My daily practice

"Wherefore by their fruits shall ye know them." --Jesus.

With this luminous quote, the Palestinian Jewish Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, gave us the only reliable litmus test for evaluating another person's belief system or practice--its "fruits"--that is, the Karmic consequences of that belief and/or practice on everyone else.

So I share my own evolving practice not in any prescriptive sense--not "this is what you should do"--but rather simply for the curiosity of anyone who encounters these words, now or in the future: this is what I do, at this time. I would encourage everyone else to likewise share his or her practice routine, for in this way, we can all learn from each other and develop a personal practice suited to our own particular path. So here is the protocol for the practice I have evolved, in its latest incarnation:

First I read some Dharma. Right now, I am reading Pema Chodron's exegesis of Shantideva, entitled "No Time to Lose." I try to read a little bit of this each morning, in order to focus my mind on practice and diffuse whatever shenpa--whatever obsessive thoughts--have been provoked by my reading of the editorial page over breakfast. Then, but only when I sense that I am mentally and emotionally ready, I enter into a ceremonial space by taking off my sandals before I walk upstairs to my sanctuary in the attic. I have found that the tradition of taking off one's shoes before meditation makes good sense, because immediately we become more mindful of each step we take, and this, likewise, prepares us for formal meditation.

Then, after bowing to my Indonesian wood-sculpture of the Buddha, I practice the Qigong longevity sequence that I learned from the eminent Tai Chi master Gabriel Chin, with whom I had the joy and privilege of learning and practicing while we lived in Michigan in the early 90's. He was one of my first and finest teachers.

The longevity sequence consists of a set of simple exercises to generate chi or vital energy, and enhance its balanced circulation. The first exercise is to simply jiggle up and down like a puppet on a string, about 100 times or so. Next is to do 10 arm rolls (like a crawl-stroke and back-stroke while swimming) forwards, then backwards. Then I do 10 "scooping of hands" (or Hands-in-Clouds) moves, right and left, while keeping my eyes on the center of each palm as it comes up. Then I do another swimming move, this one like a butterfly stroke, forward and backward 3 times. Then I swing my arms around, hands down, on a level plane, 5 times each: left-counterclockwise, right clockwise, then left clockwise, right counterclockwise. Next I do the "snake"--joining palms over my head, I make an "S" motion down along the axis of my body, then back up again--3 times alternately in both directions. Next I do an exercise called "crane stretches its wings:" Hands straight forward, palms up, inhale--then exhale, drawing hands smoothly to the chest (3 times); then hands out sideways, palms up (inhale)--then exhale, drawing hands smoothly to the shoulders and relaxing them. (3 times). Finally--and this is the most difficult--I go up on my toes as I push my open palms straight back behind me, then purse my fingers as I draw them under my armpit and up to my shoulders--all on the inhale--then blow it out (thrusting my fingers forward forcefully with the sudden exhalation, while keeping each thumb over the middle of the palm). (3 times) This, according to the tradition, expels "stagnant chi" from our bodies. The original sequence goes on much longer, but at this point I foreshorten it by going into a Shou Gong (closing) exercise--on three full breaths. On the first inhale, lift open hands up to the sky, gathering the ambient Chi, then bring them down toward your scalp, in effect "pushing" the Chi right down your spinal column. Then, on the first exhale, elbows out, bring open palms straight down your center line, past your ears and straight down your center axis to your dantian (the fulcrum of your body, 4 inches below your navel) where--on the last inhale, you turn your palms out, so your fingertips, still parallel to the ground, are just touching--then, on the last exhale, rotate your palms outward in opposite directions, and bring them in toward your dantian, one over the other (for males, right over left; for females, left over right). If done correctly and mindfully, you can actually feel the subtle "buzz" of chi (which is the electrical force-field around your body) radiating through your palms from the core of your body.

After my Qigong sequence, I then do 3 prostrations, incorporating the Vinyasa sequence from hatha yoga. Getting down on hands and knees, I look up toward the Buddha, and leading with my rump, I crouch into a "pose of a child" asana, joining my palms above my head; then, leading with my shoulders I curl my spine up, roll it out, and repeat--3 times. On each prostration, I take refuge in, and contemplate the meanings of, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha--the "Three Jewels" of Buddhist tradition.

