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Tonight I did something I do less and less of these days — I came home and didn’t jump on the Internet. Didn’t rush through my meal to hurry up and check my e-mail only to be inundated with the day’s nauseating blog comments. Didn’t skip reading the book I’m almost finished with to see what’s going on with Twitter. Just fed the animals, changed, ate my dinner, watched Louie, and then sat down in the new dorm-room style circle chair I bought on sale at Target with said book I’m almost finished with.
I don’t want to go all Calculon on you by saying I was filled with a large number of powerful emotions, but I actually was. I was unplugged and I could hear myself thinking without the background noise of the fan keeping my laptop from burning my palms as I type. I thought about how my whole life is in light; fiber optics transmitting my thoughts to people I’ll probably never meet, silicon holding my words only to be revealed by the tickle of electricity sent to circuits triggered by the touch of my finger to a button. Where do my words go when I’m gone? The frantic pace of the Internet makes me feel that if I don’t check in every few hours, or every day, or every other day, all memory of me will vanish. Do people read my blog archives? Or do they simply absorb the missive I’ve sent for the day, then dash off to some other blog, where they’ll read something else that scoots my words out of the way to implant themselves in their place? If I didn’t post for a month, would you remember who I was? All you know of me is light. My picture appears to you in pixels and photons, but you don’t know the flesh behind them. And this is true for all of us who inhabit this world, who put their words out for consumption in blog form or comment form or tweet form or e-mail form. When we’re all gone, — all of us, including you — what will be left of us to know?
I’m a realist, I don’t expect our current mode of civilization to last for a thousand years or even a hundred years if we keep doing what we’re doing with no major modifications. When the time comes that there are no more working DVD players to play our DVDs, when our infrastructure is so dilapidated that we can’t access what’s left of the Internet, when there’s no electricity being generated to power our communications towers and our orbiting satellites come crashing to Earth from lack of maintenance, how will we remember what we are? How will whatever civilization rises after us, comprised of whatever beings have replaced us, know who we were? Civilizations we consider ancient today used decidedly more low tech materials to share their information, and we can pore over them today. We only need other low tech writings to teach us how to interpret the strange symbols their society used to communicate. I can’t even begin to figure out what a shiny CD has on it without benefit of fancy technology that, in our future as it stands to become now, will no longer exist. I can’t take out my laptop’s hard drive and flip through the circuits to find that short story I wrote 2 years ago. I can’t tell you one damn thing about what’s on that drive except through the low tech method of retelling memories — what I can remember about what I had on there. It’s kind of frightening to me, this impermanence. It feels like the knowledge about this golden age of history is a mere electromagnetic pulse away from becoming nothingness. I know, I know, I’m getting all existential up in this piece. But if you sit with it, it leaves you cold.
That’s why I’m obsessed with notebooks and pens and paper and books, why I’m putting together an anthology telling stories of women of color on paper, why I’m not too keen on e-books and I still buy CDs — hey, at least the liner notes and lyrics will still be readable. I don’t advocate some kind of neo-Luddite existence. I don’t think we need to start carving stone tablets. Just write some. Papryus is still around, I have hope that archival quality, acid-free paper will be too. Write your memories, journal daily, write your speculative autobiography. Write your parents’ or your significant other’s biographies. Leave your story for the climate refugees of the 2100s to read. Go out with your friends and tell each other your stories and write those down. Don’t let the only ones remembered be the ones lucky enough to get their words in print before the clock runs out.
Now excuse me while I go finish reading that book I’m almost finished with.
***Trigger Warning for description of street harassment*** (Mild, with no violence, but I’d rather be overly cautious than trigger someone!)
A couple of months ago, I was walking on the street by my house, sobbing. I’d just had a huge fight with my mom, hung up on her, and felt so miserable I didn’t even want to stop the tears. But the guy swaggering toward me on the other side of the sidewalk did and knew exactly how he’d do it, too: “Girl, I’d never make you cry, you come home with me and I’ll make you scream.”
Ew. Gross and so self-absorbed, as street harassment goes, for him presume he knew what was wrong and could fix it with his dick. I glared but otherwise ignored him as he passed. I guess he whipped around to take another look because the next thing I heard was, “Oooh, girl has an ass, too!”
I turned, raised my bag in the air and let loose with all the curse words for slime like him I could think of and some indignant feminist rage, too. As soon as I’d gotten the first f-bomb out of my mouth, he broke off into a run and I ran right after him, screaming at his back: “Would you say that to your mother? Your sister? You think you own this street and my body if you want it? FUCK YOU!”
As all the women reading this know, this situation could have turned dangerous quickly – often times confronting street harassers escalates the situation and I usually don’t do it to this extent, but I felt more comfortable, and probably more angry, because the door to my apartment was a few feet away. When I made it inside, I felt strong, powerful, and more than a little bit subversive.
