Right Action on the Streets

Here's an interesting post for you all to consider from Daishin, whose blog is also worth a deeper look.

The neighbourhood I live in has a high number of people begging in the street. Individuals and groups sit near stores and the pub. Each time I go by, I’m faced with a dilemma. How do I reconcile my desire (my vow!) to be of service, to practice compassion, to alleviate suffering, with the fact that no amount of money I give will make a dent. In addition, my critical voice notices cell phones, to-go coffee cups, and cigarettes in plain sight and, in many instances, alcohol and drugs not far behind. Sometimes I feel anger arising for being ‘made to feel’ un-generous and privileged.

I’ve watched myself react in different ways: avoiding certain corners altogether; crossing the street in anticipation; looking down as I pass the person; saying hello and gesturing sorry no change; giving a few coins; giving all the change in my pocket; picking up a muffin and offering it on the way back. None of these are satisfactory solutions; often the same person sits at the same spot each time I walk by and there are more people looking for a handout down the street.

I’m at a loss of what to do. How do you handle these situations? What would be ‘right action’ from a Buddhist perspective? I’d be grateful for your advice and insights.

Last spring, I dated a woman who worked with homeless folks. She was out on the streets everyday, doing what she could to help people find homes, social service resources, or to just be available to listen to people's stories. I deeply respected her easy-going attitude about all this, coupled with a sincere passion to make a dent in homelessness, and all the assorted problems attached to it.

One thing I noticed for myself during the time I spent with her (about three months) was the variety of responses I had in regards to people I encountered begging on the streets. Often, it was sadly dependent on how I felt that day. If I was feeling open and generous, I'd smile or chat for a moment with someone. Maybe offer some change, or maybe not. If I felt closed, exhausted, or irritated, I'd either avoid the person completely, avoid eye contact, or simply rush to the judgment that they wanted money and I wasn't having any of that.

In this dog eat dog capitalist society we have, homelessness and poverty in general are simply givens. The whole house of cards is built on the fact that some people will simply be screwed no matter what they do. Certainly, some folks make a pile of decisions that aid in being the ones who are screwed, but others do everything they can and still are amongst the screwed. So, it's a deeply complicated pattern of personal decisions and social structures interacting within any person's life (yours, mine, people on the streets.) A few people even stay on the streets by choice, and really don't feel the need, for whatever reason, to have a steady roof over their heads or a steady job. Other people fake homelessness to get some extra cash for a habit, for rent, for food, any number of things really. So, what you see may not actually be what is. People like to indulge in righteous anger at these fakers, but the reality is they tend to be in trouble too. Most people don't choose to beg on the streets for shits and giggles.

The thing is, though, that for those of us who have steady jobs and steady roofs over our heads, we're terribly prone to reducing humans on the streets to caricatures.

There's the "transactional" image, where a person is simply a beggar of money who needs to be given to or not given to.

There's the "poor them" image, where the person is simply a victim.

The opposite of that one is the "too bad sucker" image, where the person is simply an irresponsible, lazy bum who made bad decisions and now is being punished.

And finally, there's the "poor me" imagine, where the person is simply an irritation or a burden for the other person or people passing them.

Daishin asks what "right action" is when it comes to interacting with people begging on the streets. Well, I don't think there's any fixed answer. One thing that comes to mind though is that to the degree any of us can look past assumptions and appearances, and simply engage what or who is in front of us, that to me seems to speak of how close or far we are from "right action." It's not about giving money or not. Or even talking to someone or not. It's much bigger than all of that, and yet contains those pairs as well.

Rumors You Can Trust

Rumors. The glue and dynamite of offices, family gatherings, sports fanatics, politicians, and yes, religious folks. Yesterday, I was told that perhaps someone who I work with won't be on the staff for too much longer. The specifics aren't important to mention here, only that the rumor got my inner injustice radar spinning quickly into righteousness. How dare they! If it happens, I'm going to quit on the spot! I won't work for such a place! And on and on it goes. These days, it doesn't take much for me to feel such things about my workplace. However, it's becoming all the more clearer how useless these little dramas are, and how they glue us together in skewed, unhealthy ways.

