaming and creating that can occur in the mind. In this age of 24 hour a day connectivity, where space "has to" be filled with some kind of information, most of us have chosen (without knowing probably) an existence glued together by patchwork lies and propaganda. It's an ugly thing to wake up to, and I'd bet that plenty of you out there can think of ways to defend your addictions to rumors and their kissing cousins gossip.

There seem to be a fair number of Buddhists, including myself, following the sexual abuse scandal unfolding within the Catholic Church. Certainly, there is much to learn from this, and definitely much injustice to be addressed. And yet, I'm guessing there is also some smug enjoyment of all the rumors floating about out there about Pope Benedict. In all honesty, I don't particularly like anything this Pope stands for. In fact, if a direct link between him and any of these abusing priests is verified, I hope he's removed from his "holy" office. The whole business of Popes I find tiring, and I firmly believe that they might be the complete undoing of the Church before it's all said and done. And yet, what good is it doing me, or anyone, to sit around indulging in juicy rumors about Mr. Ratzinger's alleged connections to, or pardons of, priest X or Y? How will speculating about the depths of his involvement change the very real problems of power and control going on within the Catholic Church?

When I look at my outrage about rumors at my workplace, it mostly boils down to a way to justify how lousy I feel about working there. That's it. I long ago gave up trying to do and say things that might "make the place more true to it's mission." And even though I care about my fellow teachers, and do what I can to support them, I mostly believe that it's like trying to patch a cracking dam with Elmer's glue: whatever I do, it's not gonna hold.

So, whenever a juicy rumor floats about, I can grab onto it as another reason for hating my job and workplace. It's a faux balm, sweet in the moment, and a slow seeping into the swamp afterward. This is the truth of all rumors, I think, and is probably why we bite so often and then suffer later as a result.