Of course, this isn’t how I, or probably anyone else, usually feels after a run-in with street harassment in all it’s nefarious forms, which can range from whistles, barks, meows, and grunts from across the street to threats of violence or demands to smile, to out and out attempted physical assault. Whenever one of these occurs, which can be several times a day in New York City, I usually end up feeling some combination of angry, scared, annoyed and a little less hopeful about the progress women have made and are making in asserting our basic humanity to the world.
Today, however, I have a lot more hope, so much so that I’m almost excited to meet my first street creeper of the day. With the long-awaited launch of the iHollaback iPhone app dawns a new era in pairing mobile technology with woman-powered guerrilla activism to end street harassment – and, hopefully makes feeling subversive and empowered afterward the new norm, not the exception.
Here’s how it works: when an incidence of street harassment occurs, iPhone users can pull up the app and report the place and type of abuse, as well as upload a photo of the offender. The reports go into a central, searchable database that women can use to share their stories and figure out the routes on which street harassment is most likely to occur. As Rebekah Spicuglia points out in New York Daily News, street harassment is a crime that everyone knows occurs but on which we have very little data – iHollaback will serve as a resource for law enforcement looking to cut down on the behavior, legislators trying to pass stricter laws against it, and activists holding the feet of both to the fire to actually do so.
Activist Emily May started the iHollaback movement in 2005 with a site that allows users to upload photos of offenders along with short stories. The point was to send a signal to men that women will no longer be silent or powerless in the face of street harassment and their behavior will no longer be secret or without shame. That mission holds – and will soon be expanding worldwide and beyond the iPhone, with the upcoming introduction of an international app and an SMS text service and an app for Droid phones. (I’ve personally appealed to the iHollaback team for a Blackberry app – any developer who’d to help make that happen, contact me and I’ll put you in touch with the right people!)
If you happen to be in NYC and want to drink to the beginning of the end of street harassment, the iHollaback launch party is tonight, in Brooklyn, details here.
As for me, I’m raising my glass to the dude who’s been staring at me across the train station the whole time I wrote this post – your creepy mug is going on the internets!
To say that blogging can be dhammic is not to claim that it can substitute for formal techniques of spiritual practice. Those techniques are designed to help bring us face-to-face with the hard lessons — otherwise, it becomes just another feel-good affair (or, as I once heard Mary Ann Brussat call it, “salad-bar spirituality”). Still, with any spiritual teaching, it’s easy to get too wrapped up in literalism and formalism. So we have to remember to engage creatively with the mundane — the materials already before us. Whether that’s blogging or boxing or BDSM roleplaying.
Yesterday I talked a bit about how sexism keeps us from taking journal blogging seriously. Today, 5 reasons the medium suits dhamma practice terrifically, with particular advantages as a new form of spiritual autobiography.
1. The highest wisdom comes from experience. In the dhamma, there is value in both wisdom heard from others and wisdom reasoned out for oneself, but ultimate wisdom comes only through direct experience. We can understand the texts and lectures, we can meditate, but unless we apply the dhamma in life, we won’t be able to realize and internalize its benefits. Memoir blogging can help put the focus squarely on the stuff of everyday life, a rich and often underestimated field of dhamma. As Chokyi Nyima says,
[H]onestly, it’s not that one has to go to some other place and close the door and be quiet in order to practice. That’s not the only way. It’s definitely the case that we can practice at any given moment. We can always try a little more to be kind, to be compassionate and be careful about what we do and say and so forth.
2. Dialectical praxis. Theory makes practice makes theory makes practice. A basic understanding of journal blogging might be: harvesting raw material from real life, then fashioning them into stories for online distribution and discussion. Something like this:
But we can also choose to use blogging not just for communication and performance, but reflection. We can establish a dialectical relationship between online and offline activity: particularly when mindfulness and reflexivity are applied in both contexts.
Imagine a mindful blogger who witnesses a beautiful sunrise. With mindfulness and presence, the blogger allows the experience to unfold as it is. Later, composing a blog post, the blogger reflects on the sunrise, sharing the awe, pleasure, and insight into the brevity of human existence that the sight inspired. Through the writing process, responses from commenters, or both, the blogger’s own insight deepens, matures, and evolves: the lesson of the sunrise expands for both blogger and readers, assuming new forms and nuances. In the future, when the blogger or reader witnesses a sky at dawn, the insights developed online may arise: a reminder to remain present, and a sense of connectedness with others in this brief, precious human existence.
This model is more complex than the harvesting idea because it demonstrates the circuitry connecting online and offline experience. Still, as yet there is nothing distinguishing such a praxis (mutually constituting practice and theory) as particular to the art of blogging. A traditional memoirist, for instance, in writing a book, may pass through the same phases: experiencing life directly; communicating these experiences; teasing out and developing lessons from these renderings; and applying these lessons to future life experiences.
