Category Archives: The Authentic Life

An attempt at analysis of the modern era and our ways of dealing with it.

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Relationship as spiritual practice – John Welwood

A few excerpts from a good, but difficult, article published on Lion’s Roar. My wife and I have been reading this, on recommendation of her sister, but I can’t say that we’ve understood it’s application to us personally yet. Perhaps others may find insight into this and be of assistance.

The intro says:

Living with someone we love, with all the joys and challenges, is one of the best ways to grow spiritually. But real awakening only happens, says renowned psychologist John Welwood, in the charnel ground where we acknowledge and work with our wounds, fears, and illusions.

Welwood:

..the ego acts as a survival mechanism for getting needs met while fending off the threat of being hurt, manipulated, controlled, rejected, or abandoned in ways we were as a child. This is normal and totally understandable. Yet if it’s the main tenor of a relationship, it keeps us locked in complex strategies of defensiveness and control that undermine the possibility of deeper connection.

The charnel ground is an ideal place to practice because it is right at the crossroads of life, where one cannot help but feel the rawness of human existence.

The chaos that takes place in your neurosis is the only home ground that you can build the mandala of awakening on.
-Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Trungpa Rinpoche suggests that if we can work with the “raw and rugged situation” of the charnel ground, “then some spark or sympathy or compassion, some giving in or opening can begin to take place. The chaos that takes place in your neurosis is the only home ground that you can build the mandala of awakening on.” This last sentence is a powerful one, for it suggests that awakening happens only through facing the chaos of our neurotic patterns. Yet this is often the last thing we want to deal with in relationships.

Trungpa Rinpoche suggests that our neurosis is built on the fact that:

…large areas of our life have been devoted to trying to avoid discovering our own experience. Now [in the charnel ground, in our relationships] we have a chance to explore that large area which exists in our being, which we’ve been trying to avoid. That seems to be the first message, which may be very grim, but also very exciting. We’re not trying to get away from the charnel ground, we don’t want to build a Hilton hotel in the middle of it. Building the mandala of awakening actually happens on the charnel ground. What is happening on the charnel ground is constant personal exploration, and beyond that, just giving, opening, extending yourself completely to the situation that’s available to you. Being fantastically exposed, and the sense that you could give birth to another world.

 

Fleeing the raw, wounded places in ourselves because we don’t think we can handle them is a form of self-rejection and self-abandonment that turns our feeling body into an abandoned, haunted house.

Intimate personal connecting cannot evolve unless the old love wounds that block it are faced, acknowledged, and freed up.

The only way to be free of our conditioned patterns is through a full, conscious experience of them. ==  …allows you to digest unresolved, undigested elements of your emotional experience from the past that are still affecting you: how you were hurt or overwhelmed, how you defended yourself against that by shutting down, how you constructed walls to keep people out.

As they become willing to face and embrace whatever stands between them—old relational wounds from the past, personal pathologies, difficulties hearing and understanding each other, different values and sensitivities—all in the name of loving and letting be, they are invited to “enter into reality.” Then it becomes possible to start encountering each other nakedly, in the open field of nowness, fresh and unfabricated, the field of love forever vibrating with unimagined possibilities.

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A girl’s story

This story in four parts is wonderful and terrible, almost a tragedy, though the epilog redeems it. It is a story that America needs to hear, one that reflects realities many wish to deny. Whatever our own story, or that of our loved ones, we can be happy and consoled that we haven’t had to suffer through this.

If you don’t understand what’s going on with trans people, this is a very good place to start. A place that will take you to the heart of it, and open up your heart just a bit.

Allison’s story.

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Stifling dissent

Six journalists were arrested in DC last Friday during inauguration unrest, and the charges sound like the prelude to a repressive authoritarian regime.

The charges are vague, and were applied to a fairly large group of people who were all swept up in a mass arrest. The Guardian:

An arrest report for Engel provided by Washington DC’s metropolitan police department said he was arrested after hundreds of people gathered at the intersection and “numerous crimes were occurring in police presence”.

