India

IN a month and a half, I am leaving for Dharamsala India, the capital of the Tibetan government in exile, home of the Dalai Lama and my spiritual leader, the Karmapa. It is also the center of the Tibetan resistance in exile.

Just in the last few days, THOUSANDS of Tibetans flocked to delhi to protest Hu Jintao's visit to India. It was one of the largest Tibetan protests in exile and many of the people I work with here went to support it. I was even asked to go to India for it, but unfortunately, could not make it.

In India, i will be taking part in two opposite activities. I will be studying Tibetan in order to translate for Tibetan lamas, especially Kagyu Lamas, who are famously apolitical, and I will also be there to work more with the Tibetans in their freedom struggle. This includes attending protests and campaigns.

There are two halves of the path to enlightenment, wisdom and compassion (also translated by the Tibetans as Action.)

I like to think, although I might be wrong, that my study to become a translator of the Buddha Dharma is my study of wisdom, while my protests are an active study of compassion. We will see.

Nangpa la

70 Tibetans trying to escape Tibet over the nagpa la pass were fired on by Chinese military. The majority of my friends have made that same treacherous journey and faced similar threats.

it's times like these when its very hard ot continue to have compassion for my enemies

Moral dilemma

Ah, the moral dilemma. Let it be known that I have made a decision on this, but I always feel a bit awkward.

I am in communication with people in Tibet on a near daily basis, all across the Tibetan plateau as well as Tibetans in China itself. Sometimes it's phone calls, sometimes chat, usually voice chat. Usually we talk about school, learning tibetan or english, music, tibetan culture, websites, or whatever.

However, almost innevitably, the people I am talking to bring up politics or say something that is illegal to talk about in Tibet. For example, in the first line of a conversation, it went something like this

Me: I forget, where are you right now?
Her: Qinghai, where His Holiness the Dalai Lama was born.

Right there, she is commiting a major crime in Tibet, for which she could be arrested and tortured.

Many ask me about the Dalai Lama, curious about his health, his travels, his statements, since they cannot get accurate information in Tibet.

Some are more political than others. Statements like "I hate the Chinese" or "free Tibet" which here are fine to say, but there could get you killed. They often rant to me (sometimes in type, which is more easily recorded than voice chat) about the Chinese in Tibet.

In response to the political statements, I am careful to make relatively neutral, non-incriminating statements, that can be easily interpretted by them as my support (and yes, they do know that I support them) but so as to be careful not to make things worse for them in the chat logs are found.

As for asking for news, well, I answer their questions.

But it creates this horrible moral dilemma for me.

On one hand, I want to give them the information they need, the encouragement they want, the hope that is so necesary for the survival of their people and their fight for freedom. I do NOT want to encourage Chinese censorship by telling them not to talk about it or refusing them information.

On the other hand, I don't want to risk their lives and safety by discussing issues in an easily tapped or recorded manner.

I never bring up the topics myself, but if they bring it up, I will not tell them to shut up. That would be letting Chinese censorship work. I like to think that since it is THEM bringing up the topic, not me, it is not actually me putting them in danger. But what is the best thing to do?

last night

Last night, we had a few people over. It was a good time. Then everyone left except oneof my roommate’s friends who is a cagefighter and studies martial arts. He started to wrestle with me, but I wasn’t into it. I know this guy likes to dominate and doesn’t stop when the other person taps out. Rather than fight back and risk justifying him in dominating me, I began to talk to him about not wanting to fight. I told him that he was hurting me, and that we could just talk; I didn’t want to fight. He had his arm around my neck. I wasn’t trying to overpower him to get him off me, because I know I can’t, but I was putting enough pressure on his arm to communicate I wanted him to move it. He was not hearing me about wanting to stop. I tried to move my head under his arm and he jammed his forearm into my mouth. In spite of the fact that he was unabashedly hurting me, I was concerned that he’d shoved his arm so hard into my mouth that he was going to force me to bite him. (Is there a word for a bite that happens by the force of the bitten and not the force of the teeth?) I opened my mouth further in an effort to not hurt him. The next thing I knew, I couldn’t breathe. Obviously, I couldn’t make a noise to let him know that, so I went into panic mode. I bit him and pulled on his hair, neither of which were near as hard as I could have, because again I didn’t want to hurt him. But I bit down in a desperate attempt to communicate I couldn’t breathe.

