Man Up - Zen Style

Spoken word artist Guante has it right. The phrase "man up" sucks. Big time. It's riddled with sexist connotations, homophobic notions, and is generally damaging - in my view - to anyone who doesn't conform to gendered norms. In fact, I'd argue it's really all about conforming. All about creating a hostile environment for male-identified people.

“Man Up” assaults our self esteem by suggesting that competence and perseverance are uniquely masculine traits. That women—not to mention any man who doesn’t eat steak, drive a pickup truck, have lots of sex with women and otherwise conform to gender norms absolutely—are nothing more than, background characters and props in a movie where the strong, stoic, REAL man is the hero. More than anything, though, it suggests that to be yourself—whether you, wear skinny jeans, listen to Lady Gaga, rock a little eyeliner, drink some other brand of light beer, or write poetry—will cost you.

So, what does this have to do with spiritual practice? Well, in my opinion, everything. Buddha taught about the perils of attachment. And of the numerous attachments, gender is high on the list.

It's no accident that monks and nuns of Buddha's order shaved their heads, wore patchwork robes, and abstained from sex. Among other things, this was an attempt to help cut through attachments to both one's biological body form, and also the socially constructed narratives around gender.

At the same time, it's impossible to ignore how difficult it was for the men of the Buddhist sangha throughout the centuries to break from their attachments to patriarchy. Even as they taught the perils of attachment, they themselves demonstrated a deep attachment to gendered narratives about wisdom and enlightenment.

In the minds of many Buddhist men historically, and even some still today, enlightenment was a man's domain. And any man who wanted it better "man up" in his practice. The obsession with marathon meditation retreats and hardcore, "balls busting" koan studies you see in some convert Zen communities reminds me a lot of this ancient mud.

On the one hand, "man up" is a pop culture phrase that probably is rarely heard in Buddhist circles. On the other hand, we do not live in a vacuum.

Growing up in sexist societies only increases the potential level of attachment to gender a person can have. Not only do you have the biological sex components to work with, but all the warped stories about what a woman is supposed to do, or what a man is supposed to do. Notice there is no room for a healthy gender spectrum here. Little wiggle room to explore and be flexible about identity. This is starting to change, but for every step towards more openness, there seems to be two going back.

If you take anything from this post, please consider this: gender is an important realm of practice. The path to awakening ultimately will take you through your beliefs about being a man, a woman, or gender non-conforming. Certainly, many never examine it at all. Being a "man" or a "woman" is simply a given. Others choose to ignore or bury such concerns, afraid of what they might find.

Don't be like that. Leave no stone you are aware of unturned.

Men, Crying, and Capitalism

Thanks to Katie over at the excellent blog Kloncke for pointing this article out. Consider this:

The male reluctance to shed tears is relatively new, says Tom Lutz, a University of California, Riverside professor. He traces this to the late 19th century, when factory workers—mostly men—were discouraged from indulging in emotion lest it interfere with their productivity.

Iconic historical and cultural depictions of men crying—in the Bible, Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus, for instance—have been overcome by more recent dictates discouraging men from crying. Biologically, and in the context of centuries and millennia, "male tears are the norm and males not crying is recent historical aberration," he says.

As a man who has rediscovered crying in recent years after a hell of a lot of stuffing it, I found this article compelling. Although it's probably the case that socialization at school and other places put it into my head that crying isn't ok for men, the day that solidified it for me was my grandfather's funeral.

I was 13 years old. As one of the pallbearers, I stood at the end of the line, watching the casket coming out of the hearse. Suddenly, I felt weak in the legs and turned away, just at the time when I should have been reaching up. My uncle screamed something nasty at me, jolting me back into place, to do my "job." I think I didn't forgive him for years for that.

Later that day, my grandmother came around and told all of us "Don't cry. You're grandfather wouldn't want you to cry." She was trying to support us, but this is often how grandma's support has been - kind of off. Anyway, her words that day, as well as my uncle's, stuck with me, leading the charge of all the other comments and views I'd heard saying that men don't cry, that we best be "tough," no matter what.