3. Temporal location. The “now-ness” of blogging can prove particularly auspicious for ongoing mindfulness practice. A traditional autobiographer reflects on their past, carefully condensing and constructing the messy life-events of decades or quarter-centuries into a digestible, contiguous narratives. Blogging’s structural focus on the present — with posts displayed in reverse-chronological order, showing the most current entry first, and updated far, far more frequently than books are able to be published — shifts attention to ongoing influxes of new experience. This forward motion propels the praxis of mindful blogging in a manner different from autobiography. While the memoirist resides at the front end of the past, the blogger perches on the cusp of the future.
4. Greater room for, and emphasis on, reader participation. I’m fascinated by the participatory nature of blogging because I think it challenges our idea of ‘authority’ or ‘authorship’ in ‘auto’-biographical writing. When a post is published, its life is just beginning! While reader consumption and response certainly reflect and influence the overall impact of a memoir, the memoirist doesn’t turn right around to compose and publish another commentary in response!
When bloggers are open to it, their reader participants can shape the project as much as they themselves do. Threads with intensive back-and-forth replies resemble nothing so much as published correspondence: exchanges among equals, rather than footnotes to the main event of a post. Readers have shared insights with me that I never would have come up with on my own — and oftentimes my favorite part about a post is its thread.
Plus, reader participation provides opportunities for compassionate communication. (Again, the “Ennobling Speech.”) Aware of the ‘realness’ of online community, mindful bloggers can treat reader/participants on their blogs with as much care as they would in real life, considering comments seriously and joyfully, and understanding them as a crucial component to the knowledge-making occurring in the online/offline space.
Journal writing, whether public or private, can help us get a handle on our own experiences. But blogging also remind us that we’re not the sole author of our life story.
5. Shifting focus from media to mindfulness. On a site like Feministe, this probably deserves a whole conversation to itself! But to put it briefly: it’s extremely, extremely hard to maintain mindfulness — the kind of full-body awareness that’s open and receptive — while consuming media. We get sucked into the article, the radio spot, the TV program, and become totally mentally identified with it.
Have you been trying #3 of the dhamma comment guidelines, “honoring the body”? Shit is mad difficult!
I’m not here to tell anybody how to live, or that you should cut down on your media consumption. But I will say for myself, I’ve noticed:
(a) I tend to feel ‘more productive’ or ’smarter’ when I’m reading — especially reading political media and commentary — versus when I’m sitting and meditating, or just bringing awareness to everyday activities. But ultimately it’s the work on the spiritual path that most affects my quality of living.
(b) I often reach for online reading compulsively, when I’m bored or anxious, specifically as a distraction.
(c) Reading and watching videos creates a lot of noise in my mind. A LOT of noise. Most of the time I don’t notice it unless I put forth exceptional effort to pay attention. But when I go into a 10-day silent meditation retreat, with no reading, writing, music, speaking, or touching other people, there’s no hiding from it. All that agitation is just swirling around, and there’s *nothing* I can do to stop it. Just gotta wait for it to settle down.
Again, this isn’t about condemning media as toxic or something. Media-based blogging is a great tool for the harm side of the equation. But how to keep it balanced? What if we took some of the energy we spend consuming and analyzing media, and devoted it to spreading mindful awareness in our everyday life?
By learning to remain balanced in the face of everything experienced inside, one develops detachment towards all that one encounters in external situations as well. However, this detachment is not escapism or indifference to the problems of the world. Those who regularly practice Vipassana become more sensitive to the sufferings of others, and do their utmost to relieve suffering in whatever way they can—not with any agitation, but with a mind full of love, compassion and equanimity. They learn holy indifference—how to be fully committed, fully involved in helping others, while at the same time maintaining balance of mind. In this way they remain peaceful and happy, while working for the peace and happiness of others.
Yesterday I talked a bit about how sexism prevents us from taking journal blogging seriously. Today, 5 reasons I see the medium as terrifically compatible with dhamma, with particular strengths as a new form of spiritual autobiography.
Please remember, this is my own, evolving understanding of dhamma (in the Theravāda/Vipassana/Insight Meditation tradition). I don’t speak on behalf of everyone who practices, even though we might agree on some of the main ideas. And lots of people have been practicing for twice as long as I’ve been alive, so there’s that.
Also, the blogging isn’t a substitute for the more formal techniques of dhamma — the stuff that brings us face-to-face with the hard lessons, and what keeps the practice from becoming a useless feel-good affair (or as I once heard Mary Ann Brussat call it, “salad bar spirituality”). At the same time, with any spiritual tradition it’s easy to get too caught up in formalism and literalism. We shouldn’t forget to engage creatively with the mundane — the materials already here for us. Whether that’s blogging or boxing or BDSM roleplaying.
One more thing — and this seems simple, but maybe it’s not. If you’re not a fan of spirituality in general, you don’t have to read this. The Internet’s a big place. Spend your time in the ways you see fit!
