No Money in the West: Buddist Blogging, Purity, and Capitalism's Warped Narrative

As money, capitalism, and spiritual practice often seem to be on my mind, I found this post by Zen teacher James Ford to be comment-worthy. It was written in response to a spirited discussion held on the blog No Zen in the West about blogging about Zen and making money, which I participated in.

James writes:

Over at one of the blogs I like to read there’s some reflecting going on about whether to move to a host that will provide some support but who also have advertising. Sort of like what you see to the right of this posting…

The writers of that blog solicited comments from readers.

Of those who chose to respond it appears the majority are disdainful of going with advertising.

The premise seems to be that there should be no connection between the Dharma and money.

Reminds me of something I read a few years back where this perennial theme was once again being hashed out. The thing I recall was how one commentator said his teacher never took money for teaching. And then added how he had no idea how his teacher supported himself. The writer seemed to be suggesting this not knowing was a good thing. Pure.

Personally I found it creepy.

I think it important to make sure everyone has access to the Dharma.

I think there is nothing inherently unclean or unhealthy or impure about money.

In fact if one has any obligations in this world, family, paying attention to making a living is an obligation.

Here is my response.

James, I don't disagree with any of the major points you make. In fact, the example you brought up about the dharma student and his teachers makes me cringe as well.

However, what I saw and participated over at the No Zen blog was not a purity battle. It was a sincere questioning of how to operate as a committed spiritual practitioner in a capitalist environment. I have long been troubled by the myriad of ways in which capitalism has impacted the Western dharma world. It's something I have spent the past decade wrestling with, and this blog is littered with commentaries attempting, from various angles, to unearth and challenge the assumptions that have bled into our practice from our capitalist-dominated society. Like the idea that dana is solely or mostly about giving money. Or the ways in which many Zen communities have made it next to impossible for working class and poor people to be full participants.

The fact that the blog authors of No Zen offered a forum to discuss their decision to join or not join Patheos, rather than simply made a statement of disdain for advertising, should be applauded. Furthermore, as a fellow Buddhist blogger, I appreciated that they raised the challenges of blogging and sustaining one's self financially in public. More of us need to do so. It's helpful for readers to see, and also supportive for fellow writers.

James, something in your post feels dismissive to me. Perhaps I am overly sensitive to money issues these days. At the same time, it's easy for middle and upper class practitioners, who aren't struggling financially, to dismiss debates like the one on No Zen as purity arguments. It reminds me of the manner in which many Democrats love to dismiss Greens, Socialists, and others as stuck on purity. Sometimes they are right, but often it is they who are the stuck ones. Stuck on their own relative power and privilege.

Capitalism may be empty of inherent nature, but in the relative world, it's making a major mess of everything. Money is not inherently evil, but the structures and stories we have built around it are producing a hell of a lot of suffering.

You wrote that "Paying attention to making a living is an obligation." I'd argue that it's more apt to say "Pay close attention to HOW you make a living." In that how is not a call to dismiss money and claim that one is pure because of doing so. It's about overturning the stones, and discerning if that how is sufficiently beneficial to the world or not. Or at least has a good potential to be.

Perhaps you considered all of this before moving to Patheos and decided that was worth it. My decision was different.

Neither of us chose to be very public about what we were pondering though, whereas the guys at No Zen did. Again, I thank them. If I had thought to do so, I would have done something similar on my blog.

Conversations about money and class in Zen are often fraught with bullshit posturing and hand wringing. It strikes me that you got a whiff of that in some of the comments over at No Zen, and it brought up numerous memories of similar discussions you've witnessed. While I am defending No Zen and the discussion as a whole, I also got a whiff of purity from a few of those comments.

However, they do not reflect the whole, not even close. And what you wrote reminded me of so many discussions and debates I have had about money and dharma - in my own sangha and online - where working class and poor folks were marginalized or left out in the cold entirely.

It's time for all of this to become more open, transparent, and frankly risky. Too often, we Zennies speak of liberation, but fail to risk the whole nine yards of ourselves. To place the cultures and social norms we have built ourselves out of on the fire, and let it all be burned straight through if necessarily through deep inquiry.

What's most creepy to me is how willingly many Zen practitioners unquestioningly uphold - and even enforce - middle class, capitalist norms, both as individuals and as communities of individuals. Something has got to give.