“The crowd was observed enticing a riot by organizing, promoting, encouraging, and participating in acts of violence in furtherance of the riot,” the police narrative said. “The crowd was observed braking [sic] windows, lighting fires, vandalizing police vehicles, burned a limousine, and other acts of violence. The damage was determined to excess $5,000.00.”

An arrest report for Rubinstein stated only that “numerous individual [sic] were arrested” for violating the district’s laws against rioting.

…

Jack Keller, a producer for the web documentary series Story of America, said he was charged and detained for about 36 hours after being kettled by police at 12th and L streets on Friday morning and arrested despite telling officers that he was covering the demonstrations as a journalist.

Some 200 people were arrested, and the National Lawyers’ Guild said the police had “indiscriminately targeted people for arrest en masse based on location alone”. That’s pretty clearly just designed to suppress dissent and discourage reporting on any resistance. Being in an area where crimes are being committed should not be grounds for arrest and detention.

….

The Guardian report on the first two – and then four more.

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Emma Lindsay on the mess in DC… the best case for optimism yet

Emma Lindsay – Thought she starts with the Manning pardon, it gets wider and takes a very open-minded look at the whole issue of what the Dems have done, what the Repugs have done, and how it all may hold some promise for positive development… at least her commentary is well worth reading. She’s one of the best, clearest, most honest bloggers I’ve read.

As I struggle through the Trump election, the specter of growing normalization and acceptance of the representatives of hatred and racist/classist that seem destined to populate our government, and all the rising signs of fascism, it is increasingly hard to maintain the even-minded approach that I would like to think I believe in.

I am committed to the idea that an approach of inclusiveness and moderation, rejecting us/them dichotomies and divisiveness, will bring us greater freedom, justice and understanding as a nation. But sometimes…. I just want to blast them. So it’s helpful to read those folks, like Emma Lindsay, who are able to see the positives and find optimism in spite of seeing the realities as starkly as I do.

I am also finding it helpful to return – once again, as I have many times before! – to the practice of tonglen and the lojong. A fellow practitioner mentioned to me recently that the teachings say that difficulties are things to be grateful for, and I remembered, yes, Lojong #13, Be grateful to everyone! It certainly applies in the current circumstances.

Chogyam says it deals with ‘conventional reality’ and that ‘without this world we cannot attain enlightenment’ for there would be no path. As long as we have an understanding that we are on the path, all the things that seem like obstacles are actually essential parts of the path.

So let’s be grateful to the horribleness, because it’s certainly giving me an opportunity to practice like nothing before!

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The Indian example

I am reading Arundati Roy’s introduction to the new compilation of her essays, The End of Imagination, and am chilled to the bone by the story of what’s happening there. I have read several of her essays, speeches, and interviews in the past few years describing the ascent of Modi and the Hindutva – Hindu nationalism – movement powered by Sangh Parivar, including her account of the horrid pograms in Gujarat and Kashmir, but the ongoing violence and harassment of dissidents is reaching frightening levels.

Essentially a phoney movement created by politicians and ideologs, Hindu nationalism is mostly composed of hatred of Muslims, Christians, and other non-Hindu groups. Though on the surface it sounds religious, it is not. It is nearly entirely secular, with the religious labels used only to incite mobs and other violence. It’s India, so it’s very complex. But it boils down to politicians creating identity politics and then whipping people into a frenzy over imagined insults, sometimes even staged events, people being captured, murdered, dressed in clothing to make them appear other than they are, and then put on public display to generate mob retaliation.

Modi and his party, the BJP, came to power by such techniques, promoting super nationalism, Hindu identity, hatred and violence against minorities, and using the military against Indian citizens as well as inciting supporters to attack dissidents.

Incidents of media manipulation, video from one incident being mixed with audio from another to make targeted dissidents say incriminating things, and other such activities have been documented. Of course, all of it is in service of exploitation of resources, vile profit, and pursuit of Empire.

