Tag Archives: social justice

bearing witness | on the delusion of colorblindness

Open ya eyes wide and see the truth of the skin I’m in. #TakeItAllIn

As a Dharma practitioner, I have cultivated Sangha on the sacred grounds of the Satipatthana Sutta (the Four Establishments of Mindfulness) and, in our gatherings, turn us again and again and again back to this foundational practice that teaches us to listen deeply,

see clearly,

and “remain established in the observation of the body in the body, diligent, with clear understanding, mindful, having abandoned every craving and every distaste for this life” [Majjhima Nikaya 10, as translated in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Transformation + Healing]. So too with the observation of feelings, thoughts/mental states and perceptions of whatever is in our field of awareness as we engage the world around us.

It is a spiritual discipline to help us acknowledge, take care of, and free ourselves from our attachments (what we cling to) and aversions (what we avoid). It is a spiritual practice that fosters discernment, accountability, transformation and healing.

Our skillful understanding of how connected we all are — the principle of interdependence — does not negate or override the commitment we make to:
Show Up, Notice, Pay Attention, Be Present, Hold Space, Cultivate Silence, Listen Deeply, Bear Witness.

We own our actions (thoughts, words + deeds). We are responsible for seeing and perceiving ourselves and one another clearly and in our wholeness. Skillful Understanding supports Skillful Thinking and Skillful Action.

To avoid seeing race/ethnicity is to cling to delusion. It is neither an act of compassion or generosity and not only hinders authentic connection but flat-out undermines our capacity for justice, liberation and transformative healing.

radical bodhicitta | justice is my love language

When I took the test for the 5 love languages years ago, it came as no surprise that my primary love language is acts of service (followed by quality time).

Last Wednesday, I was invited to give a dharma talk on social justice at my root sangha and opened with Dr. Cornel West’s oft-quoted observation that:

“to be human, you must bear witness to justice.
justice is what love looks like in public —
to be human is to love and be loved.”


It is a powerful reminder that love and justice are seeded in the heart.

As often as I have revisited this quote, it was only in that moment — in the quiet, sacred space of the Temple and in the presence of fellow dharma practitioners who offered their full awareness and open hearts to bear witness to my insights about the dharma and its threads to justice — that I realized that I feel most embraced, understood, and cared for by those who speak to me from a heart centered in justice, liberation, and healing.

I receive and express love in the form of justice, liberation, and transformative healing. This is how I embody the call to serve and how I put my faith into action: by turning toward and lifting up that which helps us to reclaim and prioritize our joy, wellness, and wholeness over and above the madness of hate, violence, and oppression.

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radical bodhicitta is the new digital home for my expanding work in healing justice.

when + where we enter | abiding in the practice

We closed yesterday’s daylong practice of discernment and self-inquiry by reflecting on how we aspire to show up and carry what we have learned about cultivating radical bodhicitta — what I call the heart and mind of justice, liberation, and healing — into our ever-widening circles of compassionate social action.

After everyone departed, I returned to the room to collect my belongings and stood for a few breaths to rest and revel in the full energy we had collectively generated. In that sacred pause, I looked down at my stuff scattered around me — realizing that I was embodying the wisdom that framed the final segment of our discernment. Have your heart be where your feet are. I had spent the day exactly where my heart had called me to be.

When we value and intentionally cultivate the sacred pause, we can amplify our capacity to listen deeply to the call of our hearts and see clearly the direction our feet will go.

when(ever) + where(ever) we enter, may our hearts be where our feet are. 

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…we are in fact not where are feet are. We are not here. Or at least we are not all here.
The “where” that our heart is not so much a place but
a different time: past, and simultaneously, the future.
We are everywhere but in the now.
~Omid Safi
read Safi’s full column: Have Your Heart Be Where Your Feet Are

#marchmindfulness2017 | on women cultivating community rooted in liberation

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“As women, we have been taught to either ignore our differences, or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between and individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist. Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference — those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older — know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.3jewels-lordequote2

For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”  ~ Audre Lorde

Read the entire essay:
The Master’s Tool Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House

march mindfulness 2017 | on justice, liberation + healing

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Each year I launch this campaign to uplift wisdom, values, teachings and affirmations that nourish our capacity for compassion, skillful understanding, and authentic connection.

Aligned with Sangha’s monthly contemplation and culminating with my upcoming workshop, When + Where We Enter, we’ll shine the light on and look deeply into practices of Justice, Liberation + Healing.

