Occupy Wall Street - Training Ground in Garbage Removal

I was touched by the reflectiveness of a post by Genju over at 108 Zen Books about, among other things, the Occupy Wall Street movement. She writes:

letting go. That was pretty dominant in the two weeks past if only as a realization that I can be releasing my death grip on all manner of fixations, metaphors of Self, and craven desires and what is apparent to the eye or ear could be as simple as a “yes” or “no.”

I practiced this noticing on our (now) annual trip to NYC where we met up with friends, one of whom was running the NYC Marathon. In the days before the race, we toured around the city and as Chaplains we felt it was important to head down to Occupy Wall Street to bear witness to the beginnings of this very powerful shift in societal awareness – as confusing as the process may seem at times. Personally, I still don’t quite know what I feel about it all but I was intent on bringing myself to that place of discomfort and watch the “yes” and “no” surface over and over again. Since the beginning of the Occupy movement, I’ve felt a huge level of discomfort, edging on the hyper-vigilance you might feel if you think you’re being blamed for enjoying unearned assets. I’m beginning to hate those websites that tell you’re part of the 1% or the 99%. (I’m neither unless you consider a global or restricted range as a measure of income.) I dislike now feeling the need to justify what I have, what I bought, what I pictures I upload to Facebook, what trips I take, and what my groceries cost.

I resonate with her discomfort. All the judgments about being wealthy, being poor, and the rest were there before Occupy began, but now it's so much more out in the open, which can definitely be unnerving. As an active member of our Occupy group here in Minnesota, I've been called numerous names over the last month. I and my fellow Occupiers have often been dismissed as lazy, privileged bums, never mind that the majority of us have either spent years struggling to make ends meet, or are completely broke and homeless.

Various "personal responsibility" narratives get trotted out over and over again by public officials, members of the mainstream media, and others, all operating on the basic assumption that if people just worked harder, followed the rules, and kept their shopping impulses under control, they'd be fine. Never mind that in many cases, working hard and following the rules has led folks to the unemployment line, or the underemployment line. Never mind that the entire economy is built on people not controlling their shopping impulses. Never mind ...

Occupy has been a great training ground for letting go of all that noise. Of not internalizing garbage, and also trying not to exude garbage as well. Furthermore, it's an endless schooling on the workings of greed, hatred, and ignorance. I was a part of a conversation the other day which turned way ignorant for a few minutes as two men, one a middled-aged white man and the other a young Native American man, spoke about how Somali immigrants were being handed everything under the sun tax-free. As this shift in the conversation happen, I felt myself getting really pissed, and almost let that enter the conversation. Instead, I decided to just shut up and wait until something else came to my mind.

Finally, it dawned on me that this is the age old pattern of poor people against poor people. Of hatred and ignorance keeping those often suffering most divided.

And so I said to these guys "In my experience, almost none of what you are saying is true. The vast majority of recent immigrants are struggling as much or even more than you are. However, regardless of what you think of that, this is a classic case of the poor pitted against the poor. And it's exactly why nothing seems to change because we sit and fight against each other over small things, instead of come together over all that we share."

There was an immediate shift in the conversation at that point, one that I serious doubt would have happened if I had just torn into these guys.

These kinds of interactions are happening all over the place right now. Strangers, or relative strangers, attempting to speak their minds about complex social issues, and having the opportunity to learn how to listen, pause, and find a common thread between the views being shared. It's messy. Unnerving at times. Some people just can't handle sustained engagement, but I see others really making the effort.

This could be a tipping point towards a more just and engaged society. Perhaps world even. I'm well aware that it all could end and go back to some slightly altered variation of the current "normal," but life isn't worth living if you don't dream big, huge even. So, I'm opting to stand in possibility, to plant whatever seeds I can towards a dream that may or may not come.

Humor and Buddhism

I read a letter in the current issue of Buddhadharma magazine that took aim at this discussion, about the role of humor in Buddhist practice. During the discussion, Zen teacher Bernie Glassman speakes about wearing a clown nose during dharma talks and doing other silly things during meditation retreats. Another Zen teacher, Norman Fischer, points out that the old Zen teachings are full of humor, and then recounts a story where Suzuki Roshi shook up a student who was attached to his identity as a vegetarian by flipping meals on him at a restaurant, so that the guy was faced with eating a hamburger. There's a lot of juicy stuff in this conversation, but one of the salient points everyone seems to make is how humor can be a great gateway to liberation.

