Oakland Protests, the Paramis, and Creative Practice

The post I offered earlier today was fairly cranky, and the sound byte format probably irritated a few people. That's fine. I think it's interesting to notice how you react to critical statements made about a group or groups you consider yourself a member of. Along these lines, the New York Times reported that protests in Oakland turned violent following the sentencing of a white officer for the killing of an unarmed young black man. Contrast this to the following post, made by Katie Loncke, a member of the Buddhoblogosphere, and who was amongst the arrested during the same protests. Katie took the opportunity to consider the Buddhist paramis, and how they might be applied to a situation as tense and uncertain as a protest about police brutality being broken up by police.

She writes:

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.

Katie has multiple posts about what happened, as well as a vision she and others out in Oakland have for a radically different way of being together as communities. Even if you don't agree with everything she offers, please go over and take a look at her blog posts. I find both her willingness to be on the front lines, and the dedication to grounding her actions in Buddhist teachings, inspiring.

Some of you might dismiss what Katie is doing as some "activist" appropriation. To which I'd offer the Sutra on The Lion's Roar of Queen Srimala, which is one of the sutras that points to Buddha's social teachings. There's also the Sikkha Sutta, pointing to four different kinds of practitioners in the world. And then there's the Mahanama Sutta, on being a lay practitioner. All of these sutras seem to suggest that involvement in social affairs is compatible with Buddhist practice.

Beyond the social action question, though, is simply the matter of diversity of practice. Once you stick your head under the canopy, it's pretty clear that what Buddha taught 2600 years ago has been taken in many, many directions, and will be taken in many more in the future. I don't consider this a bad thing. It's actually pretty cool. Creativity is, in my view, a hallmark of finding one's way to the heart of the great matter.

One Liners on Buddhist Practice

I'm feeling a bit scattered, and a little bit sick as well today. So, instead of a post on a particular topic, I'll offer some one liners that have been bouncing around in me, some for awhile now.

Too many convert Buddhists seem to divide the world into "inner" and "outer," and then over-focus on their "inner life."

Inner and outer are really just expedient labels to describe the relative.

Everything has a political dimension to it, so let's get over the phobia towards being "socially involved" already!

I've been thinking lately of Dogen's "practice realization" as more of a skillful means to spur on our trust in the moment as awakened on its own terms, rather than as him saying that we are literally enlightened in the moment of practice.

What "lay practice" means in Zen is kind of a mystery.

It's foolish to assume that years and years of meditation practice will bring about boundless wisdom, and yet this is one of the major criteria being used to determine who should teach and who shouldn't.

As our teacher at zen center recently said, the way we Zennies practice probably would look different if women had had an equal or greater share of the decision making power to determine what it all looked like historically.

People tend to not know shit about the actual workings of karma in their lives.

Convert Zen students are too serious. We need more joy and fun in our practice!

Contrary to what Neil Young once sang, it's not better to burn out than to fade away.

Zen and the Three Stages of Efforting

I had a full day at the zen center today, mostly participating in a half day retreat/workshop on chapter 28 of Dogen's Shobogenzo. I'll write something about it another day; I have a bit of a headache from working with it all day. Before Dogen, we had meeting of what we have been calling our "lay training group." We dug in deep on the question of what is "lay Zen practice" anyway, something that I think many practitioners around the world are trying to figure out to some degree or another. I was also scheduled to give the talk for the group, and so I did - about Right Effort, which fits right in to considerations about how rigorous people who live in the world of jobs and bills and family might practice.

One of the things I have experienced this fall is what I will call the three stages of efforting. Perhaps this could be refined into even more subtle breakdowns, but what I have seen again and again are appearances of the three that I will talk about now.

Stage 1: Self-Driven Effort

This is the kind of effort we normally think of when the word effort comes up. It's that pushing, sometimes forcing exertion done to achieve some goal. You push down hard on the shovel head, and soil and rocks come up. You see your mind wandering in meditation and you drag it back to your breath or some other focus.

One of the troubles with this kind of effort is that it's usually done in service to an "I" that you believe is in need of something. It's often also attached to a particular outcome. And there frequently is at least a bit of violence involved, and sometimes much more than that.

Stage 2: Jumpstarting Effort

Jumpstarting effort begins the same way that self-driven effort does, but it's employed differently. It's a push at the beginning to get the ball rolling, but once things are going, it drops away. An example from my meditation practice might help here. One of the phrases in the Anapanasati Sutra, which we've been studying at zen center this fall, is "gladdening the mind." So, during one period of zazen, I decided to ride that phrase on my breath, to work with it. I began by actually saying the phrase to myself as I breathed in. "Gladdening the mind." Breathing out, "Gladdening the mind." This initial push went on for a few minutes, and then it just dropped away, and there was just riding and maybe gladdening going on. So, that's what I mean by "jumpstarting" - it's like the jumper cables on a dead car battery. You don't drive around with the cables on; you only use them to get things going.