When he let me go, I told him, “You go too far.” And he said something along the lines of “Don’t spar with me unless you’re prepared.” I told him I wasn’t trying to spar with him; I couldn’t breathe. It was hours after he left before I realized he is a fighter and probably knew perfectly well I couldn’t breathe. He had shoved his arm into my mouth and wrapped himself around my ribs and neck in a hold designed to cut off someone’s air. It just didn’t occur to me that he would purposely do that to someone who wasn’t fighting him back. I told him not to ever do that to me again. He attempted to justify it, saying I had bitten him. I lost my temper, at that point. I got angrier than I have been since I was a kid. It felt like electricity was surging everywhere in my body. I told him if he felt justified in what he did then he could get out of my house and never come near me again. He repeated that I bit him, and I yelled that though he’d shoved his arm into my mouth, I hadn’t bitten down until after I couldn’t breathe. For a second there, we were on the Jerry Springer show, yelling back and forth. I think I may have rolled my head for the 1st time in my life. (Those who know me know this was a rare moment for me.) Then I realized that yelling like that only perpetuates a fight. So I repeated my order that he leave until he did. But I was so angry. I could feel it in my body and I tried to breathe through it. My roommate was sweet. He sat with me and listened even though I know he was tired and drunk and probably wanted to go to bed.

There are moments I have wondered about the limits of my pacifism. Part of me wants to kick myself for going so far out of my way to not bite the person who was hurting me that I opened my mouth further to allow him to choke me. Another part values any spark of compassion too much to denounce it. There are many reasons to avoid aggression, even in this situation. For one, I didn’t want to justify any retaliation on his part by engaging in a “who can hurt the other more” battle, because let’s face it, this guy would win. Fighting him would only perpetuate and validate a fight in which I could’ve gotten badly hurt. But more than that, it just didn’t occur to me to want to hurt him. When I took Bodhisattva vows, I made the choice to bind my fate to that of all beings. What harms another cannot serve me. I still don’t want to harm him, though when I told him to leave, I considered calling the police in an effort to encourage him to take this more seriously and not do it to anyone else.

The main thing that kept me from acting was anger. I was so filled with it that I did not believe I could do anything towards him that wasn’t motivated by its poison. Therefore there was no right thing to do. I vented to my roommate, I took refuge in my breath, and tried to cultivate compassion by humanizing him in my mind. When I worked at the rape crisis center, we taught that sometimes a woman is still in “let’s talk about this” mode, while a man is in “I’m already doing this” mode and he doesn’t hear her. We would talk to women about communicating clearly and to men about listening. What men see as ambiguous may be pretty clear to the woman saying it. This is just one of many issues; I’m not writing an exhaustive thesis on rape or male/female relations. My point is that in this situation, I was in talk-mode, when he already had me in a hold and was hurting me for sport. I didn’t think to get physical, and I don’t think it would have been a wise move considering the years of experience and training this guy has hurting people. But how do you handle something like this? I woke up sore this morning in my chest and throat. I am prescribing myself lovingkindness meditation for him. My practice is not perfect and it was challenged last night.

Despite the Hunger

Despite
the hunger
we cannot
possess
more
than
this:
Peace
in a garden
of
our own.

—Alice Walker

Identifying with Concepts We Become Sociopathic

I was discussing Socialism this weekend with my son. And as we discussed it I realized that he was under the impression that socialism is a form of government. (I have always held that it’s a form of economy instead.) And that’s when it hit me, how we are here…

At least in America we live with a functional misunderstanding of economies. We confuse the means by which wealth is created and distributed in a society with the governance of a society. We live so deeply married to economics that we have completely integrated economics into our national identity. I think this may be mostly due to the cold war, since on its public surface (certainly not its gooey center, though) the cold war was an ideological battle between socialist and capitalist economic belief systems.

Ultimately, as cultures we tend toward behaving with the same poisonous views we bring to our own identities. As we evolve our collective self perception as a people we begin to define ourselves by our beliefs and opinions. We say, “I am a man with a job and a family and I think, ‘Thusly.” As a culture we say, “We are a people that stand for certain things and we believe these things are only achievable, ‘Thusly.” As individuals this leads us to us/them dichotomies of thought. We begin to see those who do not share our beliefs and perceptions as people who are at best misguided, at worst out to get us. As a culture we begin to view nations that do not value what we value or believe as we believe to be opposed to our success, or… our enemies. We give them catchy affirming titles like, immoral… and we tell one another that they don’t like what we stand for. The terrorists are “Liberty hating” because they aren’t us and we’re all about liberty. Similarly, many in the Arab world call Americans Godless, because we aren’t them and they’re all about God.

