A message to my students

Since this is my last year of teaching at TCC before my retirement in May, this seems like a good time to leave a farewell message to all my students, past and present.

Dear Students,

As you all know, our collective future prospects have recently taken a wrenching turn for the worst, with the election to the Presidency of a clownish, boorish, cruel, pathologically narcissistic demagogue--a man whose elevation to this position of unimaginable power and prestige has traumatized the entire world community. This means, of course, that the brighter future for which you are all preparing through your education may never come to pass; instead, we appear headed into a long dark night of neofascist bigotry and violence, especially toward minorities; corporate domination of all branches of government; and the vindictive use of unprecedented surveillance to seek out and punish or brutalize all who resist or speak out against his agenda. The horrific possibilities boggle the imagination, as his daily capricious actions and tweets--and his appointments of thuggish yes-men and corporate cronies to positions of power--bring us wave after wave of dread...

So how will we cope? I first wish to refer you to a superb, though sobering, article by Bill McKibben: "How the Active Many can Overcome the Ruthless Few."

McKibben pulls no punches in laying out the terrifying details of accelerating climate change, and he stresses that our window of opportunity is steadily closing for redirecting our collective course away from global catastrophe.

And yet, in the final paragraphs, he gives us some hope, by paying tribute to the grand 20th Century tradition of Satyagraha, Mahatma Gandhi's brilliant principles and techniques for collective nonviolent resistance to evil and oppression.  He then cites many of the Bodhisattvas who have followed in Gandhi's footsteps, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Thich Nhat Hanh, Wangari Maathai,  Aung San Soo Kyi, and Vandana Shiva. His point is that such massive nonviolent resistance techniques are the only sure way to curb the abuses of corporate and state power. They do this, above all, by changing the terms of the debate.

For example, even though the Occupy protesters were crushed by massive police power in the service of corporate interests, they changed the conversation by introducing the concepts of the 1% and 99% into public discourse, and thus brought to light the criminality of the banksters and the obscene gap between the billionaire class and all the rest of us; this widespread awareness of systemic corruption and injustice in turn enabled Bernie Sanders to mobilize massive support, while at the same time, it enabled Trump to exploit the same reservoir of widespread resentment and discontent for his own pseudo-populist agenda, by directing it against scapegoats (i.e. minorities and immigrants) rather than against the super-rich (like himself and his cronies).

I am not saying, of course, that we should all hit the streets, wave protest signs, or get tear-gassed, tasered, or arrested for trespassing. Public protest and voluntary suffering are tools, but to be effective, they must be strategically planned for greatest effect. And as protests increase in frequency, the corporate media pay less and less attention to them (unless they turn violent--only then do they see it as newsworthy). There are many other, subtler ways to practice Satyagraha. In fact, Gandhi divided Satyagraha practices into three categories:

• Ahimsa (righteous nonviolence--refusing to stoop to the level of our aggressors);
• Satya (speaking truth to power)
• Swaraj (cultivating self-rule and self-reliance).

While Ahimsa requires the kind of moral courage and discipline shown by those on the front line, such as the Civil Rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge or today's Native Americans at Standing Rock, most of us lack the inner fortitude to stand our ground in the face of brutality without either running away or lashing out violently in turn. For such people--the majority for the most part--the latter two strategies remain open.

Satya means speaking truth to power, and doing so mindfully, strategically, and relentlessly. This can be done by writing Op Eds or letters to the editor, or by speaking out at city council meetings or public hearings. You have considerably more clout from writing a well-crafted letter to the editor than from being a face in a crowd at a mass demonstration that is likely to be ignored by the media and contained or brutalized by riot police. So this is an acceptable and very effective choice for the great majority of us who have no stomach for martyrdom.

Finally, Swaraj is for everyone, even if you are neither brave nor articulate. Its root meaning in Sanskrit is "self-rule," and it originally referred to the colonized Indians' quest for self-government and freedom from British colonial rule. But Gandhi extended the definition to include both "self-control" and "self-reliance." Its symbol was the Spinning Wheel, so chosen both because it is a symbol for the eightfold Wheel of Dharma (referring, of course, to self-mastery), but also because it was a literal means by which Indian peasants could declare economic independence from the British Empire, simply by spinning cotton cloth to make their own clothing.  In our time, Swaraj can be divided into three broad categories:

• Good Buy: assuming responsibility for the social and ecological effects of the money you spend. This means, before buying anything, to ask three kinds of questions: (1) Where is the money for this going? (2) What am I getting in return for it? Is it useful or addictive? (3) Does this product constitute a responsible use of the Earth's resources? 
• Good Work: assuming responsibility for the social and ecological effects of your choice of livelihood. To what extent is it Work (doing what you know best for the best interests of yourself, your community, and your planet--learning, teaching, healing, or creating) or Slavery (serving the interests of your own or others' greed, ignorance, or denial; working for "the man" in return for nothing more than a paycheck).
• Good Will:  Taking care of everyone and everything, and abandoning no one and nothing. Making this an asymptotic goal in all of your relations with others and with your world. Cultivating benevolence, compassion, selfless joy, and equanimity.

It is in this way that Satyagraha connects to the other two essential disciplines: Tonglen and Permaculture. Let's consider these briefly:

• Tonglen: in order to achieve Ahimsa, to become truly nonviolent, to root out hatred (which is the enemy within, along with denial and despair), one must learn to cultivate compassion for everyone, perpetrators and victims alike. This is difficult, but the Tibetan practice of Tonglen meditation is a powerful training technique for cultivating Ahimsa. It consists of engaging your imagination on the breath:  breathing in suffering, both the outer suffering for the victims and the inner suffering that gives rise to the violence of the perpetrators, and breathing out healing, relief, and inner peace, both to the victims and the perpetrators--along with a prayer that the latter see the light and abandon their violence (as many sheriffs and other police have already, resigning rather than brutalizing the Native Americans at Standing Rock). It takes practice, of course, but as it becomes habitual, you can use it on yourself (when something fills you with rage and despair, just breath it in to the Diamond in your mind, and breathe out inner peace, firm resolution, and equanimity)--but also do "Tonglen on the spot" with anyone else you see or anyone whose suffering enters into your consciousness. For an excellent discussion of Tonglen,  see this article by Pema Chodron
• Permaculture: In the same way that Tonglen practice enables us to practice Ahimsa--to confront and resist evil without violence or hatred--so Permaculture is the fruition of Swaraj; it involves creating a whole new, ecologically harmonious culture from the ground up, according to tried and true principles. If you are interested in learning more about Permaculture, there is an excellent short online course at Oregon State University, available on Youtube at this address.