Cool? Cool. Here we go.
1. The highest wisdom comes from experience. In the dhamma, there is value in both wisdom heard from others and wisdom reasoned out for oneself, but ultimate wisdom comes only through direct experience. We can understand the texts and lectures, we can meditate, but unless we apply the dhamma in life, we won’t be able to realize and internalize its benefits. Memoir blogging can help put the focus squarely on the stuff of everyday existence, a rich and often underestimated field of dhamma. As Chökyi Nyima says,
[H]onestly, it’s not that one has to go to some other place and close the door and be quiet in order to practice. That’s not the only way. It’s definitely the case that we can practice at any given moment. We can always try a little more to be kind, to be compassionate and be careful about what we do and say and so forth.
2. Dialectical praxis. Theory makes practice makes theory makes practice. A basic understanding of journal blogging might be: harvesting raw material from real life, then fashioning them into stories for online distribution and discussion. Something like this:
But blogging isn’t just for communication. It can also be for reflection. We can establish a dialectical relationship between online and offline activity: particularly when mindfulness and reflexivity are applied in both contexts.
Imagine a journal blogger who witnesses magnificent sunrise. With mindfulness and presence, they allows the experience to unfold as it is. Later, composing a post, the blogger reflects on the sunrise, sharing the awe, calm, and insight into the brevity of human existence that the experience inspired. Through the writing process, responses from commenters, or both, the blogger’s own insight deepens, matures, and evolves: the lesson of the sunrise expands for both blogger and readers, assuming new forms and nuances. In the future, when the blogger or readers witness a sunrise or a breathtaking sky, the insights developed online may return: not just analysis, but a reminder to remain present, and a sense of connectedness with others in this brief, precious human existence.
This model is more complex than the harvesting idea because it demonstrates the circuitry connecting online and offline experience. Personally, I’ve found it super useful. Taking the time to reflect, to photograph, and to compose blog posts has benefited my relationship to my home-cooked food (plating it nicely, appreciating it, not wolfing it down at the kitchen counter); my neighborhood; my elusive and beautiful cat — lots of everyday things that are easy to take for granted, but actually hold great nourishment and dhammic quality when we engage them with mindfulness.
Still, so far there’s not much distinguishing such a praxis (mutually constituting practice and theory) as particular to the art of blogging. A traditional memoirist writing a book may very well pass through the same phases: experiencing life directly; communicating these experiences in a discursive medium; teasing out and developing lessons from these renderings; and applying these lessons to future life experiences.
3. Temporal location. The “now-ness” of blogging can prove particularly auspicious for ongoing mindfulness and dhammic practice. While autobiographers typically reflect on the distant past of their lives, carefully condensing and constructing the messy life-events of decades or quarter-centuries into digestible, contiguous narratives, blogging’s structural focus is on the present.
Posts are displayed in reverse-chronological order, showing the most current entry first — and updated far, far more frequently than books are able to be published. Attention shifts to ongoing influxes of new experience. This forward motion propels the praxis of mindful blogging in a manner different from autobiography. While the memoirist resides at the front end of the past, the blogger perches on the cusp of the future. Every day presents an opportunity to start again — with what Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi famously explained as “Beginner’s Mind.”
4. Greater room for, and emphasis on, reader participation. The participatory nature of blogging similarly illustrates the constant change and freshness that encourage and support mindful praxis. When a post is published, its life is just beginning! While reader consumption and response certainly reflect and influence the overall impact of a memoir, the author doesn’t turn right around to compose and publish another commentary in response!
Aware of the realness of online community, dhammic bloggers can treat reader/participants on their blogs with as much care and consideration as they would in real life, considering comments seriously and joyfully, and understanding them as a crucial component to the knowledge-making happening in the online/offline space. Blog threads with intensive back-and-forth replies resemble nothing so much as published correspondence: exchanges among equals, rather than footnotes to the main event of a post.
Journals, whether private or public, can be very useful tools for getting a handle on our experiences. But a participatory memoir helps remind us that we’re not the sole authors of our life stories.
5. Transferring focus from media to mindful engagement. On a blog like Feministe, this point probably deserves a whole conversation to itself! But briefly, I’ll just put it out there: it’s really, really hard to maintain mindful awareness (kind of the backbone of dhamma, in a way) while we’re consuming media. We get sucked into the article, or the radio spot, or the TV program, very much identified with it mentally, and our full-body awareness — the calm, receiving type of mind — typically doesn’t stand a chance.
Have you been trying out #3 in the dhamma comment guidelines, “honoring our bodies”? Shit is mad difficult online!