But what’s really chilling is the similarity to our situation, and the portent of things to come in the wake of the US election. Early last year, Muslims in India were warned of a ‘final battle’. Roy says:

A fired-up, five-thousand-strong crowd chanted: … “Any Hindu whose blood isn’t boiling has water in the veins, not blood.” Regardless of who wins elections in the years to come, can this sort of venom be counteracted once it has entered the bloodstream? Can any society mend itself after having its fabric slashed and rent apart in this way?

What is happening right now is actually a systematic effort to create chaos, an attempt to arrive at a situation in which the civil rights enshrined in the constitution can be suspended…. We might well be witnessing preparations for a coup — not a military coup, but a coup nevertheless. It could be only a matter of time before India will officially cease to be a secular, democratic republic. We may find ourselves looking back fondly on the era of doctored videos and parody Twitter handles.

We have only just begun to see what the rhetoric of hatred can produce in this country. We would do well to heed India’s example and eschew this path.

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Ta Nehisi… again

Ta-Nehisi Coates may be the best social analyst and writer currently working in the American press. I am once again astounded at the clarity and honesty he brings to bear on the Obama presidency in his recent — long! — article in The Atlantic, My President Was Black.

Witness this passage, in which he says Obama’s speech to the DNC in 2004 belongs to:

… the literature of prospective presidents—men (as it turns out) who speak not to gravity and reality, but to aspirations and dreams. When Lincoln invoked the dream of a nation “conceived in liberty” and pledged to the ideal that “all men are created equal,” he erased the near-extermination of one people and the enslavement of another. When Roosevelt told the country that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he invoked the dream of American omnipotence and boundless capability. But black people, then living under a campaign of terror for more than half a century, had quite a bit to fear, and Roosevelt could not save them. The dream Ronald Reagan invoked in 1984—that “it’s morning again in America”—meant nothing to the inner cities, besieged as they were by decades of redlining policies, not to mention crack and Saturday-night specials. Likewise, Obama’s keynote address conflated the slave and the nation of immigrants who profited from him. To reinforce the majoritarian dream, the nightmare endured by the minority is erased.

While one might expect Coates to engage in apologetics for Obama, it doesn’t happen. Though he is honest in his baseline admiration for the man and the work he’s done, he steadfastly holds the Presidential feet to the flame:

Obama’s greatest misstep was born directly out of his greatest insight. Only Obama, a black man who emerged from the best of white America, and thus could sincerely trust white America, could be so certain that he could achieve broad national appeal. And yet only a black man with that same biography could underestimate his opposition’s resolve to destroy him.

These excerpts, though disconnected and probably disorganized, serve to show the remarkable depth of analysis and penetrating gaze that Coates brings to the subject. He also unfailingly puts it all into a social/economic context that makes it both understandable and sad. And he is unflinching in calling out the deep-seated racism in American history and society.

The mark of that system is visible at every level of American society, regardless of the quality of one’s choices. For instance, the unemployment rate among black college graduates (4.1 percent) is almost the same as the unemployment rate among white high-school graduates (4.6 percent). But that college degree is generally purchased at a higher price by blacks than by whites. According to research by the Brookings Institution, African Americans tend to carry more student debt four years after graduation ($53,000 versus $28,000) and suffer from a higher default rate on their loans (7.6 percent versus 2.4 percent) than white Americans. This is both the result and the perpetuator of a sprawling wealth gap between the races. White households, on average, hold seven times as much wealth as black households—a difference so large as to make comparing the “black middle class” and “white middle class” meaningless; they’re simply not comparable. According to Patrick Sharkey, a sociologist at New York University who studies economic mobility, black families making $100,000 a year or more live in more-disadvantaged neighborhoods than white families making less than $30,000. This gap didn’t just appear by magic; it’s the result of the government’s effort over many decades to create a pigmentocracy—one that will continue without explicit intervention.

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When I asked Obama about this perspective, he fluctuated between understanding where the activists were coming from and being hurt by such brush-offs. “I think that where I’ve gotten frustrated during the course of my presidency has never been because I was getting pushed too hard by activists to see the justness of a cause or the essence of an issue,” he said. “I think where I got frustrated at times was the belief that the president can do anything if he just decides he wants to do it. And that sort of lack of awareness on the part of an activist about the constraints of our political system and the constraints on this office, I think, sometimes would leave me to mutter under my breath. Very rarely did I lose it publicly. Usually I’d just smile.”