It took me a while to get into doing prostrations; with my western ego, I initially considered them as a vestige of eastern superstition and obsequious bowing before princes--something that, with my all-American commitment to universal equality, I wanted nothing to do with.

But then I have gradually realized, more and more, the inner logic behind these ancient practices. By prostrating, we not only exercise our spines, but also we humble ourselves--we sacrifice our egos, in effect, before the altar of something greater than us--in this case the long tradition of transcendent wisdom, passed from one generation to the next--to all of our teachers. So in bowing to the Buddha, I am also bowing to Lao Tzu, to Jesus, to Guru Nanak, to St. Francis, to Gandhi, to Martin Luther King, to Nelson Mandela, to Wangari Maathai, to Thich Nhat Hanh, to the Dalai Lama, and to Pema Chodron--to all Bodhisattvas whose teachings have lit my own path toward greater understanding and compassion.

After the Three Prostrations, I am then ready for formal meditation--in my own case, because of congenitally tight hips, I prefer to kneel on my 3-legged stool, rather than sitting cross-legged on a cushion.

Once seated and poised, I generally start by picking up my copy of Earth Prayers, a beautiful anthology of 365 poems, invocations, and prayers from diverse cultures all over the planet, that honor the Sacred in all life. Selecting one, usually at random, I read it, either silently or aloud, and then pick up my sandalwood mala with its 108 beads, that serves as a timekeeper, and also reduces the likelihood of spacing out or getting distracted by my thoughts.

Then I ring my beautiful, bronze bowl-like bell, sitting on its cushion in front of me--or as Thich Nhat Hanh likes to put it, I "invite the bell." As the pure, resonant peal of the bell fades into its overtones, I begin my formal practice with my standard, home-brewed ten-breath guided meditation, advancing a bead on each breath: Breathe, Observe, Let Go; Be well, Do good work, Keep in touch; Learn, Teach, Heal, and Create.

From there, I spend the rest of the bead time (usually 30-40 minutes), either on each in and out breath (if I have limited time) or one full in-and-out breath per bead (if I have lots of time), following my breath and experimenting with a few of the techniques I have learned. These include the following:

• Tonglen (breathing in Samsaric pain, breathing out Dharmic blessings, in radiating circles, first for myself, then for those I love, then those I know, then those I don't know, then those I don't like, and then those I am inclined to despise, and finally, every living being in the universe.) This is the most powerful, yet also most demanding form of practice I know.
• Various guided meditations on the in and out breath, (such as Thich Nhat Hanh's "Flower-fresh, Mountain-solid, Lake-clear, and Space-free).
• Metta meditation, based on the Four Brahmaviharas (or "limitless qualities"): loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity.
• Chakra meditation (focusing in turn on each of the Seven Chakras, from the base of the spine to the crown of the head).
• Mantra practice (e.g. "Om Mani Padme Hum" or my own tenfold mantra)

and so on...whatever useful practices I come across. But I also like, periodically, just to sit--to calmly abide in Alaya, or undifferentiated Being, devoid of all thought.

Quite naturally, distractions come up all the time--whether planning my classes, worry about stuff going on, fantasies, fears, resentments, or political apoplexy. Whenever I catch myself in such mental distractions, I try to name them, and then go back to breathing, observing, and letting go. I find that I am less likely to get distracted, however, if I read some Dharma before meditation, and thereby focus my mental chatter on the Dharma, rather than on all the usual egoic stuff.

When I reach the end of my Mala, I generally bow three times again to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and then sound the bell, letting the bell fill my consciousness again.

Then I get on my exercycle, and start pedaling. To avert boredom while bicycling, I have recently taken up mentally reviewing each injunction of the Eightfold Path, sometimes out loud, while pedaling: Right Understanding, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Contemplation. If done with any depth or commitment, this will take up 4-5 minutes quite easily.

Finally, I close with a Native American-inspired observance (with parallels in indigenous cultures throughout the world), which consists of picking up a hand drum and bowing in turn to the Six Directions and all their connotations: East (Sunrise, Spring, Starting Anew); South (Mid-day, Summer, Growth and nurturing); West (Evening, Fall, Fruition and harvest); North (Night, Winter, Death, Impermanence, and quiescence) And then I conclude with the two poles: Heaven (looking up--the Divine Mystery) and Earth (looking down--Gaia, the Manifestations). Often with the last two, I will repeat the line from the Prayer of Jesus: "Thy will be done in Heaven...and on Earth."