Now, I’m not here to tell anyone how to live their life, or to stop reading so much news and media, or anything like that. But I will say from my experience that
(a) I often feel more ‘productive’ or ’smarter’ when reading, especially reading political media, than when simply sitting and meditating, or paying attention to my life, moment by moment. But while the reading helps with the harm side of things (and with entertainment, too!), it’s the latter, the spiritual path specifically, that most affects my quality of living.
And (b) Reading creates a lot of noise in my head. A LOT of noise. I don’t notice it most of the time, but when I go on a silent 10-day meditation retreat, it becomes so clear. Amazing, how much reading agitates and excites the mind. And how addicted I become to that noise, that habitual thinking. I can’t turn it off, even when I want to.
Again, I’m not here to make judgments, but to encourage all of us to explore this for ourselves. What happens when we take some of the energy we spend consuming and digesting media, and apply it to cultivating awareness, internal focus, compassion and stability using the physical stuff of our everyday lives?
I’d been working on some posts for today, but right now I think I’d just like to take a moment to acknowledge and honor the pain that a lot of us are feeling as a result of some recent threads here. Now that trigger warnings have been added and the harm has been addressed, maybe we can take some time to heal the suffering, and to take refuge.
“Taking refuge” in dhammic praxis has a specific meaning, and refers to the “Triple Gem”:
>> Buddha – taking inspiration from the qualities of the historical Buddha, and all enlightened teachers;
>> Dhamma – taking inspiration from the teachings of the buddha;
>> Sangha – taking inspiration from a community of dhamma practitioners.
For me, this practice (including mindfulness, everyday compassion, and Vipassana meditation) is kind of the ultimate refuge, that provides a foundation for the way I understand and participate in reality. But as the teachers at East Bay Meditation Center recently reminded me, whether or not we practice dhamma, we all have places and ways we take refuge. Could be taking a walk outside. Having a good cry. Writing in a journal. Practicing some yoga. Wilin’ out on our drum kit. Talking to a best friend. Spending time with an animal companion. Singing. Dancing. Praying. Going to therapy. Getting a good night’s sleep. Closing our eyes and breathing for one whole minute. Bringing awareness to what’s going on in our body.
Hopefully, our refuge will not be a means of escaping our suffering, but of engaging it from a different angle, which aids the process of letting go. Sue Nhim described this release beautifully just today on an earlier thread here:
this states so clearly what I have been feeling for the past few months, where before I denied that harm was done to me and yet I suffered, and then I accepted that I was harmed and still suffered, and now I understand that just because I was harmed/ damaged doesn’t mean that I have to suffer and hold on to my anxiety and anger, I can just let that go. It doesn’t negate the fact that I was harmed or mean that I should just ignore it, but it happened and what I can do to win is to not suffer and go on, wiser happier better. My mom calls it a state of grace, all I know is that it doesn’t hurt to go outside anymore.
So where do you take refuge? What are your best tools for letting go of suffering?
(Description and transcript, to the best of my beginner’s ability, below the fold — additions and/or amendments appreciated!)
Friends, I’d like you to meet the East Bay Meditation Center, one of the dopest sanghas (dhammic spiritual communities) I have ever had the good fortune to encounter. For the month of June I’m the open/close volunteer for the Thursday night People of Color sit (terminology that, as Chally and others have pointed out, may be useful in this context but not in all! :). So tonight I’ll be setting up the chairs and cushions, the tea (so many kinds of tea — yummm), the sound system, arranging the chairs and cushions, lighting some candles…and then breaking everything down at the end of the night. I’m technically the bottom-liner but there are always other sweetheart regulars who are eager to help out, make the work go faster.
The video pretty much speaks for its own rad self, but basically this tremendously awesome organization, kind of little-cousin to the more famous Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin, is rooted in values of diversity and justice. They have been so inspirational for me, not only by offering a space for me to maintain and strengthen my meditation practice, but in presenting that practice in a language I understand and care about. Back in March, I got an email from the listserv advertising a “Beyond Buddhist Patriarchy” 1-day workshop:
Alternating periods of silent meditation with facilitated discussion, we’ll explore what forms of spiritual practice, and both lay and monastic community structures, may arise as we collectively go beyond internal and external patriarchal structures.
Can I tell you how happy it made me to hear that in a spiritual context? Really happy.
I know that not everybody agrees on the utility of POC-only or LGBTQQI-only spaces (of note: only 2 out of 7 days a week at EBMC are caucused in this way), but I for one am a big fan. I am also a big fan of dana (“DAH-nah,” generosity) -based micro-economies, both on a spiritual level (cultivating generosity: helpful) and on a political level (more aligned with the socialist framework, “to each according to need; from each according to ability”).
Also important and encouraging is the attitude of EBMC sponsors who come from more privileged sanghas. Instead of focusing exclusively on ‘integrating’ or ‘diversifying’ their own populations, groups like Spirit Rock that are largely white, older, and wealthy are also offering some material and financial solidarity to self-led communities like EBMC. Key! So key.