The author of the letter in response to this discussion apparently felt otherwise. She spoke of there being "a time and place" for humor and antics, but sternly disapproved of any goofing off in the zendo, especially during meditation retreats. I can imagine there are many people out there like her, feeling that we must "be serious" about our practice and all.

It kind of made me sad reading that letter, and got me to thinking about how the "adult story" in general seems almost devoid of play, silliness, and fun. And how "adult humor" so often feels tinged with judgments of others, sarcasm, or excessive displays of wit. Or it's flat out stupid due to predictability, like jokes about stoners, blondes, or other such stereotypically laughed at groups of people.

Furthermore, the letter also brought up the general over-seriousness that I think plagues western convert Buddhist practitioners. Myself included. During a recent Sunday service, our head teacher and the assistant were doing the bowing and incense before the talk, and for whatever reason, it all struck me as humorous. A big smile came to my face, and I felt myself starting to laugh, but then stuffed it at the last second, so as not to "disrupt" the ritual. And then I thought: what was that about?

Anyway, this is kind of the flip side to what happened over at Elephant Journal, and the various other stories that followed it. Humor is tricky stuff. It flops fairly often. And yet, without playfulness, well-placed jokes, and even some antics from time to time, life gets really, really heavy. Like a stone pressed to the bottom of the ocean, instead of rolling with the waves.

Zen Failure; Zen Success?

There's a slightly provocative post over at No Zen in the West I'd like to draw your attention to. For our purposes here, I want to examine one section of it, which goes like this:

A distinguished Buddhist scholar told me that the burden of Zen teachers he knows is the need to act/be “enlightened”. How heavy! “I’m a Zen teacher, great! Now I have to somehow embody the premise that this way of life and practice makes people better, enlightens people.”

David Chadwick, after decades in Zen circles, hasn’t noticed that Zen practice works, which means that Zen teachers and Zen students everywhere could be off of the hook. If it’s not making us better than other people, it’s not because we’re not doing it right!

The late Rev. John King said that he loved so much going into our San Quentin Sangha because in prison – perhaps only there – “you don’t have to pretend that your life is working”. You don’t have to pretend to be a success, because it’s clear that everyone’s life is a failure. So you can just relax.

I’m feeling something like that about David’s observation. Great! Zen doesn’t work. I don’t need to pretend it does, or convince anyone else it does. I can just do it for the love of doing it, if I happen to love doing it, and forget that any good might come of it in the least. Forget the idea that I’ve gotten any better from it.

Of course, you might recognize that "success" and "failure" are part of the Eight Worldly Winds that Buddha spoke about frequently in various forms. And if you know anything about them, you know that they're always blowing about, shifting and changing like our own breath does.

So, any talk about whether Zen practice "works" or not is coming out of those winds, and as such, doesn't have any ground to stand on. What's considered a success today, is tomorrow's failure. Something gained today is lost tomorrow and regained the next day. Yesterday, I was called a "good Zen student." Tomorrow, maybe I irritate everyone and suddenly am now considered "a bad Zen student." And so it goes.

However, this leaves us in a predicament, I think. Because all of our regular ways for assessing what's happening basically fall flat when it comes to the spiritual life.

Is everyone's life in San Quentin "a failure"? Based upon conventional view standards, I suppose you could say "yes." Yet, that's only one way to see it.

Go a little deeper, though, and you might notice that not only is talk about working and not working, success and failure lacking ground, but it also is all about comparison. And I don't know about you, but when I'm trapped in comparing myself with others, it tends to be a walk down the royal road of hell.

Somehow, if you're really going to do Zen practice, or are really intent on liberation, you have to stop defining whatever it is that you are doing (or not doing) with variations on the Eight Worldly Wind theme. In other words, coming to a place where you can let all the noise of life blow around you and even within you - without choosing to identify yourself with any one or a handful of aspects of it - is pretty key.

Just relaxing - without the need to label "success" or "failure," for example - that's one possibility. Another might be to function with the understanding that all labeling is provisional, just a skillful means for working with the causes and conditions of the moment.

The Zen of Blog Comments

The following is a short selection from a larger writing project I am working on. Given the shenanigans that went on over at Barbara's Buddhist blog yesterday and today, it seemed like a good thing to post.



In my opinion, making and receiving comments on blog posts should be treated in a similar way to how you would act with someone face to face. If you are committed to a spiritual path where honesty, compassion, and kindness are at the core, then it’s important to extend these traits into cyberspace. Although it’s harder to see and feel, what we say online can have just as much impact – positive or negative – as anything said in person. And because of the lack of non-verbal cues, it’s probably even more important to choose our words carefully while interacting with others online.