Stage 3: Selfless Efforting

This is the point at which the efforting is coming out of total connection to the present. It doesn't feel like "effort" at all, and yet something is happening. It isn't "you" doing it; it's the functioning of the whole works of life. Here, there is no attachment to a particular outcome, nor any specific goal desired to be achieved. You might be aimed in a particular direction - like getting the garden bed ready for winter - but what's happening isn't hitched to achieving that.

From my experience, this is a place of great trust. You have to trust in what's emerging, moment by moment, for this efforting to emerge itself.

Now, perhaps you're thinking that stage 1 is bad and stage 3 is wonderful. I'd like to discourage that kind of thinking.

The first three or four years I practiced Zen, I was very much living a stage 1 effort. Not always, but frequently. I sat hours and hours of zazen. I read piles of dharma books. I pushed myself to do retreats, even when I didn't have much energy. When I saw my mind wander while sitting, I'd get rough, thinking I was failing or not doing good enough because I was always thinking and feeling shitty. (This could be called being "too tight.")

After a certain point, the experience I had began to shift towards the other two stages of efforting. There was more flow, more spaciousness, and less pushing really hard. But at the same time, I was also experiencing what I'd call "burn out" from the previous years, so while things started to open up for me, I also got lazy, and almost quit formally practicing all together. (This might be called being "too loose")

Going through jukai and then becoming part of this lay practice group brought about a refocus for me. And what once was needed - stage one effort - came back into play. It can be considered "wrong effort" in that it's self-driven, but at the same time, I seemed to have to do some of that pushing and driving myself again into order to remind myself why this kind of working in the world isn't terribly helpful. This, to me, is a way to understand how samsara can be said to contain a gate into nirvana. Another way to put this might be to say sometimes you have to do something wrong in order to see how to do it right.

The fascinating thing about these stages is that during a single period of meditation, or while doing a single task, you might experience all three of them, maybe multiple times. You're mopping the floor. It's really dirty in one corner, and you get frustrated, and start pushing hard on the mop. Then you see the rest of the floor, or look at the mop in a certain way, and that efforting drops away. Then maybe the phone rings, you stop, answer the phone, come back, and need to jumpstart the process with a bit of effort, which leads you back into the flow of the moment, and there you are, flowing with the mopping, until you think about your cranky co-worker and get upset and find yourself back at pushing the damned mop across the floor.

I think, in the end, lay practice life is exactly like this. There are times when you have to push, have to ramp it up. There are other times where you subsist well on less formal practice, going along applying what you have learned with an interspersing of jumpstarting. And for some, it's just functioning in that self-less efforting. They do lots of formal practice, or not. But whatever their life is in the moment, it feels fairly effortless, even though the person might be quite busy in a conventional sense.

Anyway, this is what I have seen and experienced recently. Perhaps it might be useful for someone out there. In any case, it's really interesting to take a look at how effort works in your life. Go ahead and check it out for yourself. Maybe you have something to add that I have missed.

The Money was Nothing

Here's a news story that is really hard not to like, especially amongst all the rottenness and conflict we usually are served by the media.

A retired Canadian couple who won $11.3 million in the lottery in July have already given it (almost) all away.

"What you've never had, you never miss," 78-year-old Violet Large explained to a local reporter.

She was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer when the couple realized they'd won the jackpot in July.

"That money that we won was nothing," her tearful husband, Allen, told Patricia Brooks Arenburg of the Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald. "We have each other."

The money was a "headache," they told the paper--mainly, it brought anxiety over the prospect that "crooked people" might take advantage of them. Several people called them out of the blue to ask for money when the news first broke that they'd won the jackpot. So they began an $11 million donation spree to get rid of it and help others, the Chronicle Herald reports:

They took care of family first and then began delivering donations to the two pages' worth of groups they had decided on, including the local fire department, churches, cemeteries, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, hospitals in Truro and Halifax, where Violet underwent her cancer treatment, and organizations that fight cancer, Alzheimer's and diabetes. The list goes on and on.

Violet told the Canadian Press that they retained about 2 percent of the money for a rainy day.

"It made us feel good," Violet told the Chronicle Herald. "And there's so much good being done with that money."