Then I am ready for my day, my mind and soul clear and refreshed...

Darth Cheney and me.

"When the world is full of evil, transform all mishaps into the path of Bodhi"

--The Lojong slogans.

"Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that despitefully use you." --Jesus.

"When Jesus instructed us to love our enemies, he didn't say we had to like them." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Hatred is a form of subjective involvement with the hated object." --Commentary on the I Ching.

This evening, I got caught up in a familiar obsession: seeking out snarky reviews of Dick Cheney's recently published memoirs, and working myself into a lather of sympathetic outrage as I read through the innumerable scathing comments of readers. "Darth" Cheney is truly a loathsome excuse for a human being--perhaps the most evil, vicious, hateful, truthless, sociopathic monster in the world today--the zombie-like embodiment of everything that has gone horribly wrong with America in the years since the Bush Coup of December 12, 2000 and the great 9/11 hoax (masterminded, no doubt, by Cheney himself). At the very thought of his smug, malignant, sneering face, I feel the familiar tug of what the Tibetans call shenpa--the almost visceral temptation to wallow in moral outrage and sheer obsessive hatred.

In effect, Cheney has infected my mind. But the honest recognition of this fact can be, in itself, a path to awakening, if I choose to take it. For when I indulge in such obsessive, apoplectic hatred of Cheney, I in effect become just like him--a troglodytic monster dripping with malice.

Several years ago, after a dharma talk in Hampton by Geshe Lobsang Tenzin of the Drepung Loseling Tibetan Center at Emory University, there was a Q & A session, during which I asked the Geshe the following question:

"How do you deal with blockages? That is, I try to generate compassion for all living beings, but then there are some for whom I feel such profound loathing that I can't get past it--and one of these is the President of the United States (George W. Bush). Is there a way to generate honest compassion for people you despise?" (The same is true, of course, even more so for Cheney).

The Geshe first acknowledged that this is very difficult, but then he told a parable. "Imagine," he said, "that you encountered a horribly abusive person who threatened you and screamed vicious insults at you. Naturally, you would feel fear and hostility toward him, and maybe even hatred. But then imagine that another person came along and told you that this person had just escaped from a mental institution and was profoundly disturbed. Your ill-will would then change immediately to a sincere desire to get help for him, because you realized that his abusive behavior was the direct result of his own profound suffering. So it is as well," (he said with a smile) "for anyone for whom you feel hatred--even George Bush."

About six months later, I was attending a workshop with a fairly advanced teacher (I forget her name) in Norfolk, who finally enabled me to awaken compassion for Bush. She told us the story of his childhood--how at the tender age of eight, he had lost his 3-year old sister, whom he dearly loved, to leukemia--yet his parents had not told him anything about her disease. They just took her away one day and she never returned. (The senior Bushes--George and Barbara--were of the same World War II generation as my parents, a generation who had seen such immense suffering throughout the world, both during the Depression and the war, that they tended to be very stoical, and desperate to protect their own children from suffering by suppressing their own feelings.) After the death of this child, the situation was made worse by the fact that young George's mother became depressed, withdrawn, and emotionally distant from him--so that not only did he lose his beloved sister, but he felt abandoned by his mother when he needed her the most. As a result, he was inwardly traumatized and strove thereafter, unconsciously, to "get back" at a world which had cruelly taken away everyone he loved. This was manifested in his early teenage years by his habit of torturing birds and animals, and later by his drinking and his feckless, self-indulgent behavior, his embrace of fundamentalist Christianity, and his later obsession with killing people, both as Governor (when he signed far more death warrants than any governor before or since) and President (when he gleefully invaded Iraq and smirkingly took pride in extrajudicial murders.) But all this sociopathic behavior was rooted in intense, unacknowledged inner pain and suffering. So, no doubt, it has been for Cheney.