Searching for a definition of the word online, I found the extended one over at Wikipedia most interesting:

A rumor or rumour (see spelling differences), is often viewed as "an unverified account or explanation of events circulating from person to person and pertaining to an object, event, or issue in public concern" (33)[1] However, a review of the research on rumor conducted by Pendleton in 1998 found that research across sociology, psychology, and communication studies had widely varying definitions of rumor.[2] Thus, rumor is a concept that lacks a particular definition in the social sciences. But most theories agree that rumor involves some kind of a statement whose veracity is not quickly or ever confirmed. In addition, some scholars have identified rumor as a subset of propaganda, the latter another notoriously difficult concept to define.

Propaganda - yes, that makes sense to me as well. Think of the ways in which John McCain was smeared by rumors during the 2000 Presidential Campaign, or the myriad of ways in which current President Obama has been smeared by rumors over the past three years. Much of what was said about either man turned out to be false, and that which was true was spread solely as a way to scare people, or inflame people, so they wouldn't support the candidate. So, what's interesting here is that the account of something could be factual, but the explanation completely false or skewed.

For some reason, many years back, I became interested in sports rumors. Who's going to be traded to what team. Who might retire. What team might change coaches. All that kind of crap. Living in Minnesota over the past year, we've been inundated with rumors about the status of a Mr. Brett Favre, football Quarterback extraordinaire. Is he coming back? Is he retiring? Will the MN Vikings get another quarterback? It's an endless source of reportage for bored sports reporters who are trying keep the bucks coming in to their various news outlets. And for fans, it's an endless way to check out of the struggles of daily life, and live in an imaginary land of what if? for awhile.

I'm starting to think that part of the problem is that we don't know how to enjoy our lives anymore. Adults especially. We've bought into a story about being responsible, sacrificing every last dream so we can have a fancy vacation once a year and some "cool" toys to fritter away our free time with. Negative rumors of all sorts have replaced the beautiful dreaming and creating that can occur in the mind. In this age of 24 hour a day connectivity, where space "has to" be filled with some kind of information, most of us have chosen (without knowing probably) an existence glued together by patchwork lies and propaganda. It's an ugly thing to wake up to, and I'd bet that plenty of you out there can think of ways to defend your addictions to rumors and their kissing cousins gossip.

There seem to be a fair number of Buddhists, including myself, following the sexual abuse scandal unfolding within the Catholic Church. Certainly, there is much to learn from this, and definitely much injustice to be addressed. And yet, I'm guessing there is also some smug enjoyment of all the rumors floating about out there about Pope Benedict. In all honesty, I don't particularly like anything this Pope stands for. In fact, if a direct link between him and any of these abusing priests is verified, I hope he's removed from his "holy" office. The whole business of Popes I find tiring, and I firmly believe that they might be the complete undoing of the Church before it's all said and done. And yet, what good is it doing me, or anyone, to sit around indulging in juicy rumors about Mr. Ratzinger's alleged connections to, or pardons of, priest X or Y? How will speculating about the depths of his involvement change the very real problems of power and control going on within the Catholic Church?

When I look at my outrage about rumors at my workplace, it mostly boils down to a way to justify how lousy I feel about working there. That's it. I long ago gave up trying to do and say things that might "make the place more true to it's mission." And even though I care about my fellow teachers, and do what I can to support them, I mostly believe that it's like trying to patch a cracking dam with Elmer's glue: whatever I do, it's not gonna hold.

So, whenever a juicy rumor floats about, I can grab onto it as another reason for hating my job and workplace. It's a faux balm, sweet in the moment, and a slow seeping into the swamp afterward. This is the truth of all rumors, I think, and is probably why we bite so often and then suffer later as a result.

Yesterday Buddha's Dragons; Today Big Birds

Feeling in a photographic mood, here are a few pictures of big birds I have taken over the years to inspire your meditations or simply your flights of fancy. Enjoy!



Sometimes, there is confidence.



And sometimes, not so much.




Sometimes, we go around and around, seemingly without end.



But in the end, we're always amongst friends.

Militias, Violences, and Dragon Songs

I'm doing my best to refrain from a long commentary on the militia folks that were arrested yesterday in three U.S. states not too far away from my own. I don't feel all that kind or generous right now, and would rather rip people like this, as well as all those who silently or not so silently support them in any way, than practice patience and understanding. Many of us knew that the election of President Obama would bring out the hatred and violence, and so it is unfortunately.

How do we counteract such violence and hatred? There are plenty of things that need to be done "in the world," but as always, it comes back to how each of us are.

I sometimes chant the Metta Sutta to wake the sleeping dragons within. You don't have to believe in dragons to wake them, only be willing to open to your life as it is. What's a dragon, you might be asking? Anything you have ignored, discarded, avoided, or thought wasn't a part of you.