There are so many interesting threads to consider in this story. First off, this couple given everyone the simple, but profound message that love and companionship are much more important than material wealth. I also have to say it's kind of wonderful that they chose to distribute the money all over, pointing to a sense of how their lives are interconnected with the community they live in, and the institutions that have benefited them in the past.

On a more macro-level, it's hard not to contrast the care Violet has received for cancer, with the ways in which such care is either out of reach, or financially devastating for many here in the United States. While our government will probably spend the next two years bickering over the details of the decidedly tepid, pro-private health care industry bill that was passed last year, everyday Canadians continue to have a hell of a lot more options, even if there are some problems with their system.

And finally, back to the couple, there's this statement "We're not travelers anyway. We live in the country and we're proud of it. Money can't buy you health or happiness." I think it's just fine to travel when you're older, and I hope to be able to do so myself. But it's also refreshing to hear someone say they are happy right where they are. Even if they decide to go on vacation with the little bit of money they saved, it's clear they are at peace with the place they live in. Such a different attitude from all the "snowbirds" who run south the moment there's a chill in the autumn air every year.

Elections, Tidalwaves, and Buddhism

Arun, over at Angry Asian Buddhist, posted the following about our recent elections here in the U.S.:

The Buddhist blogs indeed have been following the election—but with a special emphasis on white male candidates. Sift back through this season’s articles to see Tricycle reminisce about Jerry Brown, while Shambhala Sun swoons over Eric Schneiderman.

Four years ago, there was some excitement around Representatives Mazie Hirono and Hank Johnson, both of them Democrats who identify as Buddhists. Both held their seats last night. But if you’ve only been following Shambhala Sun and Tricycle, you’ll have missed out on Democrat Colleen Hanabusa, who took back Hawaii’s First congressional district from the Republicans, defeating Charles Djou. Oh, and she’s Buddhist too.

Just take that in for a moment. Next year’s Hawaiian congressional delegation to the House will be a team of Asian American Buddhist women!

It's always interesting to me what happens when you look beyond the major trend of an election, and see things like this going on. Another blogger also mentioned on his Facebook page that over 100 openly gay folks were elected to various positions around the nation. It's a good reminder to not get too fixed on the tidal wave, because there's always more water doing something different all around it.

The Politics of Like, Don't Like, and Neutral

It's election day here in the U.S. I went to vote, and had a short discussion with a couple of friends about some of the candidates. That said, electoral politics here in the United States are in a pretty sorry state, with two corrupted parties that are tossed in and out of office every few election cycles by an increasingly sound-byte influenced public. Yesterday, I thought about writing some scathing stuff about all of this, and end it by calling for more grassroots action that transcends party lines. But I've done that before, and will probably do so again. Today, though, I'm not going there.

Here are three posts about voting from other members of the Buddhoblogsphere. This one I like. This one I don't like. And this one I'm fairly neutral about.

Like. Don't like. Neutral. These are the three base-level feelings we experience about everything in our lives. Peel off the skin of any emotional response and you'll find these at work.

If we learn to let these three just come and go, a lot of trouble can be avoided. A simple example from my own life might help illustrate this. As a lifelong bicyclist in a city, I have had my struggles with cars and traffic. Even when things are well marked for different kinds of vehicles, it's still the case that bicycling in the city isn't terribly easy, and planning and design work almost always privileges motorized vehicles over bikes and pedestrians - at least here in the U.S. For many years, I biked with a deep resentment towards motorized vehicles, regardless of what they were actually doing in any given moment. Someone might offer me a chance to cross ahead of them, and I'd think they were trying to shoo me through quickly, so that they could drive on. All of this stemmed from an initial "don't like" that came up again and again around motorized vehicles, and urban road planning.

About three years ago, I began cutting through the thoughts and emotional reactions that developed in response to this don't like by chanting the Jizo Bodhisattva chant while riding. Jizo is kind of an archetypal Buddhist figure that is said to protect travelers, children, the dead, and vows among other things. Chozen Bays Roshi of Great Vow Monastery wrote a fabulous book about Jizo several years ago that I was fortunate to study soon after it was published. As soon as I learned about it, I knew Jizo would be a companion on my spiritual journey.

Biking with Jizo has become a norm for me. In fact, I've noticed that the practice has become so settled within that anytime a bit of upset comes up while I'm riding, the chant just appears to support me. There's a different tenor to the experience as well. I experience the like, don't like, and neutral more clearly. Stinky alley. Don't like. Fall leaves. Like. Dog in a yard. Neutral. The coming and going of such don't spin out of control as they used to, especially the "don't like" experiences.