March Practice Schedule

on refuge + resistance | surviving to sustain skillful action

Revolution is not a one-time event.
It is becoming always vigilant for the smallest opportunity
to make a genuine change in established, outgrown responses;
for instance, it is learning to address each other’s difference with respect.
We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation
from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable.

We know what it is to be lied to.
The 60s should [have taught] us how important it is not to lie to ourselves.
Not to believe that revolution is a one-time event,
or something that happens around us
rather than inside of us.
Not to believe that freedom can belong to any one group of us
without others also being free.
How important it is not to allow even our leaders to define us to ourselves,
or to define our sources of power to us…

Each one of us must look clearly and closely
at the genuine particulars (conditions) of his or her life
and decide where action and energy is needed
and where it can be effective.
~ Audre Lorde

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Post-Women’s March Deep Refuge + Restoration Circle
yesterday, we marched.
today we rest, take deep refuge and restore ourselves in the full embrace of sangha
to rise up and take action again.
~t. scott-miller

sangha study schedule

Join us in February, as we complete our three-month journey along the Noble Eightfold Path with a study the faculties of Skillful Effort, Skillful Mindfulness, and Skillful Concentration. The following month, we’ll deepen our contemplation of Justice, Liberation, and Healing — the focus of our annual call-to-action, March Mindfulness — and close out our winter series with a special full-day workshop on the topic on 3/19. View: Upcoming Practice Dates.

on refuge + resistance | today we march

Reclaim. Resist. Rise Up! For Justice. For Equity. For A Future To Be Possible. #MarchOnWashington #MarchOnLansing #SisterMarch

#WhyIMarch

For those who came before me — for their sacrifices, suffering, and will to survive.

It’s in my DNA to give a damn!

I embody privilege and risk as an educated cis-hetero black woman who is the daughter of an immigrant, a mother to a multi-ethnic child, a wife in an interfaith, inter-racial marriage to a survivor of gun violence who lives with a disability.

I cannot, do not, will not co-sign craziness.

For my beloveds and for all the beloveds in generations to come to inherit an Earth that has been restored to wholeness and where integrity, compassion, wisdom, creativity, and deep listening are society’s leading values .

To call out unmitigated and unexamined whiteness, which in its denial of privilege and  refusal to take accountability for oppressions and inequities, creates a toxicity that corrodes what unites us.

Because corruption and complacency are killing us.

To build our capacity as a spiritually resilient community that cultivates and protects justice, freedom, and equity through compassionate, creative, innovative and skillful understanding and actions.

To be a beacon of light as a community of refuge and resistance against hate, violence, inequity and oppression.

For Justice, Liberation + Healing!

Today, we march. Tomorrow, we rest, take refuge and restore ourselves to rise up and to take action again.

on refuge + resistance | reclaiming king’s dream

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We begin this historic week with the commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the National Day of Racial Healing as we trudge toward the final day that our country’s first Black president, Barack Obama, will stand as head of state. Fueled and aflame, with our hearts and minds resting on justice, liberation and healing, we take refuge in the good works, legacy, and words of wisdom from emissaries of light.

In intimate circles, we draw closer, lean into, speak truths and listen deeply to one another — resisting the temptation to be pulled under by despair, fear, hate, and hopeless.  En masse, we gather, convene, rally, and march — using our voices and bodies to resist the normalization of this new swell of injustice and violence that seeks to impoverish, divide, and oppress us. Wherever we are, we reclaim the integrity of King’s vision: to stand firmly in our commitment to serve, liberate, heal, love and cultivate, demand, and protect justice and equity in order to restore ourselves and our communities to wholeness.

_________________________

“You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?”

You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.”

I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. “

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail

#ReclaimMLK

Movement for Black Lives ~
Resist + Reclaim   |   Schedule of Actions

March on Lansing ~
What We Stand For

Mashable ~ 8 Quotes

Take Part ~
‘Reclaim MLK’ Protesters Kick Santitized King Ideology to the Curb

Zenju ~
Now Is The Time We Have Been Waiting For

from the 3 Jewels Yoga dhamma shelf
toward wholeness: nurturing interdependence in honor of mlk jr
touching the earth | reflections on zenju’s “way-seeking mind of martin luther king jr.”

touching the earth | a reflection on zenju’s “Way-Seeking Mind of Martin Luther King Jr.”