That's my micro-level story. Consider, though, the quote above, pointing to the fairly recent cultural origins of the suppression of male tears. Katie pointed out the ties to capitalism, and I'd make it more specific: the suppression of tears is directly tied to the rise of industrialized capitalism. And why might this be? Well, the way I see it, the worst aspects of capitalism turn humans into machines. Sometimes it's blunt, like forcing people to suppress emotional experiences around their work, and sometimes it's more subtle, like making people work a certain block of time every day, regardless of what their body rhythms are, how healthy they are, or what other needs they might have.

It's really telling how, given the suppression of male tears, there is so much trouble with men around issues of grief and loss. Think of some of the male alcoholics and drug addicts you've known or seen. Consider some of the men who end up behind bars for murders of spouses, partners, former partners, or family members. And what about those over calculating, uber-rational on the surface business leaders who die of heart attacks at age 55 or 60? I'd argue that some of these issues are related to the struggles many men have with crying, expressing grief, and working through grief.

So, I find it kind of promising that one of the beacons of capitalism, the Wall Street Journal, published an article like this. Not that I think it will suddenly help make a cultural shift around men and crying, but perhaps it will give some of those high powered business dudes permission to let go. And that's something at least.

Yoga, Feminism, and the World of Oppressions

It's been about two months now since I started my yoga teacher training program. Overall, it's been a wonderful experience, filled with little insights, and lots of learning. My own yoga practice has deepened and expanded. I have made some new friends. I have met some excellent teachers. And it's been a great way to burn through the last few months of winter.

Yet, it's also brought up in person some issues I have long read about in the larger American yoga community. The first night of my core class, someone brought up eating disorders and yoga, which tumbled for me into all the warped body issues we have in the U.S., especially when it comes to female bodies.

Another issue that's been on my radar is class. Unlike my old yoga studio in St. Paul which is pretty toned down in terms of things like designer yoga clothing and expensive mats, the place where I am doing my teacher training attracts - overall - a more affluent crowd. Or, at least, there are more people who are visibly affluent, something I've struggled a bit with. Free flowing discussions, for example, about spur of the moment vacations and attendance at high end yoga retreats are dead zones for someone like me, who has no experience doing either, and has never been in a financial position to really do so.

The thing is that I'd argue that this studio is a hell of a lot better than a majority of larger places. The leadership emphasizes the totality of yoga practice, is rigorous in it's class offerings, and doesn't seem to pander a lot to fluffy forms of yoga that might bring in more money, but do so at the expense of integrity. In fact, I believe that these issues I'm speaking about above are as much about how yoga is marketed and has been "branded" in a cultural sense, than anything in particular my yoga studio is doing.

And yet, there's a part of me that wonders what would happen if I didn't "blend" in as well as I do. If I was a little more ragged around the edges - less educated, a little more shabbily clothed. Long ago, I learned how to "pass" for an average middle class white American making a decent living, owning the "normal" things middle class folks do, and being able to afford things like regular vacations to distant educations, expensive accessories, and the latest Iphone.

My yoga training classmates don't know, for example, that I have never owned a car, haven't had health insurance for nearly a decade, and have to debate myself internally on a regular basis about adding anything "extra" to my life, like home internet service - primarily out of cost consciousness. The realty is that I have always been just above poor economically, with a middle class education. So, I'm kind of a tweener when it comes to class, something that can be challenging.

But class isn't the only marker that can cause distress for people who are interested in yoga. I found this excellent post by Natalia Thomp­son (no relation) about yoga and feminism. She writes:

There’s a rea­son that yoga is a con­tentious topic on many fem­i­nist blogs: not only is yoga a “bougie” trend (striv­ing to “just be” is a pretty priv­i­leged state of exis­tence), but the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of yoga car­ries dis­tinctly sex­ist under­tones. Amer­i­can Apparel’s recent reap­pro­pri­a­tion of yoga poses in their noto­ri­ously sex­ist ads is hardly the only offender; Yoga Jour­nal is also guilty of “tap­ping that yoga ass.” The fem­i­niza­tion of yoga has become all too com­mon: as one blog­ger notes, images of yoga fre­quently depict women in “bounded, con­torted, sex­u­al­ized positions.”

