Children, Families, and American Zen

This morning, three of our high school students at zen center gave the dharma talk. Each of them grew up in the Youth Practice program we have, and are now preparing to take jukai along with the adult group this fall. It brought to mind this old post I wrote for Buddhist Geeks a few years ago that considered children and teens (or often the lack there of) in American convert Buddhist communities.

Here's one of the points I made in the post, an issue I feel my own sangha has gone to great strides to not fall into.

2. Uber-Individualism—Buddhists in the “West,” especially convert Buddhists, struggle with building long lasting, sustainable communities. Children and teens aren’t always welcome, let alone considered vital members of the sangha. But beyond Buddhism, community in general is quite challenged in places like the U.S. Whereas in the past, friends, neighbors, and community elders were all to some degree or another considered part of the extended parenting family, today for most children, these people are often viewed with suspicion. Teachers, spiritual leaders, and other community leaders are also viewed as much with suspicion as being potentially good influences on children. Now, certainly there are valid reasons for some of this suspicion, and I think it’s quite important for parents to be careful and minimize risks, but how much of the breakdown in community in general is due to obsession with the nuclear family, and an excessive focus on individuality?

Several years ago, I taught the 2nd and 3rd grade class in our program, and all three of the high schoolers that spoke today were in those classes with me. It speaks volumes that not only were they able to come before us this morning to offer what they have learned on the path, but also that we - the rest of the sangha - provided that space and sought to uphold them as we do our teachers.

Integrations like this haven't always been easy or smooth, but it's been worth it. We aren't the only ones doing this sort of thing, but it's still rare amongst convert communities.

I hope many other lay sanghas follow suit.

And Happy Mother's Day to you all!

You're a Mindfulness Teacher, Right?

The other day, I was in a meeting at the yoga center I teach meditation at, and the other meditation teacher and I were talking about student numbers. I said I had a few regulars in my class now, and he said "That's because you teach mindfulness, right?" I had a very odd reaction. Almost straight aversion. I responded that I teach a lot of practices, not just mindfulness. But the response was muddy at best, and I've been left with this curious feeling about it all.

I'm almost certain he wasn't thinking of Sati, the Pali word for Buddhist mindfulness, which is steeped in ethical considerations as well as development of attention skills. He was probably more thinking of the pop mindfulness that I've written so much about in recent years. At the same time, the classes I've been teaching haven't been highly focused on social ethics or connecting big picture issues. That's more one element among many. Nor could what I've been offering be reduced to mindfulness of any variety. Again, that's one element among others. My whole goal has been to offer a diversity of gates into meditation, and the classes has focused on everything from grief for recently lost pets to reflecting on our roles in supporting the health of the planet.

Anyway, as I was reading this article - yet another critique piece on the Wisdom 2.0 conference - I thought of this odd feeling I had being labeled a "mindfulness" teacher, and how corrupted that word seems to have become. To the point where part of me doesn't even want to claim it, because doing so without an explanation doesn't seem right anymore.

Updates from Zen Land

My writing here has dropped off a bit in recent months. However, I haven't been idle. It's actually been a big season of growth for me and those around me.

On Sunday, our sangha held a council to affirm a new head teacher. Our current head teacher will be moving into a "senior" role, where she'll be able to focus on what she wants to study and teach. The council was rather remarkable because it truly was an affirmation. People spoke movingly to the gifts our current teacher has brought to the community over the years, and also to their support and excitement for the new head teacher. I've been in plenty of meetings where people played nice in order to preserve some false sense of unity. There wasn't any of that here. No jealousy or suspicion. No hidden agendas being played out. Just wave after wave of goodness, which gives me hope for the other issues that lie ahead for us in the coming months, including finding a new building to move to.

Meanwhile, on my end, after about 15 years of study and self practice, I've decided to do something bigger with my herbal medicine knowledge. Today, I launched NGTHerbals, celebrating the power of plants, our interconnected planet, and offering handmade herbal tinctures steeped in my love for all things green. Please help me spread the word!

Here's a short selection from the first blog post over there. Don't worry, though. I'll need to find a new balance now, but I'm not quitting Dangerous Harvests. In the meantime, enjoy a bit of plant love!

"Dandelion, plantain, goldenrod, milk thistle, nettle. Behind the invasive species labels often slapped on them are a storehouse of health benefits. From the liver detoxifying power of Dandelion to the anti-inflammatory nature of Nettle, these weeds seemed to have it all.

