Zen of the Earth

This morning, I gave my first Sunday morning talk at my home sangha, Clouds in Water Zen Center. When I was asked about six weeks ago if I'd consider speaking, it didn't take long for me to answer. The time felt right to step forth and offer something to the community. Of course, I have been heavily involved in other aspects of the sangha, including board leadership for half a decade now. But offering a teaching from what you have learned, however small an offering, is something different. And a humbling experience, if you have right relationship with it.

I chose too focus on the Earth. How the Buddha's story and so many of the teachings are all inclusive, endlessly reminding us to move past our human-centric obsessions. Buddha's awakening experience is entirely located in nature, his enlightenment confirmed and upheld by Earth itself. Modern Buddhism, especially convert practice, tends to de-emphasize the Earth and its creatures. In that way, although we are going against the grain by slowing down, listening deeply, and learning to let go of our numerous attachments, there's also an element of going along with the dominant culture as well. Namely, in echoing that cut off sense when it comes to our intimate relationship with the planet.

You can listen to and download the talk here.

I would like to add a few points that came out during the discussion following the talk. Multiple people spoke of their relationship to the media, and how important it has been for them to reduce or watch their intake of news. That sometimes, adding more stories about the awfulness present in the world is basically poisoning yourself. Creating an internal flood of overwhelm that destroys any ability to make changes and act beneficially.

Another issue that came up was how to practice meditation outside. One member said she sometimes gets distracted when sitting outside. I offered that it's always good to experiment with different approaches. Our head teacher suggested she try to open all of her sense gates. To just experience taking in everything through her eyes, ears, nose, etc. And I added that she could focus on one at a time, spending 5 minutes fully listening, and then moving on to another sense.

And finally, I gave some more information about the Whealthy Human Village Project, which I wrote about in this post.

May you enjoy the rest of this fine Sunday!

The Heart of the Earth, Awakened Within Us

Last week, my sister started a photo blog. Using her phone camera, she's offering a small snap shot of images from her daily life. Carrie has been a professional art photographer for a little under a decade now. She's done an amazing amount of work in a relatively short period of time, and has already won a major award, had a few photos in the New York Times, and has put together multiple book-length exhibits. I encourage you all to go take a look.

While I am more successful in the writing world, I also have a penchant for photography. One of the reasons I like Carrie's current project is that it's a similar approach to how I work. The cameras I have used have always been of average or even below average quality. I like the challenge of trying to bring an image alive through a limited means. In addition, I am often drawn to what might be considered the un-picture-worthy. Things like broken down buildings. Overgrowth and junk in alleys. Tree stumps.

Today, though, I want to offer you all some photos from the annual May Day festival we had yesterday in Minneapolis. For the past 5 months, I have been part of the core organizing/visioning team for an eco-centric offshoot of Occupy Minneapolis called the Whealthy Human Village. It's a multifaceted project that focuses on eco-centric life practices, food justice, indigenous rights, and healing arts. Underlying all of work, really, is the thread of interconnectedness. And everything we are doing and envisioning is about helping people uncover or recover their connection to each other and the planet.

I led a meditation to begin the day yesterday where we visualized our favorite plants, merged ourselves with them, and then experienced each stage of the life cycle, from seed to death. Afterwards, I did a short check in with the group about their experiences. One participant spoke of how she was surprised at how her emotions changed as the meditation unfolded. How she felt proud and powerful as her plant unfolded into it's mature expression, and also gratitude for having been able to make it so far in life. Another member of the group spoke of the sadness she felt when half of her beloved tree split off and died. A third member of the group spoke of his challenge to keep to one plant. That other "favorite" plants kept coming in, vying for attention.

The whole day was like this. One beautiful experience after another. And so, here are some photos to offer you a snapshot into what we all experienced. May joy permeate your life, even when deep suffering is present.

Yoga Isn't Changing American Society

how can we truly be surprised that “yoga”, as it has been packaged and sold in the West has not made much of difference in the way things work or rather don’t work in America, at least within the confines of the “system“? Yoga is still very much a white person’s extra curricular endeavor in America. Or something that occasionally happens at The White House. Or something people do on Comcast ON-DEMAND. All this yoga, and we’re not getting to the root of the problem, which is the healing of our collective relationship to Mother Earth.

Holistic healing is still very much a luxury in this country, with a few exceptions. It costs a lot of money to choose natural, homeopathic healing and food in this country, which is part of why everything is upside down and backwards. The easiest way to be healthy is to live simply and in accordance with the principals of Nature.

Those are the words of Holly Westergren, who used to run the wild ride of a blog Namaste, Bitches. I had something of a love/hate relationship with her blog, mostly because I could never decide whether she was cutting through the bullshit, or simply being a different flavor of yoga snob. Regardless, I love the flavor of her offering above, although I also found myself wanting to write a response to it as well.