If you’ve got a dollar to spare and would like to support our work, it would be especially appreciated now, as we’re trying to afford a bigger space so we can have childcare! Hell yes. And if you live in the Bay Area and have never been, come check it out!
Description of The East Bay Meditation Center Video
Fade to: Colorful Buddha bust with a rainbow banner. Text: DHARMA: Teaching of the Buddha and others leading to Spiritual Liberation.
Text: SANGHA: A Spiritual Community practicing these Teachings
Text: DANA: The Practice of Generous Giving to support Dharma and Sangha
Fade to: a forest stream
Voice #1: It’s like a dream. It’s like a vision of something in the process of being fulfilled.
Fade to: a candle
Voice #2: Everyone is welcome to bring all of who they are into that spiritual space.
Fade to: an altar with statued, framed pictures, flowers, and candles, flanked by potted plants and Japanese folding screens
Fade to: Outdoor street shot of center, blue awning and Tibetan prayer flags visible through the streetfacing windows. People walking by.
Voice #3: A refuge for all people looking…
Traffic shots
Voice #4: What’s really special about EBMC is the friendliness of the community. People say that all the time.
People walking into the center, greeting each other. (I’m the one with the orange scarf on my head! ;-)
Stills of people with eyes closed
Street/foot traffic shot
Folks, most POC, entering the door, removing their shoes, and signing in at a small front table staffed by a greeter
Stills of people sitting in meditation posture and doing yoga. Various races, ethnicities, sizes, some with facial piercings, dredlocks…
Alice Walker sits in a palmy outdoor setting next to a rock sculpture with a sun hat on top. Music plays in the background throughout the film. Text: Alice Walker, Poet: Hard Times Require Furious Dancing
Alice Walker: I think the most profoundly changing practice that anyone could have is a practice of meditation. And a practice of meditation that involves other people, a practice of meditation that is urban, because so many people in urban places feel a special stress.
Stills and shots of people entering and sitting in EBMC, people walking on the streets in downtown Oakland
Indoors — Larry Yang, Core Teacher, Leadership Sangha member: East Bay Meditation Center is a meditation center that was created to create full access to as many diverse communities as possible with the principles of full economic accessibility and social justice.
Outdoors, in a field with tall grasses, next to a small stone Buddha statue — Dr. Marlene Jones, EBMC Community Teacher: Compared to other places there’s a sense of strong community there.
EBMC from street, fade toLarry Yangnext to a potted palm, orchid, and bowl-shaped bell: So the mission of EBMC is to celebrate our diversity and to be as inclusive as possible, which means going out into the communities and asking, What makes a spiritual home for you?
Spring Washam, EBMC Core Teacher, Leadership Sangha memberIndoors next to a bookshelf, Buddha statue, potted plants, and candle: Many people were really interested in issues of diversity and class, gender, and we didn’t feel like those issues were being addressed at some of the bigger centers.
Larry Yang: I think it was [Jesse Jackson, Jr?] that made the comment that Sunday mornings are one of the most segregated spaces in North America.
Member #1: I feel safe there. So that’s an important aspect of being able to really practice, really hear what’s being said to me in the dharma.
Stone statue of seated Buddha
Larry Yang: We got a beautiful Buddhist statue for the altar. Before the statue was installed, we had hung a rainbow banner (shown) on the wall behind it because it was really important to be inclusive of communities that don’t ordinarily feel included from the onset
Dr. Marlene Jones: It wasn’t until a location was found with the sincere hearts of those that started this center, who are coming from a heart place, who love the dharma, who love the community, that this became possible.
Indoors, in front of the alter, Charlie Johnson, EBMC Core Teacher, Leadership Sangha member: Really we wanted to be located in downtown Oakland.
Downtown Oakland traffic
Charlie Johnson: We’re doing our best to reduce the suffering in the world.
Run-down or poor parts of Oakland, corner store
Charlie Johnson: We’re trying to get the word out to everyone, especially the diverse population of the Bay Area.
Outdoors, near a glen and forest path,Jack Kornfield, Buddhist Teacher, Co-Founder Spirit Rock Meditation Center: The fact that EBMC is located in Oakland has allowed it to become one of the most diverse sanghas or communities of spirit that I’ve ever seen in the entire Buddhist world.
Spring Washam: Traffic’s going by, and it’s almost to me as if it’s, as if it’s still nature. It’s life unfolding. And so we use that, we use the location to look at ourself.
Dr. Marlene Jones: The East Bay Meditation Center operates on a dana basis only!
Charlie Johnson: We didn’t want a center that people had to pay to come to. Many of the people that we are trying to reach frankly just can’t afford it!
Spring Washam: We serve a community that is struggling. You know, not everyone has a job. Not everyone’s able, not everyone can give. But those who can, do.