What I have witnessed online is that commenting on blog posts brings out the best and worst in us. When people are at their best, you can see ripple effects that spread across the world. A well timed supportive comment can mean all the difference to someone who is struggling and feeling isolated. A clear declaration of the truth in the middle of an embattled debate can shift the entire conversation. And sometimes, something someone says “goes viral,” spreading from blog to blog, across Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, positively impacting the views of hundreds and thousands of people.

And unfortunately, the same thing goes for comments on the worst end of the spectrum. A single personalized attack on a writer can shift an entire discussion in that direction. Lies can and do spread online, sometimes at an alarmingly fast rate. And the internet is littered with the wreckage of angry, hate fueled arguments that sometimes have spread into the flesh and blood world with terrible consequences.

Zen of "Not Enough"

Over at the blog Ox Herding yesterday, Barry wrote the following:

I've practiced steadily for nearly 22 years so you'd think I'd know better . . . but lately I've watched my mind whip itself into a frenzy of not-enough.

Not enough attainment. Not enough clarity. Not enough enlightenment. Just not enough of something that I think is different from what I actually have.

In the midst of my self-generated dust storm, I came across these words from Kwong Roshi in No Beginning, No End:

This is what the training should do - defeat you, defeat your thoughts, defeat your idea for the preservation of yourself.

Well, this sound wonderful to my thinking mind, but my gaining mind won't tolerate it. So I've been struggling.

Yep, I've been there too. I can imagine anyone who does this life project long enough is going to hit up hard against personal expectations. You know that it's not about self-improvement, and intellectually, you understand that we're all Buddhas in every moment, but sometimes, none of that matters.

When it comes to this "not enough" in my life, it often seems directly tied to comparisons. Comparing myself with other Zen practitioners. Comparing the current self I see with the past self I saw. Or simply comparing one day to the next, thinking that if things are a real mess one day, I should have my shit together the next. Which doesn't always happen.

I haven't had a lot of this "not enough" thinking in recent months, despite living in a lot of uncertainty about career goals and the general direction of my life. I can feel something unfolding, shifting my aim in life a bit, but it's not clear yet, so I'm just sitting with it. And for whatever reason, "comparing mind" has mostly gone on vacation. I'd like to think it's relocated permanently, but I'm not that foolish.

The other thing about "not enough" thinking is that it's intimately tied to a gut level feeling of lack. Some people call this "poverty consciousness," or "living in scarcity," but whatever you want to name it, it's really a pervasive distrust in the world's ability to support you, moment by moment. That somehow, there is enough, even if just barely. Which isn't to say that it's ok for the people in Somalia to be starving right now (it's not), but that even each of them have something amazingly powerful running through their lives, despite the severe lack of food, water, and decent shelter. I worked with famine survivors in my ESL classrooms, and whether they called it God or Allah or simply good fortune, it was quite clear to me that each of them got it, on a gut level, that we are enough as we all.

We are enough as we are. As opposed to having enough. Many of my students' family members didn't have enough to the point of physical death. But for every moment they were alive, they each were enough. While we always can "improve a little bit," as Suzuki Roshi said, it's important to remember that having and being aren't the same. In fact, when I think about, notions of having seem to come from the view of the self that Kwong Roshi says needs to be defeated.

What can we really have anyway?

Homeless Zen Retreat

I don't have too much to say about this post, other than it's so much more inspiring than a lot of the stuff I have read over the past week.

When I went on my first 9-day retreat, I felt claustrophobic. There was no place to run and nothing to do but sit with my thoughts. What came up was sometimes poignant and sometimes scary. I spent many hours marveling at the tenderness of my own heart. But I also had to face my lifelong habit of wriggling away from anything that required true commitment. I was so afraid that I would wither away if I stayed in one place or dedicated myself to one thing. But only through going on retreat—and subsequent meditation practice—did I begin to dismantle those fears, and gradually build an organization in which I, and hundreds of homeless youth, could experience a true sense of belonging.

But as I learned last month, dreaming of going on retreat and actually going on retreat are worlds apart. Taking twelve homeless youth to a Zen-Buddhist monastery for 3 days was an experience that I could not prepare for. And while I had designed the experience for them, I too had to open myself to learning along the way. As it turned out, one of the first lessons appeared even before we left the city.

The post goes on to detail the experience. I loved how the retreat leaders and monastics at the retreat center seemed to balance holding the container of a retreat with the basic needs of teenagers who have lived quite unstable lives.

Amidst wranglings over the intentions of Buddhist teachers at some conference, or endless dissections of the behavior of a Congressman named Weiner, writings like this are a reminder to me to stay focused, and let whatever seems like a distraction roll off my back.