And yet there was more to it than just the medicinal benefits. Like the way they taught me about my mind. How the nettle patch, for example, mirrored the way my critical thinking sometimes turned into heavy negativity and pessimism. Once I slip past the border, the negativity literally takes over, stinging parts of my body and leaving it tense and pained."

Marketing the Self and Spiritual Discernment

Marketing of the self. Aren't we taught to do that pretty early on in life? You gotta stand out or you'll be forgotten, right? You better promote or you will never be successful, right?

I believe there is a double bind around all of this in modern societies. The human tendency to self cherish is the main dish. Humans have been eating it, probably since the beginning of our species. In addition to the main dish is a set of side dishes called consumerism, capitalism, and commodification. Ever seductive, they add endless flavors and textures onto the main dish. I suppose it might be the case that plain old self cherishing gets kind of dull after awhile. It's so much more exciting to be the hot, new product on the block. Or the respected, reliable old one.

The pressure to be a product is damn strong, so much so that even spiritual teachers are falling for it in droves. Being a person with some wisdom mixed with a bag full of delusion doesn't feel good enough. Being a person who takes a shit and can't quite wipe it all clean isn't sexy enough. Being a person who is articulate one minute, and has nothing helpful to say the next just doesn't cut it. And so, we end up with teachers with trademarks at the end of their names. Teachers who spew endless amounts of flowery language. Teachers who market themselves as healers, and then end up abusing the hell out of anyone who gets close to them.

It is any wonder that so many of us are so confused in this life?

Some people get really irritated with me when I start talking about systems and collective conditions. They say things like "Zen practice is about you. Focus on yourself and stop pointing the finger at others." But this isn't about simple judgment. This isn't about damning those trademarked teachers to hell. It's about cultivating an awareness of the larger patterns that are influencing our thinking and behavior. About seeing as conditioned much of what we think is "normal," and that to the extent that we continue mindlessly eating it, we'll be used and controlled by it.

*If you haven't seen them already, I have multiple new posts up over at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. You can check them out here.

The Woo in "Western" Yoga and Buddhism

Carol Horton has a new post on her blog Think Body Electric concerning woo and yoga communities. It has a lot of thought provoking stuff in it, as she seeks to - in my opinion - come to a more balanced attitude about ideas and practices that might fall into the "New Agey" category.

I would like to take up the following comment, that comes after some discussion about abusive yoga gurus and manipulative, control based yoga communities that seem heavily reliant on woo. Carol writes:

I strongly believe that it would be helpful if the yoga community developed a much more active connection to relevant dimensions of Western psychology. This has already happened in the convert Buddhist community, where excellent work connecting meditation and psychotherapy has been going on for decades. In the yoga community, however, there’s much more of a default toward New Age thinking. Generally speaking, I think this is a problem.

When I first read this paragraph, I had a pretty strong reaction. Why? Because I believe the marriage of western psychology with Buddhist teachings in North America has been the penultimate double-edged sword. On the one hand, there have been books like Harvey Aronson's Buddhist Practice on Western Ground, which have offered practitioners a wonderful window into exploring the connections, as well as great differences, between psychological theories and Buddhist teachings. And certainly, for those coming from psychologically damaged backgrounds who have entered Buddhist communities or taken up Buddhist practices, having an emphasis on the psychological element of Buddha's teachings has often meant the difference between sanity and insanity. Probably even life and death for some folks.

However, there is another side of the coin. It's quite easy to find teachers, books, and entire Buddhists communities that have reduced the dharma to primarily or solely about the psychological and emotional dimensions of life. Amongst this subsection of Western convert Buddhists, teachings that are vast and subtle, and which contain layer and layer of pointers, get shunted into what amounts to a self-improvement project in Buddhist clothes. While everything in the dharma points to the extremely fluid and limited life span of emotional reactions, this is where the bulk of time is spent amongst these folks, fixating on every last tinge of anger, fear, and sadness, as if in doing so, perhaps one day they might become the "perfect" human animal, able to exude some peaceful calmness, not influenced by anything in their past (especially their childhoods) under all conditions.