As a Zen practitioner in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, my study of his teachings and personal history provided a surprising lesson about the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This gleaming insight into their relationship renewed my appreciation and broadened my understanding of King’s legacy as it elucidated the global impact of his compassionate mission. Several years ago, inspired by the “inter-being” between these two leaders as well as my own dharma as a Black American woman on this path of practice, I led my root sangha in the Touching the Earth prostrations to honor King and Thay as spiritual teachers.

Since then, my Monday evening Yin+Yang Yoga class has fallen on this national holiday. Each asana that brings our hearts closer to the earth (like these two favorites: Child’s Pose + Anahatasana) becomes a prostration, in which we fully embody the mindfulness practice of remembrance and reconciliation. We remember our origins and connections: to ancestors, by blood and spirit; to this Earth that sustains us and upon which our complex and interwoven histories have been built. We may began to penetrate the deep suffering emanating from our painful histories, which continue to manifest in new forms and to impact our experiences and abilities to relate to one another because of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, disability and a whole slew of “differences” that seem to separate us. Breath by compassion-filled breath, we may began to reconcile these histories as we acknowledge, cradle, and heal our own suffering. We give it back to this wondrous Earth to absorb and transform it, as from the mud blooms a lotus. In every class, I invite the practitioners to cultivate compassionate understanding of their bodies, minds and hearts through the alignment of breath and posture. Generating such mindfulness and loving awareness for ourselves teaches us how to skillfully extend compassion and loving-kindness to others.When we abide in mindfulness, our senses become clear and fully attuned to the spectrum of beauty and suffering in the world.  We acknowledge our own contribution to that stream–how our actions increase beauty or increase suffering. We make amends when we cause suffering and begin anew, watering seeds of compassion. Each heart-driven act–embodied on the mat, the cushion, among our beloveds and within our communities–commemorates the King’s legacy. On this path, as teacher and practitioner, I know I am a continuation of Dr. King.

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[Originally posted 31 January 2013; Updated 20 January 2014]

Related

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel |The Way-Seeking Mind of Martin Luther Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. | King’s Nobel Peace Prize Nomination Letter for Thich Nhat Hanh
Rev. Dr. Andrew C. Kennedy | Martin Luther King Jr. + Thich Nhat Hanh

[Broken links updated 16 January 2017]

 

the eightfold path: on skillful speech, skillful action + skillful livelihood

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Sangha is studying how we “live into community” and the purpose of gathering as spiritual friends to build our capacity for skillfulness and resilience. To that end, we’re contemplating the Eightfold Path as a set of embodied practices that help us develop wisdom, ethical action, and various faculties that support our meditation.

The Eightfold Path is the fourth of the 4 Noble Truths:

There is Suffering.
There are Causes of Suffering (craving/attachment).
There is an End of Suffering.
The Noble Path is the End of Suffering.

The wisdom pair of Skillful Understanding and Skillful Thinking carries us to gates of the three ethical actions where we may examine how silence and discernment give shape and dimension to:

Skillful Speech — What we choose to say, how we choose to say it, and when we choose to say it. Speech is a form of action (the cause of karma) that is fueled by the quality of our understanding, thinking and intentions. It may be guided by factors that create a more skillful impact (the effect of karma) in the world.*

*(I use world here to encompass our daily encounters with people, places, and all manner of things.)

Skillful Action — How we choose to respond to the world as embodied in our conduct (direct/indirect; personal/interpersonal; private/public). The behaviors/activities we engage in and abstain from that reflect the quality of our understanding, thinking, and intentions.

Skillful Livelihood — I am compelled to expand livelihood beyond its common denotation as the work we do to earn a living. This is also coupled with a desire to suss out the snares of privilege and shame that arise when we narrow in on ethical employment without considering socio-cultural and economic factors that influence where and how we work. Looking deeply at the root meaning of the word itself unearths a broad view of how we cultivate our “way of life” and includes all the choices/actions we make to nourish and sustain a sense of living well (values, interests, experiences and relationships). Our livelihood then reflects and is informed by the quality of our understanding, thinking, intentions and actions.

Our contemplation draws on Audre Lorde’s essay, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action:

What is the quality and impact of our silence?
Where does our silence show up as fear or avoidance?
When can it cause harm?  When can it be a tool for healing? 
Where can it be shaped into a tool of resistance — a healthy boundary to guard against toxic communication?  A way of standing in our commitment to non-violent, compassionate action?
In what ways do we use meditation and practices of discernment as skillful means to transform silence into skillful speech and skillful action?


other liberating actions of the eightfold path

on skillful understanding + skillful thinking
on skillful effort, skillful mindfulness + skillful concentration