Giving homeless youth the gift of a Zen retreat is the kind of engaged practice that makes my heart happy to hear. May we do more of it. May it become commonplace.

How Do You Not Waste Your Life?

The past few weeks have felt kind of odd. All the rapture talk. Tornadoes here in Minnesota and in other parts of the country. A bit of bumpiness at the zen center. Struggling to find flow between the yoga and Zen practices. Confused encounters with a few friends. Flat tire, mistake after mistake Friday the 13th. Dreams of snow destroying my garden.

The shaky, ever-changing ground upon which we stand is, I suppose really evident to me right now. Most of the morning, I've had this tension rolling around in my stomach, directed at nothing in particular really. I read this from a post by Harvey Hilbert about yesterday's tornadoes in Missouri:

For those survivors, life will not be the same. A cold glass of milk, a marshmallow, or a simple daisy will speak to them in ways they never quite imagined. As a survivor myself, I take it as my sacred trust to reaffirm the teaching from the Sandokai: Do not waste time.

And I thought "What does it mean to not waste time?"

There are plenty of Buddhist platitudes I could pull out as a response. Things like not getting lost in acting out habitual patterns. Or spending your days craving things, people, or experiences.

Also, we could sit and quibble over Harvey's framing of the last lines of the Sandokai as not wasting time. The lines are often translated as "I respectfully urge you who study the mystery, do not pass your days and nights in vain."

But you know, none of that cuts it for me right now.

I'll re-frame my question as "What does it mean to not waste your life?" or "How does one not waste his/hers life?"

For some reason, my old fears around making mistakes have been coming up, around with the attendant perfection/non-perfection narratives. I don't really know where my life is going in many ways, so certainly those stories are about finding some ground to hold on to, even if it's old, shitty ground.

In fact, I don't know where this post is going. I'm just writing what's coming up, a sentence at a time.

I think I'm starting to gut level understand why people do everything in their power to resist liberation. In the depths of our heart, we want to be in touch with our boundlessness. But even small shifts towards that, like letting go of some of the conventional things that once defined you (or so you thought anyway) brings with it a palpable fear, confusion, and desire to get back some stable ground.

A friend of mine, who has been struggling to make a few key decisions in her life, recently said something like "I don't want to live the rest of my life doing the same things." But then she goes back to doing so, for now (that's what we all think, for now).

Like my friend, I have done the "for now" return many times.

This returning doesn't define either of us, but it does make me think that the mind is so desperate for things to be stable and predictable, even if it's causing a crap load of suffering.

There are endless spiritual teachings from various traditions about the pitfalls of craving pleasures and avoiding pain. Buddhism is particularly strong in providing such teachings, and they are quite wonderful.

But in a lot of ways, I think it's as much if not more a craving for some of form of stability and predictability that drives our minds - that keeps us from liberation.

Desiring a pleasurable, comfortable life where you always get what you want might be one version.

Another, though, might be to just keep repeating all the jacked up thought and behavior patterns that often bring suffering with them, but which are absolutely familiar, right down to the cells in your body.

Dark Tunnel Dukkha

For various reasons, this time of year tends to bring out the worst in me. Or that which I don't want to look at, have avoided, am afraid of, etc. This year, it feels quite fierce, given where I am in my life.

After three months of not working, I'm getting a crash course in how difficult it is to let go of external identities and desired support from others, and just be yourself right now. Here is a short list of what's been coming up for me over the past few weeks:

1. Lots of questions about who I am and where I am going.

2. Lack of confidence.

3. Fear. Lots and lots of fear.

4. Avoiding. Lots of avoiding.

5. Frustration with an inability to articulate what's going on to others.

6. Irritation with unsolicited advice.

7. Guilt. I mean, after three months, why don't you have something figured out?

8. Surprise. Why has the harsh critical voice suddenly returned with full force?

9. Anger. A more recently returned guest.

10. The usual seasonal depression, that came later this year, and which I thought I had a decent handle on, but now am swamped in again.

When I left my job at the end of August, my intention was to take time and listen deeply for what it was that my life was really calling for me to do. I had grown tired of doing what a lot of people do - keeping a job that slowly kills them because they're totally afraid of the economic and/or social consequences of leaving it without the safety net of another job lined up.

The thing is, it was always more than about work for me. All signs in my life had pointed to it being time to figure out a way to synthesize what I love into how I live more fully, on a day to day basis. This kind of thinking tends to be dismissed by the conventional world as pipe dream bullshit, and it might turn out to be just that, but I don't want to be on my death bed thinking "Maybe I should have taken a risk to do X."