Maybe some of you have grown irritated by my use of the word "dragon." I suppose it easily conjures up medieval fantasies and geeky teenagers hanging around in dark basements. But really, don't you think all the plain, rational talk of those who desire peace, racial harmony, and an end to oppression seems to be falling flat? Some of us write endlessly about the misery and injustices occurring in the world, and yet most of them continue to go on and on, no matter how much effort is made to change them.

So, maybe it's time for dragon-talk. Time for marshalling all the imaginative forces we have available to us - the very thing modern, scientific and rational societies have disparaged as useless, childish garbage, even as the scientists and thinkers rely on such imaginations to drive their ideas.

Behind the hatred, violence, and bigotry, I can see millions of dragons. Lost dreams. Past hurts. Unexamined fears. Grief. Sadness. Loneliness. Material needs unfulfilled. Bodies and minds treated like lowly machines.

Dragons. When you turn away from them, they find a way to roar! Sometimes so fiercely that damage is done. The kind of damage that destroys families, communities, even nations.

Speaking of dragons, here's a koan and commentary from our old dharma friend the late John Daido Loori:

Singing the Dragon Song

Dharma Discourse by John Daido Loori, Roshi
Koans of the Way of Reality
Dragon Singing in a Withered Tree

Featured in Mountain Record 24.2, Winter 2006
The Main Case

Xiangyan was once asked by a monastic, “What is the Way?”

Xiangyan said, “A dragon singing in a withered tree.”

The monastic said, “What does this mean?”

Xiangyan said, “Eyeballs in a skull.”

Later, another monastic asked Shishuang, “What is the dragon’s singing in a withered tree?”

Shishuang said, “It still has joy.”

The monastic said, “What are the eyeballs in a skull?”

Shishuang said, “They still have senses.”

Later, another monastic asked Master Caoshan, “What is the dragon’s singing in a withered tree?”

Caoshan said, “Bloodstream has not stopped.”

The monastic said, “What are the eyeballs in a skull?”

Caoshan said, “Dry all the way.”

The monastic said, “I wonder, can anyone hear it?”

Caoshan said, “Throughout the entire earth, there is no one who does not hear it.”

The monastic said, “Which verse does the dragon sing?”

Caoshan said, “I don’t know which verse it is, but all those who hear it are lost.”
The Commentary

Do not mistake a withered tree for a dead tree; it abounds with life and celebrates each and every spring with new foliage. It’s just that few have realized this. As for the dragon’s song, actually, everyone is able to hear it, because it exists everywhere. And yet, there can be no dragon’s song unless there is a withered tree.

If you can see through to the point of this koan and make it your own, then your own voice will be the dragon’s song and you will be able to make use of it among the ten thousand things. If, however, you are unable to perceive it, then the worldly truth will prevail and everything will appear to be an impenetrable barrier.

You should understand that illumination and function are a single truth, principle and phenomena are not two realities. These old masters know how to simultaneously roll out and gather in. Letting go of the primary, they open the gate of the secondary.

When the great function manifests, it does not hold to any fixed standards. Sometimes a blade of grass can be used as the sixteen-foot golden body of the Buddha; sometimes the sixteen-foot golden body of the Buddha can be used as a blade of grass. All this notwithstanding, tell me, how do you understand the great function?
The Capping Verse

Letting out the hook,
just to fish out the dragons.
The mysterious devices outside of convention
are only for those who wish to know the self.

As I get ready to head to my garden, the "withered trees" are rustling in the wind.

Perils of Job Searching

I have a job. Maybe a career even, as an ESL teacher. But one that is poorly paid, in a field being "professionalized" and "standardized" as we speak. Yawn. In addition, I work at an organization that is, to put it kindly, in "transition." No need to say much more about all that; I've had plenty of job issue posts in the past.

Moving on. People like to do that. I like to do that, too. Of course, we all seem to want to do so on our own terms, which rarely happens. And so, there are lots of silly mind machinations that occur, victim narratives, arguments, frustrations, disappointments, despite questions "Why can't I just have something good happen to me now?" It goes on and on. You probably know this stuff all too well if you're paying attention to your life.