Do I still get pissed and reactive towards motorized vehicles at times? Sure. However, such experiences sometimes colored my entire day in the past, and now usually burn off within minutes. And when I think about it, it really comes back to this point of being able to see, and experience, these three base-level feeling tones without getting lost in emotional and thought elaborations.

Seems to me that this teaching is very useful when it comes to electoral politics. Some will like the outcome of today's vote. Some won't like it. And some, including many people outside of the U.S., will probably be neutral.

Can you see your base-level feeling here? The beauty of having a diverse set of practices to draw upon, from sitting meditation to chanting to bowing, just to name a few, is that any of these can be called upon to help cut through intense reactions that stem from the three base-level feeling tones. So, I offer you this story on election day here in the U.S. May all beings be liberated.

Zen and Interpersonal Needs

Several years ago, we had a few workshops at the zen center on the topic of Non-Violent Communication. The leaders of the trainings had studied with Marshall Rosenberg, who has given over his life to exploring ways in which how we speak to each other impacts almost every aspect of our lives. I must admit that I was very skeptical about NVC when I first encountered it. It seemed too touchy-feely to me, a kind of "niceness" that I wanted to shed from my life, not reinforce. However, as the years have gone on, and I have payed closer attention to speech in my life, I have found that Rosenberg's work is pretty damned intelligent, and worth considering as part of my Buddhist practice.

Yet, I still have some reservations about it. Or questions perhaps. Here are some comments about NVC from an interview Zen Teacher Robert Joshin Althouse did with the website Sweeping Zen:

I learned about Nonviolent Communication (NVC) many years ago from my teacher, Jikyo Roshi. I then had the opportunity to study with Marshall Rosenberg. I have always found NVC to be very useful and helpful for many of my students. So I am very comfortable using and applying it in my life and within my Zen teachings as well. NVC is a language that grows out of a “needs” awareness. If people just try to mimic the language they end up sounding like NVC parrots which is not helpful at all. The heart of the matter is shifting to an awareness of needs which includes the needs of others around us as well. I think that is a very difficult teaching in this culture, and actually an important one. We all have some conditioning around this. Growing up many of us have learned that it’s not ok to have needs. I’ve even encountered Zen students that don’t think we should have needs. But to me that is just ridiculous. In NVC needs are defined as anything that supports our life. So as long as we are alive we’re going to have needs. We have physical needs for food, water, clothing and shelter. We have interpersonal needs for understanding, respect, love, and empathy. Being aware of our feelings and needs can help us move away from judgments that often interfere with our ability to connect and communicate with others skillfully.

I've never had a qualm with those basic survival needs Althouse mentions. The Buddha's own experience of trying to deny those needs almost killed him. But when we start diving into the list of interpersonal needs, it starts to get murky to me.

There are, in my view, a few ways to look at this. On the one hand, you can view some of the interpersonal needs as attachments, desires, and possibly hindrances to one's practice. The Center For Non-Violent Communication has a pretty extensive list that isn't even, in their words, exhaustive. It just seems to me like it falls too much in the "You're perfect just the way you are" direction, with not enough "But you need a little improvement" - to use that often quoted Suzuki Roshi saying.

Having a need to be respected, for example, can get you into big trouble if you believe in it too much. I had many political arguments in the past which often boiled down to wanting the other person or people to respect my viewpoint - one that tended to be far outside the mainstream. Now, if you understand NVC process and philosophy, you'd know that the "wanting the other person or people" to respond in a certain way isn't helpful. In fact, that wanting is viewed as a major trouble point. So, in that way, NVC is very much in line with Zen practice, for example.

However, I still have to wonder about speaking about "having a need for respect" is, in itself, beneficial. It seems questionable to me. In fact, it seems like one can easily use that as a way to prop up a sense of self.

On the other hand, if you approach NVC as a process to work with what's present RIGHT NOW, then speaking of interpersonal needs might be very useful. If I come from a place of this is where things are at - I am experiencing a need for respect in this moment - perhaps it might be a place to be able to let go of that, and better meet the person, people, and circumstances you're in dialogue with.

But I think this is somewhat different from saying people have these needs, and that it's fine to continue to come from a place of having these needs, so long as you are honestly working with them. That seems too much like speaking about a solid personality, which I just don't think is very helpful.

One of the things I really admire about Rosenberg and his colleague is the effort they have made to expose the various layers of judgment humans make within their language and thoughts. And they have worked hard to show that NVC is about how you function in the world, not how you want others to function.

So, perhaps some of you out there have even more experience working with NVC than I do. I'm curious to know what people think about "needs" and how they play into Buddhist practice, and expression of the dharma. Any thoughts?