Hello Beloved Community in the form of the POC sangha at EBMC, In the winter of 2008/2009 I was traveling throughout Europe for several weeks. The Europeans I found myself in the company of were all exceedingly delighted that eight years of the presidency of George W. Bush would officially be coming to an end soon. They were equally if not even more jubilant about the prospect of a first term presidency of Barack Hussein Obama. Everywhere I went in Europe people literally stopped me in the streets often shaking my hand or even embracing me, to congratulate me on the election of President Obama. And then right after the New Year, Oscar Grant was murdered in Oakland. Many friends back home in Oakland (I lived less than a mile from The Fruitvale station at that point in time) contacted me in shock and dismay and rage. Friends in Europe asked me to explain to them what the circumstances were where a white police officer could shoot an unarmed black youth with seeming impunity in this country. Thus began the most recent cycle of my trying to make some kind of sense of the violence against people of color (and trangender people because the violence against transgender people in this country, especially transgender women of color, per capita, is completely off the charts). Since Oscar Grants murder I have spent the intervening years mostly in silence trying to process the ongoing genocide. I have tried to find teachings from my Buddhist practice that could guide me in how to process it all, largely to no avail. The Trayvon Martin killing was a rare exception where I very gently and genteelly (in my perspective) broke my silence and said a few very carefully chosen words, mostly questions, publicly, about it all. To my shock, these gentle and genteel words were, several times, met with the total dissolution of longstanding friendships(?) with several white friends, all on their end, simply for asking questions about it. This is when I discovered unequivocally that this topic touches the deepest of nerves in The American/human Psyche. Against this backdrop and the backdrop of the recent events in Ferguson, MO, and so many other events swirling in my head, I attended the POC sit last week. I spoke about generosity in the Dharma talk. I spoke about crossing over to the other shore. Later that night I had a powerful Dharma-based dream. I still remember every single frame of it. The following day (Friday September 5, 2014) I was contemplating The 10 Paramitas (aka: The 10 Perfections of the Heart) while also thinking about Ferguson and all of the corresponding issues, when I spontaneously entered what I am going to call a state of samadhi. Please do not add unnecessary power to this presumed experience either in the positive/impressed direction nor in the negative/judging direction. Many people have this experience all the time. Phenomena based experiences alone are relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. What we do with them in the real, day-to-day life of pain, struggle, suffering, joy in the world matters much more. Shortly after leaving this state of samadhi I started receiving information, a download, if you will, that seemed to be giving me guidance about how I can respond, through the wisdom of the heart, to all of this violence in the world, within the context of my Buddhist practice. For the last five days I have continued to receive this information, largely continuously and often being guided to study well established Buddhist teachings and guided to understand these teachings through prisms I have typically not viewed them through before. I am in the process of transcribing the first of these downloads with the intention of sharing these thoughts with the POC sangha this Thursday, September 11, 2014. I am approaching all of this through the experience of real (as opposed to false) humility and trust and the experience of ahimsa (the desire to cause no harm) and am also trying to do so through my understanding of the Brahmaviharas (AKA:The Four Immeasurables--loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, equanimity). Thank you for your openness. A Bow
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 15:04:32 +0000
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