Save All Beings

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of a talk I offered to Morning Star Zen Sangha on April 4, 2018.

From The Way of Tenderness, by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel: ”Complete tenderness trusts the fluidity of our life energy and its extension into those around us. It allows rage and anger to flow in and out again without holding on to it as proof of being human. The way of tenderness is an elixir for the clogged arteries in the heart of our world. The way of tenderness does not equal quiescence. It does not mean that fiery emotions disappear. It does not render acceptable that anyone could hurt or abuse life. Tenderness doesn't erase the inequities we face in the relative world. It doesn't encourage a spiritual bypass of the feelings, we experience.”

I've been feeling really grateful to be here tonight with all of you sitting together and getting to hear the ringing of the bells. How lucky we are to take refuge in the presence of one another, in our sangha. We have this remarkable, safe space to allow ourselves to unfold. Not everyone is so fortunate. 

50 years ago tonight, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. I've been listening to stories about him on the radio. I’ve been recalling Black people who have been unjustly killed. Aura Rosser. Philando Castille. Freddie Gray. Eric Garner. 12 year old Tamir Rice. The anniversary of Dr. King’s murder reminds us of what he was fighting for. At the moment of his assassination, it was economic justice. He was in Memphis to support the sanitation workers of the city. And it's frustrating to look out into our world now and see that economic justice has not come, that we have actually maintained economic disparities between the races. It's staggering. I recently read that the average white family in Boston has about $250,000 in equity, and the average Black family has $8. King also fought against mass incarceration and violence against Black people, yet assassinations and imprisonments continue. One in four young Black men go to prison. We have a name for it: the school to prison pipeline. We can either think that there is something wrong with Black people, or we can think that there is something wrong with our society that these continue to be the outcomes. I believe the latter.

Some of us may also be tuned into the injustice facing a voiceless constituent: the environment -- the way that environmental protections are being stripped away one after another even though it's clear that this causes great harm to us all, and disproportionate harm to the poor and people of color. And worldwide, we see great suffering -- refugee crises, war, genocides, starvation. As King said, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." So much of it is driven by the 3 poisons of greed, anger, and ignorance, but mostly greed. And the greedy suffer too. In Buddhism, this endless longing to possess is personified as hungry ghosts, creatures with a huge bellies and tiny mouths who cannot ingest as much food as they desire. This rampant longing to consume the world could destroy us all. 

Our practice on the cushion is not about escapism or denial. It's about awakening to things as they are, and that includes suffering in the world. We are called to alleviate suffering for all beings. That is the heart of this practice. The mind sometimes wants to jump ahead. How do I do it? And then, of course, we run up against inevitable failure and may feel that the next best thing is to just give up. And yet, here we come, week after week, and make our bodhisattva vow to liberate all beings from suffering. How is it that we fulfill our vow to free all beings? Faced with this living koan again and again, do we go to a place of denial, a place of quietism, or do we practice the brave way of tenderness, of being awake? 

Part of the reason we do not practice turning away from our own suffering is so that we can bear the suffering of all, so that we don't have to turn away, so that we can bear witness to it, feel it ourselves and not be completely overwhelmed. Or if we are overwhelmed, even in being overwhelmed, to realize that this being overwhelmed is impermanent, that we can re-engage for the sake of those who are suffering. 

One of the great, powerful images of our tradition is Avalokiteshvara with her thousand hands reaching out to help others, tears streaming down her face. Ours is not a practice of closing our eyes to the pain that we find in the world. We come here and sit on the cushion week after week, night after night, because it gives us a great capacity and remarkable faith that we can indeed bear this pain, that we actually don't need to turn away, that we are indeed saved by the beautiful sound of the bell, that each moment, we are actually saved by all beings. We are saved because we are not separate, and it's precisely because we are not separate that we are called to serve.

Some of us in BoWZ just studied a book by Oluo called So You Want to Talk about Race. Really interesting book. One theme was that those of us who are privileged in some way can recognize that that privilege gives us inequitable access to power that we can use to help others. I could use my position in the public schools to help change systems that have not benefited many Black and Latin American children. It's a simple and brilliant concept, deeply empowering, that we might be able to use privileges that we have -- in the same way we might be able to use this fortunate gift that we've been given of a Buddhist practice to tolerate and bear witness to the suffering of the world -- that we might be of service. 

