Convenience Zombies

I have written about this topic before, but found the following article fairly compelling. As someone who has a foot in the technological world, but who readily chooses substance over convenience, I found these words to ring very true:

Convenience seems to come at the price of interaction — the sort of day-to-day interactions that make us a part of our communities. Instead of chatting with the person at the grocery store check-out we do battle with the automated self check-out machine. Instead of going to a teller at the bank we find any old ATM to do our banking. Jobs that involve serving the public are quickly disappearing as they are replaced by machines and internet-based services. And I can’t help worrying that the increased lack of human interaction is going to be socially detrimental and isolating.

I really believe that these daily interactions mean something, and I believe that they add richness to my life. I’ve recently heard that Blockbuster is going under and that NetFlix will soon be our primary movie procuring option, and I have to say that I’m very sad about this. In fact, my regular Sunday night trip to the local Blockbuster to pick out a movie with my husband has become something that we both cherish. After dinner we set out on a short walk to the store and hope that “Movie Guy” will be there.

“Movie Guy” is our most trusted Blockbuster employee who can always be counted on to provide excellent recommendations for movies both new and old. It seems that he’s seen every movie ever made and has detailed opinions about all of them. I’m not going to invite Movie Guy to my next birthday party, but we have a relationship nonetheless. It’s a relationship based on similar taste in films, on a shared sense of humour, and on one person doing his job really well and other people benefiting from that person’s expertise.

Ironically, it wasn't too long ago that Blockbuster was the convenience store of movies, putting independent after independent out of business. In fact, some of those Movie Guys had been, at one time, owners of their own rental places, which served not only as businesses, but gathering places for movie fanatics. So, one might view Blockbuster as an intermediate step on the process of moving towards full privatization and individualization.

This is one of the reasons why I have withheld complete support for a view that suggests a person can rely solely on internet resources or books to fuel their spiritual practice. Even a tiny group of people meditating together, yoga together, or studying sacred texts together has an effect one really can't come by doing it all "alone."

Beyond that, though, the larger issue is really the general struggle with community many of us have. Perhaps it won't be a big deal if, for example, Netflix takes over the movie rental industry. In and of itself, it's not terribly important. However, it does play into a trend of ease, that is coupled with isolation and a "checking out" of formerly everyday interactions.

A few months ago, I stepped up to the check out counter at our local library to borrow some movies. The woman behind the desk said, "Have you tried our individual check out yet?" I turned around and saw the row of computer check outs that are rapidly replacing interaction with a live person in our libraries. I wanted to say "Yes, but I prefer working with you." Instead, I just said "Yes" and she proceeded to pull the movies out of their covers, while saying "we're trying to get our numbers up on the check out machines."

The first thing I thought was "Aren't you concerned about your job disappearing?" Although it is the case that librarians are diversifying their skill sets these days, which is a positive, it's also the case that budgets are getting cut routinely. Underwriting billionaires to build new football stadiums seems to be more important than keeping libraries open and filled with intelligent, friendly staff folks.

After that initial thought, I felt a bit of sadness, noting how these kinds of interactions are slowly being whittled away by computerization, and unfortunately, we aren't doing a great job of shifting to a different mode of interacting with each other.

Again, I think it's more the general shift going on that's alarming, as opposed to any specific interaction. I have seen some librarians, for example, spending more time helping people locate information and resources vital to their well-being - so perhaps there a lag I'm witnessing there, which in the end, will result in much more interactive community libraries.

But I'm not sure it's a lag that can be generalized to the broader picture.

The world is obsessed with connectivity. Everyone needs an iPhone, instant access to email and text messages, instant access to products and information and yet I get the sense that we’re all more disconnected than ever. Sure, we can get 60 text messages a minute from our closest friends, but we avoid human beings in public like lepers. We plug up our ears, glue our eyes to our phones, and block out the random people who fill our days. We reject them thoroughly, then go back to our concrete boxes to eat dinner in front of TVs instead of with our families. We know a thousand methods for keeping in touch but we’ve forgotten how to reach out. We’ve forgotten how to say saying hello to the person sitting next to us on the bus simply because they’re sharing our space for awhile.