Over­sex­u­al­ized ads aside, the roots and phi­los­o­phy of yoga also pose a chal­lenge to fem­i­nist yogi­nis. As one fem­i­nist scholar and yoga teacher explains, “On our mats, we have the oppor­tu­nity to cul­ti­vate a wit­ness to how things are [and] learn to accept real­ity as it is, with­out judg­ment… But as a fem­i­nist, I am not accus­tomed to accept­ing things as they are.” Another fem­i­nist blog­ger trou­bles the ori­gins of yoga: accord­ing to her, it “is wrought from patri­ar­chal ide­olo­gies and power struc­tures that are his­tor­i­cally and con­tem­porar­ily per­va­sive in culture.”

From my own expe­ri­ences prac­tic­ing yoga, I’ve become painfully aware that the yoga stu­dio isn’t always a safe space for women and queer folks. I’ve had male teach­ers who have made sex­ual com­ments and touched female stu­dents inap­pro­pri­ately, and I could cer­tainly empathize with a queer yoga teacher’s account of attend­ing a Yoga Jour­nal con­fer­ence that was any­thing but inclu­sive: the (hetero)sexist norms reflected in yoga ads too often shape the spaces where yoga is prac­ticed. The yoga stu­dio should be a place where we escape the (unwanted) male gaze or the polic­ing of gen­der non-conforming bod­ies, but that’s not always the case.

To my current yoga studio's credit, they have developed a whole series of classes for plus-sized yogis and yoginis - recognizing the ways in which our collective thin people fetish has bled into the yoga world. In addition, there seems to be strong culture of ethics amongst the studio's teachers, which is evident by how much respect students are given, and how - as teacher trainees - we have discussions about things like requesting permission from students to do pose adjustments. This might sound basic to some of you, but the stories I have heard from classmates about experiences with teachers and other studios suggests to me that it's not as basic and commonplace as one would think.

But then there's some of the other issues Ms. Thompson mentions above. I wrote recently about an exchange between a few female students and a male teacher that exposed some of the male-centric, perhaps sexist issues of yoga as a historical discipline. I've written about race issues in Buddhist convert communities frequently, and I think some of that applies as well to the yoga world. During the weekend workshop I took in early March, I remember looking around at one point and thinking "Man, it's a sea of whiteness here." I can imagine the few people of color in the room felt like they were border crossing just to come practice. And then there's the gender-queer dimension brought up in Thompson's post. This one is perhaps harder to tease out, in part because talking directly about sexuality doesn't tend to be on the agenda in an average yoga class. Furthermore, just as I can pass as financially middle class, many queer folks can pass as straight. Or, perhaps it's more accurate to say that they are blended into the heterosexual norm by default. However, if you're a woman with a butch appearance and mannerisms or a decidely femme looking and acting man, it's hard not to stand out in the average yoga studio.

One of the challenges, as I see it, is figuring out ways to bring these topics into the regular discourse of yoga classes and trainings. Being a path of liberation, yoga needs to be more deliberately applied to the oppressive, destructive narratives that we all have ingested by growing up and/or living in this society. And it seems especially important that anyone who feels compelled to spread yoga to "the masses" best get on board with ways to de-centralize the current norms that privilege the experience of white middle and upper class, thin bodied, heterosexual yoga practitioners above all others.

None of this is meant to condemn American yoga as a hopeless cause. Or an indulgent, "bougie" activity. Despite the issues above, there's a lot of wonderful things happening in certain pockets of the American yoga scene. There IS plenty of substance and depth, but you have to look for it. And there are people looking at some of the difficult -isms that plague our lives on a daily basis, if perhaps in a piece-mail way. With more discussion, more sharing of ideas, approaches and experiences, it might be that somewhere down the road, a more thorough and inclusive method of interrogating oppression through yoga practice will come forth. A more total liberation depends upon it in my view. May it be so.

The Zen of Pointing at the Moon

I have been writing this blog for a little over two years now. Being a writer has been part of my life since I was a young kid scrawling goofy titles onto otherwise mundane homework assignments. So, you might say that I like to breathe life into words. To do my best to convey the world through this imperfect medium.