I find job searching to be a humbling experience. There are many jobs you get disqualified for before you even finish reading the description. Others are painfully under paid, or clearly displaying the red flag of overworking. Still others you end up applying for, only to receive a kindly e-mail a month later stating that several hundred people applied for the position and this e-mail is just to inform you that you haven't made the cut. A few others call you for an interview, perhaps, but then choose someone else.

It's easy to forget that sometime in the past, it was you that was chosen and all those others who had to keep sloshing along. It's also easy to forget that none of this is personal, not even when it slides into the personal.

I wanted to check out my graduate school's job site this morning, only to find that they had completely changed it. Now, you have to fill out a questionnaire stating that you have a connection to the school, you're authorized to work in the U.S. and some other fine things. Then you have to confirm your e-mail address. And then, once you're in, you discover that the whole thing is set up to "maximize" matches to jobs. This is all well and good, except that in order to search, you need to get specific, really specific - entering in job categories, locations, filling in a resume helps, etc. etc. In other words, be prepared to spend an hour, or two, just to search the jobs.

What I like to do is search a general category like non-profit work, or education work. I've always been a generalist, a person with a wide range of experience and interest, who doesn't zone in on a specific, end all to end all career. I'm very skeptical of the specialization that seems to have developed in much of the job world. It feels limiting and limited, and I say this as someone who has "specialized" job-wise in adult basic education for most of the past decade. In fact, there is a contradiction between the kinds of specialization I see employers requiring, and the trend towards several careers over a lifetime that clearly is the way most of us under 50 are dealing with these days.

Back to the job search engine, I tried to bypass the specialization being called for by typing in my location, hoping to get any job in the area. This is what I got in return:

The search you have entered will return far too many jobs, and will negatively affect other users response times.

In my mind, I'm feeling negatively affected by this search engine, but press on, adding the "keyword" nonprofit.

A list of 10 jobs is returned, including one dated June 2008."

Pretty cool, eh? I've heard many "experts" speaking about the recession's impact on the job market. There was an article in the local paper about people "adjusting" to new jobs that are two or three rungs down the ladder from their previous job. I laughed while reading it, thinking that two or three rungs down for me would be a part-time overnight gig at Wal-Mart cleaning toilets.

My mother is trying to create her own business, again, with thoughts of quitting the decent paying part-time job she has in the near future. She's doing ok, but not well enough yet to move on. I have had similar thoughts about stepping off the tread mill and making my own mark somehow. Scary. Exciting. Cloudiness.

I have the week off, and this is how it is beginning. No worries, though. The sun is out, and the garden I started Saturday is waiting for me.

"Life's Too Short for This"

I walked into a coffee shop I hang out at a bit in downtown St. Paul. Among the folks in there was what I've come to term "the family." Over the last ten years or so, I've found myself in the company of this couple and their increasing number of children on dozens of occassions.

The scene is always the same. The children, in various states of unkemptness, run wild, while the man, older and dominant in a quiet sort of way, pontificates to his younger wife about some Bible passage. He frequently takes shots at all ogranized churches, and includes them among Satan's work. Meanwhile, for a long time, I wondered if the children were even getting home schooled, given how little they seemed to be able to read, write, or interact socially.

So, there they were doing there thing today. I sat down, and the guy sitting behind me starts leaving a message on the phone about a Bible study session. For a moment, I thought "Man, you're surrounded," then let it drop.

Over the years, I've struggled to not run a litany of jugdments through my mind about that couple and their kids. Until a month ago, I'd never said a single word to any of them. Then the wife turned to me, as I was working on a blog post, and said "Aren't you that guy who goes to that Buddhist place?" I said I was and she looked at me, paused, and then said "I always found it funny that people would worship a guy who isn't a God." I smiled because it probably is funny from the outside, what we Buddhists are doing.

I'd forgotten that exchange this morning as I sat down and opened my laptop. As the couple gathered their children and started to leave, I was reading a post on someone else's blog. For some reason, I looked up just as the wife said "I'm wondering if ..." (short pause) "if you'd ever consider being challenged on you views?" Now, in the past, I probably would have been interested in such a debate. To prove that I could stand up as a Buddhist, even if the discussion went nowhere. However, as she said those words, I just thought "Life's too short for this." So, instead of engaging, I just said "I don't think it would be worth our time." And she nodded, stepped back, and said "Everyone has free will." And walked out.

The guy behind me, who was reading a passage in the Book of Romans (he'd said as much in the phone message he left), says "Do you know that woman?"

"Barely," I said, not knowing how else to explain this odd connection we'd had over the years.