I would like to think we are in a transition period, where people are still trying to find the balance point working with the new technologies we have. But so much seems accelerated these days, and it takes more effort to be ok with not keeping up with it all. I see it even with people who are dedicated to slowing down, to practicing meditation and other spiritual practices, to prioritizing paying attention over production and speed. All of that is at odds with the demands of their workplace, or their families, or some other vital part of their lives.

In fact, I can see it in myself, having spent the past three or four years advocating with others that our Zen Center get more "online" and "connected with the outside world." It's not that this is a bad thing, but that it has forced a few folks, including our head teacher, to plug into technology in ways they might have not chosen to without the pressure coming from us. And while I believe we are correct to be moving in this direction, it has brought up all sorts of questions about how to apply the ancient teachings that are supposed to guide our lives to what we are doing online.

While my own experiences and learning probably makes me more optimistic than the author of the article I am quoting above, I do think there are more and more people who have become "Convenience Zombies." You even see it amongst people coming to zen centers and yoga studios. "Just teach me how to meditate. Just tell me how to move my body. No ritual. No archaic texts. I want to feel better NOW."

It's all a cause for pause. Because those disappearing "Movie Guys" are symbolic of a larger trend, one that we really might want to reconsider, even if it means slowing things down a bit.

Buddhists Talking Sexual Desire

There is an excellent post and discussion about desire going on over at the blog On the Precipice. Specifically, it's tackling sex and sexual desire, which are, for obvious and not so obvious reasons both major stumbling blocks for humans and also gateways to enlightenment.

To open the discussion up further, let's consider a few of the comments made over there first.

Katherine, the post author, writes:

I didn’t consciously choose to abstain from sexual activity. Initially it was more a consequence of environmental choices I made in my life–namely to spend an extended period of time meditating in Burma, and thus observing the eight precepts. After some time learning in the fish bowl of a retreat center exactly what desire is like, when I went back into the world, the five precepts were just kind of a given. And as long as I’m still in training–knowing that old habit patterns can out-muscle wise and skillful alternatives, in the absence of a committed relationship, there would naturally be celibacy. Believing a particular train of thought that ran through my head at one point, and in the fear that I might somehow be suppressing desire (e.g., note the delusion of this post), I experimented once (while firmly in the world, mind you). In the language of addiction recovery, we would say I “slipped”. Not that I hold the precepts with such moral fervor, but let’s face it, I’m just disappointed I can’t say I’ve been celibate for as long the x years and y months as I’d like.

It's interesting to me that she uses the language of addiction recovery because I believe that is both something that offers insight, and also a place of trouble for a lot of folks.

There's no doubt in my mind that sexual activity, even if just done in one's mind in the form of fantasy, can be quite addictive. When sex is approached in an addictive manner, it's all about objectification and sense gratification. Instead of moving closer to your life, you move away from it, all the while believing that you are getting something that previously was "missing" from your life. That's the interesting thing about addictive sexual patterns. They trick the mind into thinking that whatever actions are being done will fill in or settle that pit of uneasiness we all feel at our core. Another, more blunt way to phrase it, might be "This orgasm will be the one that brings endless bliss, and remove the misery." That's the trick. And actually, if you experience the rise and fall of the trick, you actually start to shoot from a view of diminished returns. Instead of believing that the coming orgasm or sexual high will bring endless bliss or even long term bliss, you're "happy" with a short term relief from whatever misery and/or longing is present.

This is very much like substance addiction. The cycle of rising euphoria and then falling into withdrawal is a pattern of diminished returns, but one that your mind continues to buy into because it can't stand to face that uneasy pit.

Let's face it, that uneasy pit is really, when you strip off all the emotional and conceptual stuff, merely the emptiness of self. The moving sands that make up our lives. And since no amount of dumping stuff or experiences into it will make it a fixed whole, we are basically left to face it full on, without flinching. But most of the time, we opt to keep trying to fill the hole.