Furthermore, because psychology and Western convert Buddhism have been so cozy, it is has attracted a lot of psychologists, including active therapists who have risen to the ranks of teachers. And unfortunately, this had led to some troubling blurring between spiritual practice and therapy, between Buddhist teacher and therapist. The exchanges between Brad Warner and Barry Magrid during a recent dharma talk at Ordinary Mind Zendo constitute a weird example of this dynamic in action. But on a more mundane level, you have all those students who struggle to not treat their interactions in the sangha with others, especially the head teacher, as a form of therapy.

All of this is to say that I think merging western psychology with any spiritual practice is best done with great care.

And when it comes to the North American yoga community and it's "woo problems," I'd argue that this more so due to the continual efforts to divorce the spiritual teachings and philosophy of yoga from the physical practices. As well as the failure to integrate meditation, and the other subtle practices, into the physical work (asanas) in such a manner that it brings people the foundational ground upon which to unfold their lives on. Too many people want to drink Yoga Lite - something heavy on body work, and less filling on everything else. And they'll defend that almost to the death if necessary, never mind that non-attachment is at the core of everything yoga.

In some ways, the sweaty, physical asana classes peppered with happy sounding phrases and self improvement cliches is the yoga community's version of the Western convert Buddhist self-improvement project. Both offer an opportunity for better health, less destructive thinking, and more grounded behavior. All nice benefits, and certainly not something to dismiss. But at the same time, neither of these approaches are focusing on the profoundly vast awakening teachings at the core of both Buddhism and yoga.

Reducing the woo in yoga communities comes when there is an increasing focus on the whole works of yogic practice and thought. It comes when teachers, students, studio owners and yogic writers stop offering placating sugars, and start offering holistic, well-balanced meals. That can include servings of intelligently considered psychology, but must be more than just using psychological theories as the missing "healthy vitamin" to an otherwise fast-food like practice diet.

The Dark Side of Core Values

This entire post is an excellent romp through some of the dark side of the yoga world, but I was particularly struck by some of the comments made.

Someone named AMO said the following:

When a person is surrounded by gorgeous young bodies, vibrating around their energy and exclaiming - "oh great yogi god of mine, teach me, teach me!" it is too much power for most people to handle. I know ego is my greatest character flaw. Especially ego connected to my deepest value, the value of helping others, of being of use. The dark side of that value, and all our values have a dark side, is I can slip proudly into the role of YOUR TEACHER if you show any signs of worshiping me.

Oye! I know this one all too well, having been an ESL teacher for many years, as well as an organizational leader in a non-profit, and at my zen center. Spending the past few weeks in this liminal place I'm in, I have watched this wanting to be helpful and loved because of it energy arise again and again.

Last Monday, I went over to an old student's apartment and tried to fix her computer. Even though I really didn't do much, she was grateful for a little bit of my time and also was asking if I might help out with some other things. I hesitated to offer more time on another day, and then later realized that this has been a strong pattern for me. I had to call her and tell her I didn't have time to help out right now because I knew if I did, I'd be playing that role again, and not getting the opportunity to examine it more closely.

What I have seen is that when I feel useful, helpful, or am "doing good," all seems "right" with the world. When what I am doing or not doing doesn't seem to be useful or helpful, all seems "not right" with the world. This isn't true 100% of the time, but both poles are a common experience for me.

There is an addictive quality to being considered the "teacher" or the "do gooder" and it can be at its worst with spiritual leaders precisely because they are so close to the source of all experience.

Another commenter, YogiOne, added this provocative paragraph:

Yogis expect Yogis to act better than others (We should know better). Christians expect Christians to act better than other people too. Same for Buddhists, Muslims, Jains, Hindus, etc. Perhaps these expectations are not realistic. Perhaps the identification with Yoga (or any of the other groups) rather than with our personal practice is part of the problem.

This identification process is insidious, and actually - in my experience anyway - is pretty subtle. In the beginning, you start taking in these new ideas, and there's a level of excitement. Maybe you see some tangible improvements in your life. You aren't as angry or sad, and/or maybe your body feels healthier. And then you become committed to the path you have chosen. You have scrutinized your life, made deliberate changes, and have become more willing to watch your faults. It's really easy to assume under these conditions that you "should be acting better" than others. In fact, sometimes it's completely true that you can handle things better, and people begin to uphold you as someone who can handle things better, which just adds another layer.

It's important, at the end of the day, to not idealize even the most life-affirming teachings and values. Everything can be flipped over in ways that bring tremendous suffering, perhaps especially that which can awaken and liberate us.