We begin to develop national identities that we associate with. These identities protect us from the darker and sometimes dysfunctional aspects of our own systems. As we assail the dysfunction of others we are better able to ignore our own inequities. Buddhists and modern psychologists alike describe this as unfortunate behavior that individuals engage in… unfortunate because as we ignore our own failings we are able to demonize others. This further encourages feelings of isolation and paranoia in an individual as they lean more and more toward creating an identity that is based on diametric differences with others.

As cultures engage in this activity nationalism begins to develop. Isolated behavior becomes normal and the aspects of human culture that all people’s have in common become less and less obvious. From the perspective of one who is identifying with dichotomies those who do not think, feel and act in accordance with one’s own behavior is not consequential, or worse such people are often undesirable.

Once we allow our attitudes to be informed by these perceived differences we begin to view alternative attitudes as being outside of us, or somehow separated from us. This makes ending them, even with violence, a far less appalling proposition. After all, if a thing is outside of us, not in common with us and perhaps dangerous to us, there can be no fallout for destroying it.

p

"Contributing Member"

Hello everyone.

Some time ago I was told about this blog and expressed the deep interest of becoming an opinionated, politically minded buddhist. (well I am already that, but I guess this makes it innarguable.) I've been terribly busy and have neglected the opportunity for some time now. However, I felt it might be time to take a moment and at least introduce myself a little. Perhaps this will kick start me out of my own concerns and I will start posting here. At least, that's my intent.

So, my name is Steven, but I'm also known by friends as "Tori". My screen name is most often "Porksound", it's a very unique name so if you've seen a Proksound somewhere, it was probably me.

I began studying the dharma 20 years ago when I was 15. It's a funny story. I was a "not so good" kid then, and also interested in alternative cultures and spirituality. I was poor and thought most "transcendental" themes were pretty cool. So I stole a big delivery box that was just outside the back door of a "magic" book store. You know the kind of place, Tarot cards, crystals, babbling brook recordings playing in the background... Well, I expected to find a case of tarot cards or Alister Crowley books... but what I found when I got home was a big box of texts on buddhism. Mostly Tibetan Buddhism and tantra. I was a bit let down, I don't mind saying. But I soon began to read this stuff, and what unfolded was like a seedling pushing up through the soil. Of course I was too undisciplined and self centered to embrace the practice at that time, and the philosophies became just so much intellectual candy for an overactive teen aged mind.

Years passed, and I began to see the futility of living my life as a nihilist. I met a dear friend who seemed to approach life from a very unique place. And I appreciated it. Turned our he was a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner. This again rang a bell or two and I began to look into these ideas again. Later that year I had the wonderful opportunity of meeting Lama Tharchin Rinpoche in California. It was your standard teaching at a bookstore, and aside from all of the people treating him like a rockstar, I was struck by the event. I honestly do not remember what the teaching was about, but I knew, whatever he had, I wanted it. NO, i needed it. This was not a bell going off, it was a resounding crash. And I found it at once terrifying and thrilling.

A couple of years later I met Tulku Thubten Rinpoche at Lama Tharchin's retreat center while on a Vajrasatva Retreat. I took refuge with Rinpoche then and was given the dharma name, "Drodul Phawo". I don't speak Tibetan but I'm told it means "Liberator Hero". Rinpoche was careful to explain at the time that I must be my own hero... not anyone elses. he saw, even then my unfortunate tendency toward feeling special about myself. hehehe...

Today I am an artist, an electronic musician and a father. I earn my living as a politcal activist directing a Statewide program for people with disabilities. I am deeply concerned with human rights, my tax dollars going to reasonable activities and approaching issues with a combination of radical activism and mature "at the table" negotiation. I am also beginning a three year intensive study program with my refuge guru that will focus on what Tibetans call the three yanas, one for each year. I'm as always, both nervous and excited to be undertaking this expansion of my dharma activities.

I am a Nyingmapa Buddhist who has taken empowerments in the Dudjom Lineage. My new activities will be focused on the Mipham Ngondro.

My current political interests are of course,

The War in Iraq...
The coming war in Iran...
The renewed attacks on Homosexuality in America...

I am most often reflecting more on how systems within our society lead to conditions that appear to be without.

And I'm less an Anarchist than a socialist. But its all about freedom. And freedom is not easy, its brutally honest, daring and true. But those who approach experience from a position of freedom are the most compassionate, reliable and deeply forgiving people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

cheers...

p