Going back to addiction languaging, though, I also believe that there is a place of trouble there. Maybe many. For example, one of the underlying premises of many addiction recovery groups is that the only way to heal is to abstain from that which you were addicted to, usually for the rest of your life. Now, even if one doesn't literally apply a "rest of my life" approach to celibacy, it's really easy to get hung up on a belief that you must "perfect" your sexual self before re-entering being a sexually active person.

This perfectionism is something you see amongst some folks in 12 Step groups. A person who has years of sobriety, and has cleaned up their lives in many ways, might spend months or even years feeling shame and guilt about a single "slip" where they drank, or smoked a joint, or what have you. There's something quite puritanical about this in my opinion, even if the person in question really is better off always being sober.

Furthermore, while there are similarities between sexual addictions and substance addictions, the very fact that substances are something chosen to be brought in from the outside makes them different. Sexual energy can arise without any external stimulus, and indeed, is simply part of our being. And while some people choose to be celibate their entire lives, the vast majority of us do not, and so some other approaches are necessary in my view.

In my comments to Katherine's post, I wrote:

The relationship itself might be the vehicle for both of us to break through the dangling chads of craving we might enter into the partnership with.

I firmly believe that people can enter into an intimate, even spiritual partnership with the intention to awaken with each other. Which is different from trying to break through all of one's selfish desires alone. Now, clearly this is high-level relationship stuff, something that probably requires that those involved have burned through some of their attachments and selfish acting out beforehand.

Which leads to this comment, from Ted Meissner, author of the blog The Secular Buddhist:

The nice thing is that this time, the time for intimacy with just this moment rather than with Other, can help us grow in wonderful ways that can make us better partners in the event we do find someone with whom we can share — this moment.

The "this time' he's referring to is the period of celibacy Katherine describes in her post. For me, this points to a synergistic approach whereby one renounces acting on sexual energy and thoughts for a time, and then chooses to return to being active again.

However, I also believe that for some of us, that returning might not be to that final, wonderful powerhouse spiritual partnership. It might be something other, even something that you might be tempted to call a slip up or mistake. But which in the end, actually taught you something you were previously not seeing before.

Following a long term relationship that led to a period of renunciation for me, I had a couple of short flings that basically ended my desire for sex without a deeper commitment. Intellectually I knew the fleeting quality of causal sex, and personally, I hadn't really engaged much in it previously. However, it was the multiple casual experiences over a short time that finalized a break with any interest in it.

On the other hand, there is this comment from Barry Briggs, of the blog Ox Herding:

Over the past five years, with guidance from my teacher, I’ve undertaken an examination of my own sexual impulses, desires, addictions and actions. From one perspective, it’s been rather gruesome. From another perspective, it’s been liberating.

That "gruesome" aspect is one of the main reasons why people don't want to pay much attention to this area of life, choosing instead to either repetitiously act out of habitual, addictive patterns or severely repress desire and/or wallow in guilt and shame about it. I have been in both of those camps, and they are flat out death beds if you ask me.

So, it's a really tricky balance. For example, with the casual sex examples I mentioned above. Someone who is just acting out of their addictiveness could easily claim their actions are all about "learning," while the reality is more about using someone else.

Which is why I really like this point, from Katherine's post:

There’s a lot of ego and, as such, a lot of dukkha–harm to myself, harm to others–involved the moment an interaction heads south of the waist line. Part of that is our own emotional baggage and habits of behavior, part of it is deeply conditioned on a subconscious level from our parents and ancestors. The good news is we can unlearn some of that. We can lighten the load.

Lighten the load. That makes a ton of sense to me. It's a little bit like the peeling the onion metaphor. That you're stripping off layer after layer as you go.

Moving towards naked if you will.

That's where I am aiming to go. How about you?

Buddhists from Burma Practicing in Minnesota

I'm a bit behind the blogging ball on this one, which happens sometimes. Arun, over at Angry Asian Buddhist, recently put a call out for posts celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Today, he has a round up post offering links to various bloggers who responded with some excellent writing.