Member #2: To me it’s extraordinary that there’s like so much spirituality in the Bay Area, but a lot of it is offered at a price, where, if you can’t afford, you almost can’t access, you know, increasing your own mental health, physical health, spiritual health, because you can’t afford the price tag at the door. So EBMC’s really, you know, broken down barriers as far as giving me access and also a lot of people that I know that would not have been able to afford to benefit.
Indoors, on a floral-print couch with a printed cloth behind, Mushim Ikeda-Nash, EBMC Core Teacher, Leadership Sangha member: Dana is an ancient Buddhist word that means the practice of generous giving.
Larry Yang: It is radical because it is not an economy of, of exchange. It’s an economy of gift. And so to bring the economy of gift into a market economy is going upstream.
People putting cash donations into vessels marked “Dana.”
Spring Washam: Anybody could just walk in the door, you know, completely accessible.
Outdoors, on a patio,Anushka Fernandopulle, Community Teacher There’s a beautiful sangha there. And there’s many different sanghas, I would say, of people who, I think because of the spirit in which it’s given, the teachings are given there, and the way it’s run, it feels like the community of people in the sangha have more ownership of it than in many other centers, I think.
Member #3: I even moved up to Oakland from San Francisco because this community was so important to me.
Mushim Ikeda-Nash: Our foundation groups have been a meditation group for people of color, and a meditation group for members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and questioning communities.
Member #4: Without the center I haven’t had a home for deepening into meditation practice. And as a transgendered and queer person, it’s important to have that safe space to feel comfortable going deeper, without feeling misunderstood or invisible.
Outdoors, sitting in a field of yellow flowers, Faith Adiele, Author, Speaker, Teacher: I recently became the new coordinator for the People of Color sangha, the Thursday night sits. And I did it because I just moved to the Bay Area, and I was amazed that something like this existed.
Member #5: I call it the peace movement in Oakland.
String of flags saying “peace” in different languages inside the EBMC door
Member #5: When I go there, that expansion is happening, and when I leave there I feel larger, I feel my heart has expanded, my mind has expanded. One of the fertile, potent seeds is always being planted at EBMC.
Stills of people sitting and meditating. Calligraphy print that reads, “Meditating.”
Spring Washam’s voice: You know, meditation is about connecting to what’s true. It’s about connecting to your truth, your true self. It’s really transformational.
Mushim Ikeda-Nash: For three years we’ve been building our programming level and at the current time, we have weekly groups meeting Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings, we have class series on Monday and Tuesday evenings, and we very often have at least one, if not two, day retreats on Saturday, and/or Sunday.
Yoga teacher conducting a class in EBMC, students of various colors and sizes participating.
Mushim Ikeda-Nash: So the center is being used a lot.
Folks setting up chairs, cushions, and candles for an evening sit
Larry Yang: I think that we have over 150 volunteers, who are very precious to us.
Faith Adiele: Every week there are new people that are coming who have, like, never meditated, or didn’t know about the center, and they kind of come in, [Mimes with eyes wide, looking around], they’re like, Is this the place where folks of color are? You know, Do I have to have a paper and pencil? You know, it’s so cute, someone has told them, “You have to go!”
Larry Yang: It’s amazing how positive the feedback is, considering how young an organization we are.
Spring Washam: Our classes are really popular right now, they’re so popular that I would say 50% to 60% of whatever we do has a wait list now.
Charlie Johnson: We have become so successful over the last three years that we’re kind of bulging at the seams.
People sitting in EBMC, shot of a buddha statue and green plants
Spring Washam: The next step for EBMC is a really, um, as I mentioned, a state-of-the-art meditation center. We would *love* to have a beautiful space that fits a couple hundred people.
Mushim Ikeda-Nash: Where people can go outside into a protected courtyard area to do walking meditation…We need a family room where there can be a child-safe space.
Dr. Marlene Jones: It’s too small. And who knew?! Who knew it was gonna get so small, so fast?
Spring Washam: The vision of the different space, a new space for EBMC, for me is huge.
Mushim Ikeda-Nash: What East Bay Meditation Center needs in order to grow to meet the needs of our specific communities is financial commitment and support.
Lovely diverse crowd sitting together :)
Spring Washam: The other way that people can give is becoming a monthly donor, and that’s a really important program.
Mushim Ikeda-Nash: Some people might give $15 every month, some might give $100 or more every month.
Sylvia Boorstein, Mindfulness Teacher: When I open my bank statement, I get to see, in between Long’s Drugs, and the grocery shopping that I do, and the dry-cleaner’s that I visit, I get to see Spirit Rock meditation and East Bay Meditation Center, and Insight Meditation Center, in between — sprinkled in between when you read your statement — you’re thinking, oh yeah, oh yeah, I remember that, I wonder if I needed that, oh yeah, Oh look! Look what I did, look what I did, look what I did, look what I did…
Member #6: I started donating to the East Bay Meditation Center, as a Friend of the meditation center, before I ever came in.
