Did you hear the one about the Dalai Lama and Lululemon?

Seriously, it's no joke. In an era of ever-expanding capitalist reach, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism is teaming up with a corporation well known for its sexism, sizism, and sweatshop labor practices.

Lululemon and the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education are partnering to “promote mindfulness…to foster heart-mind wellbeing in children and youth.”

Heart-mind well-being refers to ”creating a balance between educating the mind and educating the heart” by encouraging children to develop social and emotional skills, as per the description on the Dalai Lama Center’s website. Thanks to this new partnership with Lululemon and the 250,000 Canadian dollars ($221,900) they’ll provide annually for the next three years (that’s almost a quarter of a million dollars every year), the center’s heart-mind education initiative can be expanded and further research can be done on the connection between the heart and mind, so that more kids will be more mindful, compassionate and able to resolve conflicts more peacefully, for example.

I can already hear the spiritual noise train arriving on track 29. What about 'form is emptiness, emptiness is form'? Why are you bringing politics into all this? Why are you hating on Lululemon again? Why are you hating on the Dalai Lama? WHAT ... ABOUT ... THE CHILDREN?!!!!

Spare me. I'm tired of corporate apologetics, idol worship, and the use of dharmic teachings in the service of maintaining colonialism and the capitalism it spawned. This deal has all the hallmarks of the non-profit industrial complex on it, and really, it's pretty sad that the Dalai Lama Center leadership thinks that an expensive clothing company is the kind of outfit that ready, willing, and most importantly able to spread "mindfulness ... and heart-mind wellbeing in children and youth." I mean, the company's target audience isn't even children and youth. If they want to go this route, perhaps joining up with Lego, Microsoft, Nintendo, or some other such corporation might be in order.

Note that the Dalai Lama Center's press release contains not only the NASDAQ tag for Lululemon (in case folks want to invest in stock?), but also a paragraph long description of the company that appears to be cut and pasted from Lululemon's marketing copy.

What does the Dalai Lama Center have to say about the sexism, sizism, classism, and oppressive labor practices of the corporation they're partnering with? Do they intend to also promote mindful awareness of the systemic causes that allow folks like the on again off again leader of Lululemon, Chip Wilson, to essentially get away with comments about pronouncements about women's thighs and jokes about Japanese mispronunciations of Lululemon? Or, since this is supposedly all about the children, will they speak out loudly against Chip Wilson's support of "Third World child labor"? Sure, Wilson is finally gone after a long power struggle, but concretely addressing his views (and their corporate practices) in the context of the global capitalist workplace would put some teeth into this project.

Finally, I have to say that if Lululemon truly wanted to be a leader in promoting mindfulness and compassion in the lives of tomorrow's leaders, they'd invest a hell of a lot more than $750,000. For a corporation bringing in nearly $2 billion annually, that's essentially pocket change. And also a small price to pay for a marketing campaign to restore the company's long tarnished image.

Dalai Lama Supports Legalizing Medicinal Marijuana

Currently in Mexico, where a debate over the legalization of marijuana is heating up, the Dalai Lama told an audience that he supports the medicinal use of the plant.

The Tibetan spiritual leader, speaking at an event hosted by former Mexican president Vicente Fox, said that "the exception" for smoking marijuana would be if it has pharmaceutical virtues.

"But otherwise if it's just an issue of somebody (using the drug to have) a crazy mind, that's not good," he said after being asked his position on legalization at the outdoor event at the ex-president's Fox Center in the central state of Guanajuato.

Over at the Buddhist Blog, James Ure offers the following in support of the Dalai Lama's comments:

For eons, marijuana has been used medicinally by humans to treat ailments. Historically, marijuana has been legal for use up till only recently. Ironically, legalizing marijuana will simply return it to its historical status of acceptability. Marijuana truly is a miracle drug as it alleviates so much suffering from a plethora of conditions. It helps relieve my chronic depression to the point of saving me from suicide a few times. In addition, medical marijuana blunts the aches and pains of my bursitis to enable my body to meditate properly. Why wouldn't compassionate-minded Buddhists support the use of a healing, natural, herbal, non-addictive medicine such as marijuana to treat symptoms of medical conditions?

As a non-user who doesn't have a personal stake in the plant's legality, I also support decriminalization. Billions of dollars have been spent across the continent in the futile war on drugs. We have prison cells filled with folks whose main or only crime is using and/or selling this plant. There is a heavy racial bias towards men in color particularly when it comes to arrests and incarceration, one symptom of a broader pattern of systemic racism that could be alleviated through decriminalization. Like alcohol prohibition, marijuana prohibition has only increased the power of drug gangs and cartels, while also providing governments across North and Central America an excuse to ramp up the militarization of law enforcement agencies.