First off, if you are interested in doing some more academic reading about Asian-American Buddhists, check out this bibliography.

Second, as long time readers know, I spent many years as an ESL teacher. Amongst my students over that time were a large number of Karen, an ethnic minority group from Burma. While many of them were Christian, I did have a handful of Buddhist Karen students, and they are members of a sangha located in Maplewood, MN.

While the convert Buddhist sanghas, like the one I belong to, have gained a bit of press and attention over the years, that Asian-American and Asian-immigrant dominant sanghas have mostly not - with the exception of the Tibetan communities here in Minnesota, which have mostly been able to ride the coattails of the Dalai Lama.

So, here is a little bit about the Sitagu Dhamma Vihara Buddhist Monastery in Maplewood, from one of their websites:

Theravada Buddha Sasana Nuggaha, Minnesota(TBSN/MN), a non profit organization, was established in St. Paul on May 2, 2004 (Buddha day) (Kason Full moon day of Burmese era in 1365) in order to full fill the crucial requirement for the Buddhists population from Burma, in mid west area of Minnesota. Even many Buddhists with different ethnic back ground from Burma migrated in Minnesota three decades ago there was no Theravada Buddhist monastery in Minnesota. Most of the Burmese Buddhists practice their belief at Lao, Cambodia, Vietnamese, and Chinese Buddhist temples in twin cities area those days.

Four years ago in 2004, Buddhists enthusiastic in Twin cities gathered at Lao Buddhist temple on Burmese New year day and discussed about future establishment of Theravada Buddha Sasana (Teaching of Buddha) association and monastery in MN.
On the full moon day of May 2, 2004, the first Buddhist non-profit organization was successfully formed and named Theravada Buddha Sasana Nuggaha (Supporting to prolong the uncontaminated Buddha Teaching

Meaning of TBSN

Theravada- Preserving the original Buddha’s teaching (canon) from elders Buddhist monk (sanga) until now, called Theravada Buddhism the form of Buddhism practiced in Sri lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, considered to be the most orthodox current form of Buddha Teaching.

Buddha- the Founder of Buddhism, the Enlightened One

Sasana- All Teaching of Buddha.

Nuggaha- Supporters, custodians, preservers of uncontaminated pure teaching of Buddha.

It's so easy for communities like this to go under the radar, barely noticed outside of their membership. The services are held in a house. The websites (here is their main one) are often done in a mixture of first languages and English. And in this case, the English is written by second language speakers. Furthermore, the mainstream media just doesn't cover them. I could only locate the following article about a sangha food fair, which was held last year. And this from a very minor local media source.

Anyway, I hope you take a moment to check out some of the photos on their website, and to consider what sanghas might be under the radar in your community.

*The photograph is from a celebration of traditional Htamane, which is a dish from Burma consisting of sticky rice, mixed with oil, peanuts, Sesame seeds, and other ingredients.

Midwest Tornadoes Hit Home

I'm on the bus last night, coming home from my yoga teacher training core class. It's fairly late, around 9:30 pm, and so some of the people getting on are clearly intoxicated, high, or just plain wound up. This includes a woman sitting in the back, loudly talking on her phone, first to her son, and later to her mother in law.

Felt myself getting irritated. There's no where to go inside of a bus; the intimacy of the space is palpable at times like this.

At one point, she turns to a guy sitting next to her and they start up a conversation. "I've been drinking. I just called my baby. How are you doing baby?" Everyone is "baby" to her apparently.

The tone of her voice swerves from strong to sweet to totally grief ridden and back again.

I'm sitting there thinking "I just want to be home. Have some peace and quiet."

Then she says it. "The tornado destroyed my apartment building!" There's no doubt everyone on that bus heard it. I certainly heard it. It ripped right through me.

As she told the story of being in a basement, listening to people screaming nearby, the tornado closing in on them, all of my thoughts about home and quiet took on a new meaning.

I began wishing the woman well, wondering how the son she spoke to on the phone was doing.