After some rocky efforts to explore what I'd call an alternative approach to disaster relief (see posts from the beginning of the week), and continued toe dipping as a man into the muddy world of feminist blogs, I came across this post by Arun from Angry Asian Buddhist. He writes:

Marginalization is a problem, but the issue isn’t race. I’ve typically framed the place of Asians in Western Buddhism as one where we’re marginalized by White Buddhists, but this framework glosses over the very same marginalization between different Asian communities. How often do you see Cambodian Buddhists attending Korean Zen centers, or Chinese Buddhist publications open their pages to Sri Lankan writers? And just as Asians Buddhists marginalize each other, so do White Buddhists.

One of the main themes of Arun's post is that the language he has been using failed to capture what he wanted to say. Furthermore, the language he used may have limited both his own vision, and that of his readers influenced by what he has said.

Now, my toe dipping on those feminist blogs has gone off and on for several months now. There are a lot of disagreements on these blogs, some of them extremely nasty, in part due to the same kinds of language problems. Say a word, phrase, or sentence that sounds like it supports some kind of oppression, and all hell breaks loose. On a few of those blogs, if you're a man who says it, it's almost certain all hell will break loose.

Like the race issues that lead to the argument Arun was in, gender issues are a deeply complex territory filled with people from various "schools of thought" trying to claim to have all the answers. Using language. Something that any of us Zen students worth a lick of salt know can't capture it all.

So, all of this has gotten me thinking about the ways in which people might be reading my writing, and others' writing. How I might be reading others' writing.

Writing that meta post the other day was a lot about the disaster relief discussion I was trying to have, but actually it was also about how everything I offer is partial. It's hopefully pointing in the right direction, a direction that leads towards a more liberated mind, body, and "spirit." However, even so, it's still partial, just as every last spiritual teaching on the planet is partial. Pointing to the moon, but not the moon. Right?

This doesn't mean that all writing is equally valuable. Equally helpful. Equally liberating. Some work aids moving towards liberation, while other work is just a hindrance. There's probably 1000X as much hindrance as there is liberation-centric material.

Yet, one of the things that witnessing and participating in all of these discussions has shown me is that, in order to find a way to speak, to write, in a manner that might spark liberation, a person must wade into the mud. You have to struggle to convey yourself, your understanding, your views, and your confusion - and through dialogue, experience, and even some conflict - the false and inaccurate parts are worn away, and the stone of truth comes forth.

Sometimes, this happens fairly quickly, and sometimes, it might take lifetimes. Battles over gender and race have been going on for centuries; there's no knowing if in my lifetime, enough of us will have liberated ourselves of oppressive narratives in order to shift the social tides. And regardless, it won't happen through language alone. No one can write the way to freedom for themselves, or the world. It's only one piece, an important one perhaps, but still only one form of expressing the total dynamic functioning of this life.

In fact, it's important to remember this even if someone is writing about something seemingly simple, like mindfulness while washing the dishes. That, too, might be a great lesson, or not. Perhaps they haven't found the language yet to truly express their understanding. And perhaps they're trying to express something they have no understanding or experience of at all. I've been on both those tracks. I doubt anyone is immune from doing so.

Every day is an opportunity to work with the particular mud before you, to see it and step right into it as best as you can. In my own life, writing has been one of the major tools I use to do this. It helps me to discern which mud is mine to work with, and which mud isn't.(There's plenty out there that isn't "your mud" or isn't "yours anymore," if you catch my drift.)

Maybe some of you have other major tools you use. Obviously, things like meditation and yoga would fit in here. But maybe you have other things - gardening, dancing, making music, painting - the list is probably endless. What points you in the direction of the moon (enlightened living)? And how do you offer as moon pointers to others?

I'll leave you all with a poem from Ryokan (1758-1831). Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

You stop to point at the moon in the sky,
but the finger's blind unless the moon is shining.

One moon, one careless finger pointing --
are these two things or one?

The question is a pointer guiding
a novice from ignorance thick as fog.

Look deeper. The mystery calls and calls:
No moon, no finger -- nothing there at all.