Member #7: I do the monthly giving, because I really support what’s going on here, and want people to know about it. It’s just terrific that it’s here, in Oakland.
Green buddha face with rainbow banner
Mushim Ikeda-Nash: I feel that we have met the goals of our original mission in the most exciting way. We’ve been called the most diverse spiritual community on the planet, and I thought about that and I thought, That may not be overreaching, it may actually be true!
Larry Yang: In spite of all of that which we need, I really wanna emphasize all of that which we have. Because EBMC actually has an energy on its own now. And will continue, if people support it.
Member #8, Hey that’s me Kloncke!: The feeling of community, and trust, and shared experience in that room is just palpable.
Member #9: Unlike most, many places in my daily life, I find myself not having to explain who I am here, where I come from…never have to answer that question.
Jack Kornfield: I get asked to do benefits for organizations that are terrific all around the world. EBMC is one organization that is really dear to my heart, because it is a model for the planet, it is an offering that is beautiful, wise, diverse, strong, clear…and I want to do anything I can to support it.
Alice Walker: I think that supporting the East Bay Meditation Center in an urban area, in Oakland, is one of the best things that people can do.
Jack Kornfield: EBMC is a bright light, saying this is how — this is what’s possible. EBMC is showing what’s possible, and I am honored and thrilled to be asked to be a part of it and support it in any way I can.
Charlie Johnson: Come join us. [Adorable smile and chuckle!! :D]
Credits:
A Savannah Films Production
Produced & Directed by Konda Mason
Editor: Beli Sullivan
Graphics: Taku Hazeyama
Associate Producer: Ellie Arielle
Special Thanks: We are grateful to all who have contributed time, expertise, and energy creating the East Bay Meditation Center. ~EBMC Leadership Sangha
What both moves suggest is the depressing fact that a good portion of the country looked at Arizona and didn’t think oh no here comes fascism, but rather, how can we can get some of that over here? I hope that Fremont is not a sign of further new ground being staked out in the move to purge certain areas of undocumented immigrants, though I’m frankly pessimistic about that. These types of laws effectively criminalise the entire Latin@ community, as well as having secondary affects of other groups whose legal status may be murky (ie trans people whose legal sex on their documents may be mismatched with their gender presentation).
Let us all hope that the Nevada lawsuit prevails, as well as the Federal government’s lawsuit against Arizona. Because the spread of these laws must be stopped.
Speaking of American exceptionalism, are you interested in tracking what the US legislature is up to? Good, because I got a request for this post, so here we go!
While it’s great to rely on action items from sites and organisations you follow and trust to alert you to key upcoming legislation, there’s a lot of stuff that happens in Congress that isn’t widely discussed, even though it may be of great importance. There are also many things that die in committee for lack of support that might stand a fighting chance if members of the public knew about them and were taking action; why rely on MoveOn or NARAL to write your action items when you can do it yourself? (Incidentally, if you are muzzy on the process of how a bill becomes a law in the first place, here is a quickie overview you may find helpful.)
I follow a fair number of political sites, to keep up on what’s happening both on a Federal and state level in terms of policy here in the United States; for the purposes of this post, I’m focusing on Federal stuff because I think it’s more widely applicable to the readership. In addition to following sites, I also like to go straight to the source. While it’s always great to read interpretation of activity in Congress, reviewing the original source material provides information and context that wouldn’t otherwise be available. There are a lot of resources you can use to find out what’s going on in Congress, and I thought I would list some of them here for those who are interested in tracking pending Federal legislation, but not really sure how to go about it.
While her personal position on choice is not clear, we do know that Sr. McBride acted in a thoughtful and pastoral manner with regards to this patient as part of the ethics panel. We need to support Sr. McBride and honor her courage and commitment to staying true to her conscience and to providing the healthcare women need.
Please take a moment to write a letter of support to Sr. McBride. Send your letters to activists@catholicsforchoice.org. We will be compiling your letters and notes, and will send them on to Sr. McBride so that she knows she is not alone during this difficult time. We need her to hear from everyone, from all communities and all faith traditions, so please share this action with your friends, colleagues and family.
On May Day, we’re telling the our elected leaders in Washington DC that we’re not going to wait any longer for them to act. They’ve made promises and pledges – now it’s time for them to keep them. Every day that they don’t pass comprehensive immigration reform, millions of families and communities suffer. Workers are exploited. Ordinary immigrants live in fear of raids. Families are torn apart.
Every day that our leaders don’t act, the dream that is America is tarnished. Our leaders can’t hide behind their rhetoric. It’s time for concrete action.
On May Day tens of thousands of people will attend hundreds of marches all across the country. We’ll stand together to show our leaders that we’re not going to wait any longer for them to fix our broken immigration system. All of us, immigrants and native-born citizens, will be united to show the world that this country needs comprehensive immigration reform now.