He laughed, then continued, “The reason I say that is because those are the times where sometimes you feel actually a little bit hurt. Because you feel like saying to these folks, ‘[Don’t] you think if I could do it, I [would] have just done it? Do you think that the only problem is that I don’t care enough about the plight of poor people, or gay people?’ ”

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The thought experiment doesn’t hold up. The programs Obama favored would advance white America too—and without a specific commitment to equality, there is no guarantee that the programs would eschew discrimination. Obama’s solution relies on a goodwill that his own personal history tells him exists in the larger country. My own history tells me something different. The large numbers of black men in jail, for instance, are not just the result of poor policy, but of not seeing those men as human.

The most recent Congress boasted 138 members from the states that comprised the old Confederacy. Of the 101 Republicans in that group, 96 are white and one is black. Of the 37 Democrats, 18 are black and 15 are white. There are no white congressional Democrats in the Deep South. Exit polls in Mississippi in 2008 found that 96 percent of voters who described themselves as Republicans were white. The Republican Party is not simply the party of whites, but the preferred party of whites who identify their interest as defending the historical privileges of whiteness.

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One theory popular among (primarily) white intellectuals of varying political persuasions held that this response was largely the discontented rumblings of a white working class threatened by the menace of globalization and crony capitalism. Dismissing these rumblings as racism was said to condescend to this proletariat, which had long suffered the slings and arrows of coastal elites, heartless technocrats, and reformist snobs. Racism was not something to be coolly and empirically assessed but a slander upon the working man. Deindustrialization, globalization, and broad income inequality are real. And they have landed with at least as great a force upon black and Latino people in our country as upon white people. And yet these groups were strangely unrepresented in this new populism.

I encourage everyone to read this wonderful piece of journalism.

I liked the article so much, I subscribed to The Atlantic. And sent them a letter saying I did it because I liked the article. Hope they appreciate it!  🙂

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A miracle at Standing Rock

Yes, a miracle is what we need, what the world needs. Charles Eisenstein suggests that the miracle could begin at Standing Rock. The miracle of action out of compassion, seeing the Other as oneself, opening one’s heart to the realities of all beings – a miracle of love.

The halting of the Dakota Access Pipeline would be miraculous simply because of the array of powerful ruling interests that are committed to building it. Not only has Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the pipeline, but a who’s-who of global banks has committed over $10 billion in lines of credit to ETP and other involved entities. Those banks, many of whom are facing financial stress of their own, are counting on the profits from the loans at a time when credit-worthy capital investments are hard to come by. Finally, the United States government has (in its estimation) a geopolitical interest in increasing domestic oil production to reduce the economic power of Russia and the Middle East. To hope to halt the pipeline in the face of such powers is in a certain sense unrealistic.

But, Charles says, things could go differently this time, if we all stay off the warpath, as the elders have advised the Water Protectors to do. “… at Standing Rock, something different is possible. It is not because the Dakota Sioux have finally acquired more guns or money than the pro-pipeline forces. It is because we are ready collectively for a change of heart.”

That’s pretty strong. This is an opening not seen in a long time, and one that could stand as a non-violent model for all the confrontations we’re likely to see over the next four years or so. If the pipeline is re-routed, it establishes a precedent – we can affect even these huge corporate projects if we stay focused, unified and nonviolent.

It will be a victory whether to pipeline is stopped or not: “This has already born fruit: if not for the resolute nonviolence of the resistance, the government would surely have forcefully evicted the Water Protectors by now, justifying violence with violence.”

Each of these invitations onto the warpath also presents an opportunity to defy the enabling narratives of violence and to take a step toward victory without fighting. It is an opportunity to employ what Gandhi called “soul force.” Meeting violence with nonviolence invites the other into nonviolence as well.

Beyond that, this action has the potential to awaken the world:

… when we choose love in the face of enormous temptation to hate, we are issuing a powerful prayer for a world of love. When we refuse to dehumanize in the face of atrocity, we issue a prayer for universal dignity. When thousands of people sacrifice their safety and comfort to protect the water, a powerful prayer issues from their gathering. Some day, in some form, it will be answered.