In closing, I'll offer one idea I just had. A Buddhist bloggers co-operative. It's been floated before, but here it is again. You get bloggers together under a collective platform, and build a shared fundraising mechanism or set of mechanisms that raise money and other support for writers in a manner that perhaps subverts capitalist norms. Or at least undercuts some of the bite.

The point of offering the co-op idea is to suggest that things can be different. That human minds and hearts can creatively address the challenges we face. Purity/evil. Democrats/Republicans. Capitalism/socialism. All those binaries are tired and wasteful. Dead ends. Lacking creativity. And in the end, clinging to either end of them really does little to solve the myriad of challenges more people are facing as the worlds' major economies are crumbling.

I have said enough. It's your turn. Go at it.

Send Yoga, Guns, and Money

You ever seen anyone with a pistol come into your yoga class? Me neither. With that said, I'd like to recommend that folks go over to the blog Think Body Electric and read Carol's current post, which takes up the topic among other things. For our purposes here, though, I actually want to address a comment Carol made to another reader on her post, which I believe offers some interesting nuggets to chew on.

I take it as a given that any spiritual or religious practice is going to be integrated with the culture that surrounds it in one way or another. If it didn't, it wouldn't be meaningful to anyone.

Therefore, it's not that yoga "needs to be associated with cultural liberalism" - the fact is that, historically, it has been (e.g., all Eastern spiritual practices became much more popular in the US after the Beatles went to study TM in India in the 1960s). During the 2000s, it's become more commercialized and mainstream, and more associated with the cultural nexus represented by women's magazines (self-care, self-help, fitness, beauty, etc.). Now, I see another shift happening, with yoga starting to become more associated with the cultural right (used to train the military, promote Ayn Rand, etc.). All that is simply empirical observation.

When it comes to values, mine are that I'd like to see yoga (and meditation) play a progressive role in our culture. That doesn't mean rehashing the existing conservative/liberal, right/left divide, which is destructive and dead-end. We need something new.

That said, because I care about social equity, civil rights, environmental protection, etc., that put me very much on the left-of-center side of the spectrum. But I see the Occupy movement as the start of something new. Ideally, I'd like yoga to have something positive to contribute to that. I think that what Michael Stone is saying in that regard is great. I'd like to see more in that vein.

When I first read this, I thought of convert American Buddhism. Because debates about the political orientation of practitioners have been widespread in recent years. Like what Carol is pointing to above with yoga, there has also been an increasing number of folks who claim both Buddhism and more conservative political viewpoints. And with that, much discussion has come as to what role, if any, social and political issues have in the practice.

In her post, Carol makes reference to both Buddhists and yoga practitioners who also are gun owners. And then goes on to address the issue of gun ownership specifically for self-defense purposes, something she - and I, for the record - am not enamored with. In fact, I was in a discussion yesterday with a member of our local Occupy group who once was a member of the Tea Party, in large part because of second amendment rights. When I mentioned the fact that pro conceal carry laws have greatly expanded over the past two decades, he basically shrugged, saying he felt the need to continue fighting for his rights.

While I personally would love to be in a world without guns all together, I also don't think that mere gun ownership is an issue in and of itself. Furthermore, it's vitally important that both convert American Buddhism and American yoga be open and accessible to anyone, regardless of their political views.

However, what concerns me - and perhaps is the main underlying issue for Carol as well - is the sense that the self-defense arguments of certain gun enthusiasts tend to run counter to the non-violent aim of both Buddhism and yoga. Note that I said aim, as in non-violent intentions, and also making whatever effort you can towards manifesting non-violence in your actions, knowing that we all fall short.

I'm actually most interested in a community, or collective standpoint, and am less interested in focusing on the common self-defense narrative of a single incident where someone successfully (or unsuccessfully) defends themselves during a crime.

Living in communities where anyone, potentially, could be packing heat increases the general anxiety and fear of the entire community. Not only do you have to be concerned about people who have unlawfully acquired guns, but also with those who have them legally, and might be responding to crime with their weapons. This is probably especially true in densely populated, urban areas, where people are more anonymous, and where crime is more of an everyday occurrence.