And then I noticed how she kept repeating the story. How the mind keeps going on the territory of trauma, as if in doing so, we can locate what's necessary to heal.

What had been just an irritatingly loud conversation suddenly became dharma.

It's right there under our nose, all the time.

Gay Marriage: A Conservative Response to Conservative Bigotry

I have noticed over the past week or so that a good dozen of my friends on Facebook have signed on to a group stating, "I will vote No on the marriage amendment." Like many other U.S. states in recent years, Minnesota will have a measure on the ballot next year trying to codify in the State Constitution heterosexual marriage as the sole legitimate form of marriage. It's been one of the lynchpin issues of the religious right in this nation, who are hellbent on keeping the GLBTQ community oppressed, marginalized, and vilified.

While I appreciate the sentiment of the Facebook page, and articles like this one, my views on this issue are more complex, and not easily measured by a yea or nay vote.

First off, I plan to vote No on the ballot measure next year because using the Constitution to restrict people's rights is astoundingly stupid in my view.

However, here's where I diverge from the norm.

The pro-Gay marriage movement has always felt like a conservative response to a conservative attack on the GLBTQ community. One of the underlying assumptions being that once gay folks can marry like straight folks currently do, things will be better. Which is true in one sense, but not necessarily true for those who aren't, for whatever reason, interested in getting married.

And those reasons are far more diverse than many of us tend to imagine. Some people are simply players, or afraid of commitment. Some are just exploring. Some haven't healed from past relationships. I know older folks who want to be in an intimate relationship, but have no interest in going through another marriage ceremony. Some are deeply invested in polyamory, and have found ways to sustain long term relationships with multiple people.

One of the driving points behind the Gay Marriage movement has been that gay folks deserve to have the same social rights and privileges bestowed upon married straight couples. And the way I see it, gaining legal gay marriage will certainly open the door to many more people, it doesn't address some of those examples I listed above which can fall under the "long term, committed relationship" category.

There's another issue though. Marriage is a religious ceremony, and plenty of people for a variety of reasons aren't interested in doing religious ceremonies. Furthermore, while I deplore the bigotry of these conservative Judeo-Christian institutions pushing for things like marriage amendments, I feel a strange sympathy towards their general fear of being controlled by the government. The intertwined nature of marriage's current relationship with civil society is problematic when you consider desires for a separation of church and state. At least, it's problematic in my view.

It seems to me that a better course of action would be to leave marriage to the spiritual/religious sphere, where those of us who are members of said communities can choose to partake of these ceremonies as a part of our commitment to our partners.

And as such, the government's role would then be to offer civil union to all who wish to make a commitment to another, with all the financial and social rights, privileges and responsibilities that currently are tied to marriage.

This would open the door for more folks in general, remove the church and state marriage tangle, and also, I believe, would lessen the intensity of opposition from the religious right. Certainly, there are plenty of people who will argue that offering civil unions is still an "affront" to marriage, and I doubt there's anything legally that will get these folks to either stand down or change their minds. However, when the leaders of conservative church X or mosque Y aren't feeling like the government is going to come in and shut them down for not performing a marriage ceremony between two men (that's the standard fantasy), I bet some of them will move on to other issues. It's much easier right now to rally the right wing troops when amongst their worries is one of being told by the government what they can and can't do.

So, I'm not sure what to do about that Facebook group. To join or not join, that is the question.(Not a terribly serious question, but it is the one that led me to this post.) Your thoughts?

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.

Mind Tricks

I have been digging through some old photographs, looking for some images to use for a writing project. Seeing several years of images, and thinking about the stories around some of them, has been an interesting process. Experiences that once held such great charges, positive or negative, now don't. Other experiences, long forgotten, suddenly give rise to emotions they didn't at the time they actually happened.

Memory can be a pretty strange animal, kind of like the photo above, which I took in Grand Marais, MN in 2007.

Kind of makes you wonder. How do you go about getting permission to trespass? And what's so special inside that bland ass building anyway?