Anyway, when I left in August, I didn't expect the following to occur.

1. Most of my "in the flesh" friends either growing extremely busy, or simply vanishing from my life all together.

2. The flickering in and out of my life old romances that stirred up various unresolved issues/griefs connected to them.

3. Discussions about what it means to be a dedicated lay practitioner at my zen center, and subsequent requests by a few students in a group I am a part of for added practice requirements (more retreat time and responsibilities for upholding aspects of formal practice at the center).

4. Frequently interrupted sleep patterns and various minor illnesses over the past month.

All in all, I'm finding that other than my immediate family, many of the relationships in my life are either dormant, strained, or disappearing. And I'm seeing how this has sent me spinning more often than I'd care to admit. Even though I have had wonderful people supporting me throughout my life, and know that the universe itself is always supporting each of us in a myriad of ways, it's also true that I have had to do a lot of things on my own. That from an early age, I was called on to be a responsible person capable of taking care of his shit. And what this did to me was create a pattern where I feel I should be competent or better in what I'm doing most of the time, otherwise something is way wrong. Intellectually, I know this to be a story, but deep down somewhere, this story is still fighting for control of my life. And in this time of not knowing about so much, it's rearing its ugly head pretty frequently.

The other thing about this pattern, at least for me, is that I have quite weak skills in asking for help or support. Years and years of having to do it myself, or thinking I had to do it myself, have left me in a tough position now. When you're not good at reaching out in these ways in the first place, and then many of those who you have developed a sense of trust with are not available, you're left to face your rotten skills on your own. In fact, whereas when I'm doing fairly well, I have a good sense of what I need and can usually locate it, or figure out how to deal without it. But being in this place of such fierce not knowing about so much, I also don't know what it is I really need. So, not only am I not good at reaching out for support, but I often don't even know what I'd ask for right now.

In posting this, I am not desiring advice on "what to do." Nor am I fishing for sympathy. I've had darker periods in my life, where not having the tools and insights of a spiritual practice meant swirling around in endless rounds of self-criticism and anger at others for not "getting me." That was worse than what I am experiencing now, even though what I am experiencing now feels like it's going straight to the core of my life. Much more palpable and scary than what I went through when I was younger, but the ride is less maddening you might say.

It's also been interesting to watch momentary impulses to post some sad-sack headline on Facebook, or to write some crying in your beer type post on here. I've watched a few friends use Facebook like that over the past few years, and I don't want to join that crowd. Some blogs get like that as well, where post after post is about the latest misery a person is experiencing, or how decision X or experience Y is another example of how "bad" a Buddhist they are. This is mostly just hustling for a self-esteem boost, and that's pretty damned tawdry if you ask me.

One of the reasons I dedicated myself to both zen and yoga practice is that both emphasize total liberation. If you stick with it, experiment with what you learn, and trust the process, major shifts do happen in your life. And even though there's endless talk about dropping all "expectations for any fruition" - especially enlightenment - I think it's foolhardy to believe that you'll just reach a certain point where you'll have a relatively comfortable "external life" supported by your practice. Actually, I'd say this is exactly what happens to those who seek out practice as self-help, which isn't a terrible thing, but certainly is limited.

When I received my dharma name a few years ago, I found myself pondering "devotion." And one of the things I have realized is that even though on the outside, my "practice" sometimes looks a bit slack, I have always, since I was really, really young, had a fire for uncovering the truth. At five years old, I returned home one day from school and told my mother the kids in class were boring. Why? Because they were mostly interested in playing around and picking on each other. They were being kids in other words.

I played too. It wasn't that I was some learning robot, always focused on serious stuff. But that little boy carried an old man's voice in his head from the beginning I think. Which made me kind of different. And sometimes caused trouble. Like the time I took my sister down in the basement to show her the pile of presents, and tell her there was no Santa Claus. She wasn't even five years old yet.

So, the leap to leave my old workplace, and more importantly, to live in this not knowing place is all about that devotion to the truth. To awakening. To liberation.

And this post is part update about where I am at, and also mostly an attempt to say that I'm not finding it terribly easy right now. Here in Minnesota, we keep getting piled on by snowstorm and snowstorm. I feel like the ground, buried in snow. Except the ground just accepts it, whereas with each additional layer, I'm fighting it more than accepting it.

Perhaps this will all change very soon, or maybe not for awhile. I don't know. I'm doing my best to trust the process. Some days that's easier than others.