Charles’ essay is very much worth reading:

Standing Rock: A Change of Heart

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Joanna Macy – heart wisdom

Joanna Macy, a wonderful Buddhist teacher with many years of deep practice and profound teachings, shares this wisdom on the dark times we live in. I’m paraphrasing…

These times, The Great Turning, call for Shambala Warriors wielding the twin weapons of Compassion and Insight – Compassion to provide the heat and motivation to get out there and do what needs to be done and the cooling wisdom of Insight into the ‘radical inter-dependence of all phenomena.’ And we must understand that it is not a war between the good guys and the bad guys, but that ‘the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart.’

Deep wisdom that only true practice can help us bring into the world.

Joanna shares this in her movie, The Great Turning, and this clip is available to view on Vimeo – Joanna Macy on the Shambala Warrior.

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Metta for All Beings

In these dark times, times that demand such awareness and commitment to strong action, we need to build each others’ heart strength for the suffering we will encounter, for the hard work we will do, for the long struggle we must endure.

One way of building this strength is to send out heart-felt messages to others, spoken and unspoken messages that come from the meditative state and have power to spread encouragement and support. In some Buddhist traditions, this process is known as metta, which is usually translated ‘loving kindness’, but goes far beyond that when part of a deep practice of compassion and compassionate action.

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel composed this poem, whose words speak to us so strongly in light of recent words and actions, in the spirit of that powerful form of metta:

 

For All Beings

May all beings be cared for and loved,

Be listened to, understood and acknowledged despite different views,

Be accepted for who they are in this moment,

Be afforded patience,

Be allowed to live without fear of having their lives taken away or their bodies violated.

May all beings

Be well in its broadest sense,

Be fed,

Be clothed,

Be treated as if their life is precious,

Be held in the eyes of each other as family.

May all beings

Be appreciated,

Feel welcomed anywhere on the planet,

Be freed from acts of hatred and desperation including war, poverty, slavery, and street crimes,

Live on the planet, housed and protected from harm,

Be given what is needed to live fully, without scarcity,

Enjoy life, living without fear of one another,

Be able to speak freely in a voice and mind of undeniable love.

May all beings

Receive and share the gifts of life,

Be given time to rest, be still, and experience silence.

May all beings

Be awake.

The poem was published in Turning Wheel by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship in 2009. May it be spoken, heard, understood and enacted throughout the world.

Metta!

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Key elements of fascism

Because fascism is such an insidious thing, we must be vigilant and well-informed about how it looks in the early stages, before it’s too late.

Fascism has been sneaking into our lives, into the hearts and minds of our countrymen, slipping into the national dialog in the guise of patriotism, strength, purity, religious piety, safety – all things that seem positive and non-threatening.

Trump and his appointees are pretty clearly leading us to an authoritarian state in the name of protecting us from “outsiders” and that’s why it’s problematic. From Dave Neiwert, a researcher on fascism who’s been following its rise for many years, here are a few of the characteristics that struck me as particularly noticeable in the current political climate:

— Attempted mass mobilization with militarization of political relationships and style and with the goal of a mass party militia
— Positive evaluation and use of, or willingness to use, violence
— Extreme stress on the masculine principle and male dominance, while espousing the organic view of society

— Specific tendency toward an authoritarian, charismatic, personal style of command, whether or not the command is to some degree initially elective. — [from Stanley Payne, in Fascism: Comparison and Definition]

— a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal constraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion. [from Robert Paxton’s definition of fascism]

From Paxton’s “mobilizing passions” of fascism:

— the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against the group’s enemies, both internal and external;

— dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences;

— the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny;

— the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason;

From Roger Griffin: “Fascism rejects liberal ideas such as freedom and individual rights, and often presses for the destruction of elections, legislatures, and other elements of democracy.”

Neiwert’s entire essay is worth reading: http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2015/11/donald-trump-may-not-be-fascist-but-he.html