This does not mean that we have to constantly be thinking about the problems of the world. There are times when we sit and we just hear the bell, and we are saved. By allowing ourselves to be saved in our practice again and again, by allowing ourselves to simply bear witness to what is, we find something quite indestructible: the nonduality of our heart-minds and the universe, a salvific revelation that fortifies us and nourishes us, a deep sense of connectivity and compassion that fills us up again and again as we sit on the cushion. 

We don't have to think about this to make this happen. This is the sometimes sudden, the sometimes gradual realization of our true nature, already true, that nourishes our capacity to step forth in the world and be of service. None of us, with all of our effort, could ever erase all of the suffering in the world. But each of us can do something, and collectively we bring about change. 

Each of us will be called to quite different forms of service, and this is as it should be. So the question is, what is it that calls to you? In what ways can you be of service? Can we all take this precious gift that we are given in our sangha, in this restorative practice, and bring it forth into the world in service? This is the way of tenderness. 

It's hard. I don't know about you but I am so often so sad and sometimes angry about injustices in the world. Sometimes I realize that I am unconsciously participating in injustices. But witnessing is just the beginning. Each of us can return to the cushion and be saved, be restored, be renewed, then each of us can do something to alleviate the problem. This is how we save all beings, by seeing the child in front of us who needs our help and offering that help. Or perhaps it's by getting involved politically, supporting a campaign, or writing to congresspeople. 

What is your path?

Nourishing Bodhisattva Practice

what to do with your goat in a drowning world

hear the helicopters come over the roof
water's up to my attic windows
and I'm stuck here with my goat
I can see my neighbor in the hole on his roof
he's got two dachsies and a tomcat
just across the rushing river is his sister
she's cradling her baby and a rooster
circling helicopters circling helicopters
will take me but not my goat
will lift me up from muck and flood
but they won't take my neighbor's dogs or cat
or his sister's baby's rooster
helicopters overhead nation to the rescue
take the people damn their friends
I'm not going without my goat
he's not going without his pets
baby won't leave without her rooster
lord oh lord why don't we have an ark
that's the helicopters leaving
that's the nation to the rescue
leaving us here in the dark
             - Andrei Codrescu

Buddhists are called by compassion to alleviate suffering in the world. While there are innumerable forms this practice can take, two that I have explored are social justice and environmentalism. But anyone who has dared to turn toward these issues can easily feel overwhelmed, like the tide is literally and figuratively rising around them, and, as a way of feeling better, slip back into denial.

For me, these issues sometimes seem utterly overwhelming and intractable, especially in the face of a White House that is so regressive. Though I may put solar panels on my house, if the Trump administration simultaneously denies the reality of global warming, pulls out of international climate agreements, and boosts coal and oil production, I can feel defeated. And as a teacher, though I may help a Latin American or Black student advance into a higher level English class, if more aggressive border patrols separate migrant families from one another and children die in record numbers while in detention, I begin to feel hopeless.

In the face of such overwhelming odds, it is tempting to turn away from these issues to avoid feeling so disheartened. We may thus swing like pendulums from feeling motivated and taking actions to feeling overwhelmed and disengaging. In moments of overwhelm, we may tell ourselves, "it's all just too much. There's actually nothing we can do to prevent institutional racism and the destruction of our planet. It's inevitable." We may even pretend that our "Buddha-nature" liberates us from caring. But this is a misunderstanding of our Buddha-nature.

As I have described, if our insight into emptiness is genuine, our compassion naturally increases. We are all interwoven. We are all part of the same systems. We breathe the same air. In awakening to the inherent interconnectedness and beauty of the world, we can't help but be moved when we see what we love being harmed. Though sometimes it offers temporary relief from this world on fire, escapism is ultimately no refuge from what actually is. If our practice is authentic, withdrawal will, in time, give way to a more honest sense of co-responsibility every time we hear about the disproportionate imprisonment and poverty you of people of color, about historic storms flooding our cities, or about the eventual potential destruction of civilization due to global warming. This sense of co-responsibility is not a flaw in practice. It is our compassion urging us to save all beings.