Consider these words from Thich Nhat Hanh:

The philosophy of "an eye for an eye," only creates more suffering and bloodshed and more enemies. One of the greatest casualties we may suffer results from this wrong thinking and action. Whole societies are living constantly in fear with their nerves being attacked day and night. Such a state of confusion, fear and anxiety is extremely dangerous. It can bring about another world war, this time extremely destructive in the worst possible way.

Part of the problem I have always had with second amendment enthusiasts who aren't hunters (hunting is a different discussion in my opinion), is that their arguments tend to focus on individuals defending themselves against individuals. Occasionally, someone will also bring up being able to defend "ourselves" against a rogue military or government, but mostly, it's about protection from individually targeted crime. Which isn't the whole picture.

What's the overall impact of more guns on our communities? On each of us? On the environment? Can a society that upholds gun ownership as a collective response to potential violence also be aiming in the direction of overall non-violence?

Although I tend to support any efforts to reduce the number of guns in circulation, the larger issue is really one of approaching the violent seeds each of us carry within ourselves, and which also come together collectively in our communities and nations. Whether someone in my yoga studio or Zen sangha owns a gun is less important to me than how they handle violence in their lives. At the same time, it's difficult for me to forget the periods of history when large groups of Buddhists twisted elements of Buddha's teachings to support warfare and violent oppression. Given the collective energy here in the United States, it's possible something similar could happen in the future.

I'd like to leave you all with the plea from the end of the Thich Nhat Hanh essay quoted above. However each of us move forward, it seems pertinent.

Spiritual leaders in this country need to be invited to raise their voice strongly and speak up for peaceful solutions to the world problems and bring about the awareness of the teaching of compassion and non-violence to the American nation and the people.

By understanding the nature and cause of the suffering of humanity, we will then know the right method to begin to heal the great problems on this planet.

* A nod to the late musician Warren Zevon for inspiring the title of this post.

Zen Finances and Practice

Algernon over at Notes from a Burning House has a thought provoking post about, among other things, the costs of running a Zen center, retreats, and the power of having to ask for help. I agreed with a lot of what he had to say, but did find myself thinking a bit differently about a few points. Algernon writes:

Buddhist centers are in a bind because the dharma should be free for all. This value does not apply to rent, repairs to a roof, heating and cooling a space, utilities and insurance, or flying a teacher to the location for a retreat. Deming Zen Center is almost 100% donation-only, and sometimes that bites us in the back. Operating a Zen Center on the basis of dana is very difficult even when everyone chips in. Sometimes people don't.

So there is a need for fees, even though it establishes financial gates and is a factor in the oft-reported trend that Buddhist practitioners are middle-class and up. Privileged, in other words.

One of the commenters on this article also points out the difficulty of retreats, not just because of fees but also time. Very few people are able to take time away from work to participate in 7-day retreats or longer. Many centers (including ours) do shorter retreats on weekends to allow for more participation, but this is a compromise: a short retreat is very different than an extended retreat.

Unfortunately, the commenter is led to question the importance of retreats: "It's possible that the problem lies not with the cost of retreats but with over-emphasis on the retreat model altogether." Note we are now embracing the language of capitalist enterprise: the retreat is spoken of as a product, part of a business model.

Now, here are my thoughts.

1. I think there is something valuable behind the guy's point about "retreat models," even if it's a bit off in terms of view.

As a long time Zen practitioner who has done retreats, but isn't doing much in that vain right now, I notice an in-group, out-group flavor amongst convert Zennies. If you're doing retreats fairly regularly, you're seen as "deeply practicing." If you're not, or never have, then your practice is viewed as suspect. I think this kind of division is a false one built up around the models of practice we have here in North America and in Europe. Sesshin practice, though quite powerful and excellent, is simply one form available to us.

2. To me, there is sacrifice and commitment on the one hand, and there are issues of privilege and life circumstances on the other. Katagiri Roshi used to tell parents with really young children that their main practice was "shikan-baby." Which makes sense to me. And I think there are plenty of people who have practices that don't "look deep," but whom are powerful, compassionate people in the world. My own experience has been one of working with the ebbs and flows without pressing, or doing things mostly for approval. Which has been challeging at times, given my position in our sangha, and the years of practice I have behind my belt.