All in all, prohibitions have been an immense failure. It's time for another way forward.

Dalai Lama and Gardening Weekend

Hi Everyone! I'm back from my little gardening/break from writing weekend. It was quite fun I have to say. Saturday morning, my mother and I took our annual trip to the local Quaker grade school's plant sale. In 22 years, it's grown from a tiny fundraiser in the backyard of the school, into a three day extravaganza held at the State Fair grounds. Between 9am and around 1pm, when we left to go home, there had already been about 1500 people through the doors. And this was the second day of the sale! The school has been fortunate you might say.

I had planted some greens and few cold season veggies earlier in April, but the winter dragged on this year, and it's really only been in the past week that we have had temperatures safe enough for putting the lions share of new plants in.

And yet, there were some familiar face greeting me as I turned over the soil. Patches of mint. Oregano. Chives. Bee balm. Some berry bushes bursting with new leaves. A whole lot of nettle (which I make medicine with). And dandelions. Another medicine plant friend. Even though I know some of this stuff will come back each year, it's often surprising to me how - even with the worst of winters - some things reappear much larger and more bountiful than the previous year. As if to say "I don't care about the cold; just keep growing."

For some reason, that makes me think of the Dalai Lama, who I saw speak yesterday at the University of Minnesota (photo above). Most of his speech was pretty simple. Be compassionate. More people are paying attention to how our hearts are developing and the way our minds work, and this trend needs to continue. Education institutions need to be more deliberate in helping people learn to train their minds. Religious and secular people need to work together more, because we are all responsible for the world together.

I'd also forgotten how funny the guy is. He cracked jokes about his bald head, and was quite jolly about receiving a U of M visor, which you can see him wearing in the photo.

However, one thing that struck me was story he related about speaking with Queen Elizabeth's mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, back in 1996. Having been born in 1900, the Dalai Lama felt she would have a unique perspective as someone who had lived through the entire 20th century. He asked her "Do you think the world is getting better or worse?" And without hesitation, she said "better." The Dalai Lama went on to comment how issues like human rights weren't even on the table back in 1900, and now are the concern of millions of people around the world. And how in the middle of the century, people were getting together to create nuclear weapons, and now you have efforts around the world to stop nuclear production and reduce nuclear stockpiles - even amongst nations like the U.S. and Russia.

For all the miserable stuff going on, it does help to take a long view, to see how things are unfolding across centuries worth of time. So, I appreciated that expansiveness, which is a good counterbalance to day to day considerations. Both are valuable, but without each other, it's easy to get lost.

So, I hope you all had a good weekend. May life spring forth in your corner of the world this day!

What's Happiness Anyway?

Over at Ox Herding, Barry is writing about happiness. My mother recently borrowed me the memoir of a founder of the online shoe company Zappos, Tony Hsieh, whose known for innovative ideas about how to build group culture (he also likes to make lots of money, but we'll leave that aside for now). The title of his memoir is Delivering Happiness. Sometime last year, I wrote something about the Dalai Lama's book, The Art of Happiness, and perhaps it was there that I questioned the notion that happiness is THE experience we all want, and strive for.

Hsieh's book is interesting for me because it's way outside of my normal reading box (a wide open, diverse one for sure), but certainly has never contained memoirs by rich guys talking about building companies. I've also been reading the blog of another quirky business dude, Seth Godin.

Now before a few of you start worrying, I don't intend to become a big time capitalist or anything like that. In fact, I'm getting some good practice in watching the critical mind come up with objection after objection as I read. However, one of my mottoes you might say, a simple teaching I like to share with others, is that "anything and everything can be a dharma gate." So, I'm digging into material right now I'd normally toss on the burn pile in order to see what's there.

Reading Hsieh's memoir, I'm finding that he's really not talking about happiness. What he seems to be talking about is connection to something larger than yourself, developing quality friendships, liberating your imagination, finding your passions and talents, and putting all that into building something with others together (in his case, companies). It's not quite dharma per se, but it certainly feels bigger and more interesting than the pursuit of happiness.

I guess I kind of wonder what it is we really want when we speak of happiness. Even though I can point to plenty of examples in my life when I experienced something I can label as "happiness," there's still something really vague about that word, and also about how most of us talk about it. What do you make of happiness?