Let's start with the first sentence. For most of its history, yoga was the practice of an elite few. The major teachings were kept secret, and the masses were kept away. In all the reading I have done, I have yet to find anything close to a social change ethic, or guidelines for a just society, in the teachings. While sutras in the Buddhist Pali Canon regularly talk of social relations, community structures, and the like, yoga teachings are primarily - from what I have seen - focused on individuals.

In that sense, it makes a lot of sense that "yoga has not made much of a difference" in the oppressive structures of American society. It hasn't really in India either, despite several thousand years of existence there. This doesn't dismiss the impact yoga has had on the lives of countless individuals. That can't be taken away from anyone. But yoga as a catalyst for social change hasn't been a very common theme.

"All this yoga, and we’re not getting to the root of the problem, which is the healing of our collective relationship to Mother Earth." Right. Exactly. In fact, I would argue that the Earth has been cut out of the vast majority of our religious and spiritual practices. Or has been added in like a condiment through fluffy songs, naive appeals, and heady rhetoric.

The thing is, how can those of us in the Global North countries heal that deep disconnection with the planet when we have done next to everything to separate our physical selves from it? Urban dwellers walking on concrete, driving cars, living in houses with every last crack closed off, doing our spiritual practices in pristine spaces equally closed off? Given how our economy has become structured, the bulk of rural dwellers aren't that much better off. Driving long distances into sealed off workplaces and then returning home near or after dark, only to wake up and do it all again the next day.

I'm not terribly impressed with the ecology inside of cars. Or modern buildings.

Lately, I have had fantasies of taking jackhammers to sidewalks, streets, and paved over inner city parks. Efficiency and profit are terrible mistresses, but frankly we've given ourselves over to them, forgetting our vows to the one we have been married to all along.

As a child, I remember playing in the lilac bushes that surrounded the yard of our house. Drinking in the aroma every spring; taking refugee in the canopy every summer. That was the love that ushers forth from interdependence.

It's always there, but so often we don't see it, feel it, at all. It's as if all those yoga postures and rounds of meditation haven't broken down the damn of disassociation. There are cracks all over the place though, to the point where perhaps I will witness the flood in my lifetime.

We can't, and really shouldn't want, to go back in time to what romantically might be called "simpler times." But we must bring forward the wisdom of those days, to the point where it doesn't matter if someone is doing yoga, or Zen, or praying to God.

Getting to the root really is about roots. And soil. And stones. And water.

The Seat of Separation: Chairs and the XL Pipeline

What does chronic backpain have to do with the Keystone Xl pipeline? Probably nothing directly, but in a round about way they might be connected.

Recent statistics show the number of adults with chronic low back pain is on the rise. Doctors recommend three courses of action: (1) Lifestyle change, (2) Medication or (3) Surgery. When diagnostic testing reveals no definitive cause, treatment is based largely on the patient accurately describing the intensity of pain on a scale from 1 to 10.

This is from the current post by yoga teacher J. Brown. I enjoyed the fact that he doesn't offer a list of yoga poses to address chronic back pain - enough of that around already. And as I read, I started thinking about that phrase "no definitive cause." And chairs came up.

Chairs originally were a designation of privilege. Reserved solely for royalty, religious and government leaders. It's only been in the past 5-7 hundred years that chairs have become more commonplace around the world, something that might give us pause.

Consider how much sitting you do in various kinds of chairs everyday. In cars. On buses and trains. In offices. In homes. How often do you sit on the floor? Use your whole body in a whole manner?

In my opinion, the way many of us rely so heavily on chairs is a contributing factor to things like chronic back pain.

However, I want to go further. Think about what chairs do. Among other things, they separate humans from the ground. The earth. Just as those original chairs set the elites apart from everyone else, and created a false sense of superiority, chairs today separate the masses (including the elites) from the planet we live on.

Obviously, chairs are not evil. They are simply an excellent symbol of our current state of affairs.

It's not terribly surprising, for example, that we oil pipeline companies making deals with state governments to trounce the rights of indigenous people. Or that their truck drivers are able to, with a straight face, say things like we have “corporate rights that supersede any other law" as they transport tools and materials that will be used to exploit the earth for profit.

Odds are that the decisions that led to the XL pipeline were almost all made while sitting in chairs inside sterile offices. That's just one of the many manifestations of disconnect and separation present in this situation.

Let's go further. Many people want to change all of this. We are waking up to the fact that the planet has suffered greatly as a result of human greed, hatred, and ignorance. However, too often, we are prone to sitting in chairs and in our heads, trying to come up with ways to challenge the status quo. Our meetings are mostly static events, driven by talking, and controlled by tables, chairs, and squared spaces.

Stopping something like the XL pipeline, and envisioning a new way of living, can't really come from this. Not only this anyway. There must be movement. Must be reconnection. Much be creativity when it comes to how we gather, what we do together, and where we choose to meet.

Today, I feel grief and outrage that this pipeline project is going through. That multinational corporations and the leaders of multiple nations, including the U.S., are so myopic that profits trump everything, including the promises of their ancestors.

It's time to move beyond the seats we are comfortable in. Our pain and suffering does have definitive causes, if only we are willing to look much deeper, and begin responding from that place.