3. I'm right there with you about the benefits of practicing "the ask." I have had to ask for fee reductions and wavers at zen center several times in recent years, and it's been a learning process about trust and letting go of "image." In fact, I kind of wish there were a way to create that opportunity for everyone in our sanghas. The closest thing seems to be - at least in our sangha - asking the teacher to do jukai or become a priest. But a lot of folks never go that far, so maybe there are other ways to do it for the average lay practitioner.

4. Finally, I also support breaking middle class norms in order to place your spiritual practice in the forefront. This is something I have done constantly, choosing to have much, much less in disposable income and material possessions, so I could have more time and opportunity to practice in different ways.

I'd like to expand on the point about "asking for help," especially financial help, but maybe that would be a good post on it's own.

So, what are you're thoughts on all of this?

Sweeping Zen Needs Your Help

Sweeping Zen, a virtual warehouse of all things Zen, is quickly becoming a great resource for folks interested in the convert Zen world. Adam Tebbe, the editor, has spent countless hours doing interviews with Zen teachers, assembling links to various Zen communities, collecting teacher bios, and many other things. He's currently trying to raise a little money to support hosting the website. His ask is quite modest, and I figured I'd offer my readers an opportunity to help Adam grow this resource.

Here's an excerpt from his current post:

This website has been growing in popularity, which is a wonderful development I’ve been working toward for the last two years. From month to month we receive more visitors and, recently, there has been a huge spike in visitors averaging about 1000 visitors per day this month. That is encouraging and I hope to see this trend continue. The problem may be remedied by a simple cache mechanism being put in place. However, with 72 hours to bring down CPU, my goal is to have a backup plan (ie., dedicated server for hosting). If we garner enough monthly support I will upgrade to a dedicated server as we’ll need one at some point in the future, given the trajectory of statistics.

I have considered adding a pay pal button to Dangerous Harvests, in part because I haven't been working for the last five months, and so money is going out, but not really coming in. Making money on this blog was never on the radar before, and I'm still not terribly concerned about it one way or the other.

But I do like to support my fellow bloggers out there, many of whom graciously share their experiences, research on topics, and questions about life to all of us, and who rarely ask for anything in return. Adam's blog is one of those, so if you have few bucks, send it his way. Thanks.

Buddhist Without Money

Not having a job for the past three and half months, I have had a lot of time to think about money, and my relationship with it. If I were to characterize the dominant theme of my adulthood, it would be fears of lack and actions based on stinginess. Both of these views have loosened over the past couple of years, but they still tend to dominate.

Given the society I live in, that's exactly what is desired. It's the most "beneficial" outcome for a human being in the United States (and many other countries). A belief in lack and scarcity, and deeply seated fears of having nothing, going bankrupt, and being abandoned to starve or die of some untreated illness are hallmarks of a good consumer. Trying to fill the empty pit in your gut is the way the economy runs, the way fat cats get their millions, the way the government has enough money to conduct extravegant wars in far off nations to procure more power and resources to keep the whole thing going. Not only does having material wants and being able to satisfy them make me "a good citizen" in the eyes of others, but it also is one of the very "skills" that supposedly defines me as a person at all.

There's very little I'm fully certain of these days. But I'm quite certain that this way of living, and determining the value of human lives, and other lives for that matter, is entirely deranged.

Heidemarie Schwermer has spent the last 13 years living without money. It's been a deliberate series of choices she made, slowly ridding herself of nearly everything she owns, finding that at each step of the way, she felt healthier, happier, and more alive. Others have does this before her, notibly a woman who renamed herself Peace Pilgrim, and walked over 25,000 miles, criss crossing the North American continent spreading a message of peace.

Schwermer's story, like Peace Pilgrim's, is probably extreme looking to the average eye. However, I'm a firm believer that the world needs people willing to step completely out of the norm and give birth to something entirely different, in order for a new way of thinking and being to spread.

Ideally, Schwermer would like to lead by example and give other people courage to change their attitudes towards money and how they live in and contribute to society. The pressure to buy and to own, she feels, has intensified in recent years. Consumerism is essentially about “an attempt to fill an empty space inside. And that emptiness, and the fear of loss, is manipulated by the media or big companies.” There is a fear, she says, that in not buying or owning an individual will fall out of society. The irony, she claims, is that material goods can never plug a spiritual hole and shopping and hoarding are more likely to isolate people than bring contentment. Does she intend to start a revolution?