"What was that all about?" he said. And I sat for a moment, wondering if telling him what it was about would just open up the same issue I had just cut off.

"We could have a long discussion about it, but it probably wouldn't be worth it."

He laughed a little at that, and said something about how that had been an odd exchange between her and I. I agreed, and then he went back to his Bible, and I to my blog. Which is where I am now, no less worn for wear.

Economy of Language and the Body/Mind

Arun over at Angry Asian Buddhism has an intriguing post about labels used for different groups of North American Buddhists. He takes issue with the term "cradle Buddhists," which lumps together such disparate groups as 6th generation Chinese-Americans and white Zen practitioners whose parents were "converts," yet another tricky term. There are many important points in Arun's post about the problems with this term, but what I'm interested in is the human mind's quest for easy to remember phrases.

On the webzine I've been writing for, Life as a Human, the editor, Kerry Slavens, wrote an interesting post about St. Patrick's Day and the ubiquitous "I'm Irish!" that comes with it in North America. The following comment was made to her post by a guy named Kev:

You know what the Irish can’t stand? (the REAL Irish, as in, born and raised in Ireland) Americans. They are the bane of our existence. Worse yet is Americans who say “I’m Irish”. Worse still are the Americans who say “Oh, you’re from Ireland? Do you know Mary?”.

You are not Irish. You have Irish descendants. You are American. (Well, Canadian in this case but you get my point. By the way, we love Canadians).

I have French descendants actually, my second name is Roche, which is French for something. That does not mean I am French. In fact, every human on the planet has African descendants, that doesn’t mean we’re all African.

It’s a rule. To call yourself Irish, you have to be born here, or at the very least live here long enough to see that the predominant colour of this country is not green, but gray. Gray clouds covering the sky 4/5ths of the year, gray, dull buildings, gray foot paths, roads, dirt and gravel.

I, myself, often say "I'm half Irish," because it's easier than saying something like "Half of my ancestors came from Ireland." This starts to get at part of what's going on here, which is an economy of language issue. We want to communicate. And we also want to do some in a way that people remember what we have said - frequently anyway. Look at any effective political campaign, or corporate advertisement. There's always a catchy slogan or set of slogans that get repeated to the point of being burned into the mind.

And if you pick up any song, or poem - it's all about saying as much as possible in the fewest amount of words. Even several hundred page poems, that deliberately spew language across the page - like Charles Olson's The Maximus Poems, which is a several hundred page romp through a linguistic forest - there is still an effort to erase any excess. To hell with grammar conventions. Forget the "necessary" introductory words, or cuing. No need for pleasantries that might ease a reader in.

Or, on the oppose end, you could take up a Buddhist sutra and notice how much repetition there is. Or how the same introductory phrases, like "Thus I have heard" appear over and over and over again. Even though things are repeated, there is meaning contained within every word of the sutra. People had to recall and speak these things to others, and some still do rely on spoken sharing as a prime focus of their Buddhist practice, even if they have access to books, magazines, and the internet.

So, the human mind loves an easy to remember phrase, and I'd also argue that what's taken in and remembered, also lives in our bodies. I've experienced both ends of this. Seven years ago, I jettisoned my TV for a variety of reasons, but partly because I became highly aware of how my mind, and thus my body, were being colonized by commercials. While a lot of people love that they can recite the jingle for Wal Mart or Coke, I find it to be an insidious invasion that saps energy and focus from my life's purpose. Maybe that sounds dramatic, but think about the saying "You are what you eat." People are now starting to wake up to the fact that ingesting processed, hormone-infested meat, to give just one example, has a highly negative impact on your body and mind functioning. And I'd argue that if you have a heavy diet of corporate advertisements, there is a different, but also negative impact that results.

On the other hand, I have memorized and taken in gathas, dharma poems, and short sutras to the point where they are a part of me, completely. They have imbued my body and mind in such a way that sometimes, they simply appear when an occasion calls for their wisdom.

What I have noticed about the process of learning, though, is that the most compact versions of any teaching are the ones I gravitate towards when going for ingestion. Taking in the most technically correct translation of the Heart Sutra, for example, just doesn't work. A good thing to study, but it isn't going to stick in whole.

And going back to the beginning, part of the problem with the efforts to come up with labels for various groups of Buddhists is that desire for an easy phrase, which can be taken in and sent back out into the world with ease. It doesn't mesh well with the complicated reality we live in, where such labels can only be pointers at best.