But how can Buddhists stay engaged with social and environmental causes in a sustainable and effective way given how intractable the issues appear? I decided to write this post for myself as encouragement in the face of tough odds. I hope that some of my advice to myself will be of some use to you.

First, for me, Facebook is not nearly enough to nourish or carry out activism. Social media stirs us into a frenzy with its extreme headlines, but the most common outcome is that I react to a few posts, maybe write one myself, and then slip back into feeling overwhelmed.

In terms of inspiring effective and persistent activism, we might begin by spending more time appreciating what we actually love. We are, for example, more inspired to protect nature when we remind ourselves of how much we cherish being in it. I'm lucky. My father took me on a tour of many of our nation's parks when I was young and brought us mountain climbing every year. I vividly recall him standing on top of mountains looking over valleys of fall foliage with tears in his eyes. My love of nature was implanted early. But in our high-tech, busy society, it is easy to lose touch with nature and our love of its beauty. We need to nourish this love. Take walks in a park among the trees. Sit on a bench and listen to the birds sing and the wind in the leaves. Watch chipmunks scurry through the ivy and chirp at one another. Listen to children play in a green field. Remember that this is their world too. By being attentive in a meditative way in the real world, by "practicing" being awake to what surrounds us, we find our inspiration to save all beings. And we can cultivate this appreciative attention on the cushion practicing zazen. There’s nothing that sustains me more than this.

Another way to nourish ourselves is to join with others doing the same work. In a culture where things may be going in a direction with which we do not agree, we can feel like whatever we do is, as one friend put it, "a squirt gun in an inferno." And we can feel quite alone, without a clue what to do. But when we join with others, we get ideas and energy from one another. Each of us can carry part of the load. This gives us hope. Thousands of buckets of water just might make a difference.

Morning Star Zen Sangha, my practice group, is initiating "Bodhisattva Practice Group” to choose a few local actions to do together. It is easier to live according to our vow to save all beings when we are supported by others with similar values. There are so many organizations and people doing excellent work. We can carry out local projects with them like challenging school boards to address the achievement gap, picking up trash off the beach, or gathering signatures for more renewable energy. Perhaps most inspiringly, when we join with others, our efforts add up. Many drops become a wave.

If our sanghas align in practice but less in activism, joining other organizations can help. Groups that advocate politically offers us a personal hope that we can sway public policies in an altruistic direction. Eli Broad offers democratic engagement as the most effective and empowering means of joining with others to transform a society. He writes in the New York Times, "When a society helps people through its shared democratic institutions, it does so on behalf of all, and in a context of equality.  Those institutions, representing those free and equal citizens, are making a collective choice of whom to help and how.  Those who receive help are not only objects of the transaction, but also subjects of it -- citizens with agency.  When help is moved into the private sphere, no matter how efficient we are told it is, the context of the helping is a relationship of inequality:  the giver and the taker, the helper and the helped, the donor and the recipient." While democratic institutions may not always deliver on our hopes, actively participating on the local, state, and national level offers the real opportunity for our society to live up to our ideals. And when we do so with coalitions, our voices multiply and reverberate.

Another thing I have been reflecting on is how our mindfulness can help us attend to issues one moment at a time. For example, we might notice the way we casually buy, use, and "recycle" plastic. But most plastic that we drop in the recycle bin is not actually recycled, and huge amounts of it end up in the oceans, dissolving and entering our food chain. (Turns out things actually are interconnected!) When we see how much we waste and the harm it causes, we can attentively curb our waste. These commitments, when shared among friends, begin to feel meaningful, like maybe we can turn the tide.

Finally, I need to remind myself to notice successes, not just failures. Even though there are many people who may buy styrofoam cups, if I don't buy one, there is one less cup for a whale to swallow. As a child, my daughter used to take the rings that held six-packs of cans together and cut them so they would not strangle sea turtles and birds. We can all become children again, taking great care of what we naturally love and feeling good about the small things we are doing. After all, each being we save is a universe unto itself!

So spend time appreciating what you love, join with others to take action, and celebrate the successes along the way. Most fundamentally, we need each other if we hope to save all beings. If we are left alone on the roof of a house and the flood waters rise, we will not be able to save ourselves, never mind those we love. But if we can build bridges to one another, we can save all beings, one being at a time.