“No, I think of myself as planting the seed,” she says. “Perhaps people come away from my lectures or seeing me being interviewed and decide to spend a little less. Others might start meditating. The point is that my living without money is to allow for the possibility of another kind of society. I want people to ask themselves, ‘What do I need? How do I really want to live?’ Every person needs to ask themselves who they really are and where they belong. That means getting to grips with oneself.”

It's been quite interesting to me how often thoughts have come up in recent months that tie my "worth" to monetary earnings and the ability to purchase things and experiences. I have been slowly venturing back into dating again, and those thoughts are often with me. She's going to turn the other way when she learns you're not working right now. It's bad enough you don't drive, don't own a house, etc. I used to feel terrible about all this. I had the intellectual understanding that having money and stuff isn't correlated with joy and awakening, but couldn't break through my fears around "identity," and specifically being a person who doesn't go along with the norm. There was lots of internal battles, and movements back and forth between not giving a crap about money and possessions, and thinking I needed to "keep up" in a modest way so I'd pass for being "ok."

Now, I find that the inner turmoil has lessened greatly, and I'm groping along for a new way to think and be around money and things. It's exciting, but scary at times. I can imagine many people reach this place, and then find the lack of a clear direction just brings up too much fear, so they leap back into the old model: taking some job they tolerate or faintly enjoy, buying more stuff, and trying to prove to their lovers, family, friends, and the world that they, too, are "worthy."

In my opinion, people like Heidemarie are trying to remind us that there is more power, joy, and depth in healthy communities than in privatized, individual lives. Some would say she's an idealist caught in a utopian dream. Some would say she's a Communist. Some would say she's a lunatic. I've been called all of these myself, and I haven't even taken the drastic steps she has.

In addition, the kind of bartering that Heidemarie's life thrives on is actually part of an emerging trend around the world. In some places, skills and material sharing have always been a constant, out of necessity and/or out of a belief that it's the best way to treat others and keep a community alive. In other places, like the U.S. and Germany, skills and material sharing are being rediscovered as people struggle finanically, and also have discovered that having material wealth hasn't brought the kind of happiness and depth of experience they thought it would.

And it's no accident, in my view, that part of the process Heidemarie has gone through has included meditation practice. How do you make these kinds of radical shifts without paying close attention the life you have now, the thoughts and feelings you have now?

Early on, Schwermer wanted to help the homeless. Like a lot of people, she really didn't know anyone who was homeless, or even much about being homeless, and as a result, her efforts flopped. Although she has changed so much through the years, she still hasn't had much "success" with her initial goal.

“I haven’t managed to reach the homeless,” she says. “I did hold lectures for the homeless but only six or seven showed up. They didn’t want to hear it. One of the men there accused me of having ‘connections’, that I’d only been able to do what I have been able to do because I knew people. I do have contacts, that’s what this new world is all about, forging links and contacts. Otherwise it wouldn’t work.”

Lectures probably aren't the way. Who wants to listen to someone who had a middle class life in the past lecture about how to live without money?

However, I think she's totally right that making connections and forging links is a huge part of shifting one's way of thinking and living with money and material possessions.

One of the deepest sicknesses of the modern, "market driven" world is a heart-crushing isolation and disinitigration of community. Some people stay homeless for decades because they can't get anyone to pay attention to them, and/or feel unworthy of that attention. Others lives lives that appear to be functioning "fine" - have jobs, homes, stuff - but are equally bereft of the ability to connect with others, and feel worthy of being connected to. Within all of this there is a personal responsibility to pay attention to one's life, and be willing to cross into an unknown future, often with fears in hand. However, that's only a small part of the story.

The brave few will continue to break through, and offer different ways to live and be. However, until more of us take them up on the offer to fully, deeply, and thoroughly examine our lives - individually and collectively - then they will remain the brave few.

Blaming poor people for having nothing, and not being willing change that, is the garbage of the current model. Striving for more stuff, and fearing profound lack, is also the garbage of the current model. It's a hallmark of this model of living actually: producing garbage.

May we find a healthier, more liberated set of ways.

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.