Reflecting thus, we can find it possible to cultivate compassion even for monsters like Bush and Cheney. It is not easy--it takes serious introspection. One possible path to this realization is in a passage cited by Maureen Dowd in her (typically sardonic) review of his book, in which, toward the end, after an ugly litany of spin, smarmy self-justification, and lashing out at others in his own and the later administration, he indulges the reader with a sentimental moment, as he recalls drifting into unconsciousness before his most recent heart surgery, and having a very realistic dream that he was relaxing joyfully in "the Italian countryside, somewhere north of Rome." This is the very locale, dear to my heart--Tuscany--where my wife and I have spent two idyllic months during the past two years. Yet Cheney will never be able to go there himself, without fear of being immediately arrested as a war criminal. So at that moment, ironically, in his dream-state, it is as if Cheney and I became one. And we are one, much as I am loath to admit it, not only in our capacity for hatred, but equally in our capacity for joy that is free from suffering...for the sunny, ancient hills of Tuscany.

I'll see if I can say this honestly: May Dick Cheney know happiness, and the roots of happiness. May he be free from suffering, and the roots of suffering. May he know the original joy that transcends all suffering. And may he know the great equanimity, free from passion, aggression, and prejudice. May he one day awaken to his own hidden Buddha nature, and--for the benefit of all beings--may he see the light at last...

To be honest, the above words do not feel as sincere as they should--but I'm trying. Loving your enemy is the hardest injunction of all--but also the most essential. For Bodhicitta eludes us if we leave out anyone at all--even Dick Cheney.

Wangari Maathai: A Gaian Bodhisattva

I am currently reading a book that is both painful and inspiring: Wangari Maathai's latest book, The Challenge for Africa. It is, by any standard, a tour de force of historical insight, deep cultural awareness, moral clarity, compassion, perseverance, and hope--she is a magnificent role model, not only for all Africans, but for all Gaians--that is, for all of us. Here is one sample--her normative definition of democracy, which jumped out at me with the force of a revelation:

All political systems, institutions of the state, and cultural values (as well as pathways toward, and indicators of, economic growth) are justifiable only insofar as they encourage basic freedoms, including human rights, and individual and collective well-being. In that respect, democracy doesn’t solely mean “one person, one vote.” It also means, among other things, the protection of minority rights; an effective and truly representative parliament; an independent judiciary; an informed and engaged citizenry; an independent fourth estate; the rights to assemble, practice one’s religion freely, and advocate for one’s view peacefully without fear of reprisal or arbitrary arrest; and an empowered and active civil society that can operate without intimidation. By this definition, many African countries—and indeed, many societies in both the developing and developed worlds—fall short of genuine democracy. Likewise, “development” doesn’t only entail the acquisition of material things, although everyone should have enough to live with dignity and without fear of starvation or becoming homeless. Instead, it means achieving a quality of life that is sustainable, and of allowing the expression of the full range of creativity and humanity.

Wangari Maathai (Nobel Peace Prize Laureate)

The Challenge for Africa (Random House/Anchor Books, 2009), p. 56

What more needs to be said about the asymptotic goal toward which we all should be striving?

Vertical and Horizontal Healing

My last post, "Life without Hope," was full of unrelieved despair for the world, leavened only by the quiet resignation to impermanence of Anglican poet and divine George Herbert, reminding us, yet again, that "only a sweet and virtuous soul" can transcend the ravages of time and mortality--much as the Buddha, in the "five remembrances" (i.e. that we are of the nature to get sick, grow old, die, and lose everything we love) concludes that "my actions are my only true possessions."

As Gaian Buddhist philosopher and activist Joanna Macy has often suggested, despair for our planet cannot and should not be suppressed, but rather it needs to be acknowledged, embraced, and worked through, as a path to healing and empowerment. This is not easy, but I would like to share one formulation I have come up with that may help in this ongoing process.

Our culture as a whole suffers from a fragmentation that is both vertical and horizontal. By "vertical" I refer to the personal axis of body, mind, and spirit. Ever since Descartes saved the Catholic church from science and science from the church by developing a dualistic ideology that clearly distinguished res cogitans (the domain of mind, subjectivity, and spirituality) from res extensa (the objective, physical domain, subject to scientific investigation and manipulation, and beginning with our own bodies), this vertical dissociation--of our bodies from our minds, and of our minds from our spirits--has become completely embedded in our mainstream culture. We are encouraged to view our bodies as objects, like our cars, getting them tuned up by exercises, decorated by make-up or tattoos, and repaired by physicians and surgeons. In short, we go to the gym for our bodies, the school or college for our minds, and the church or synagogue for our spirits--as if these were separate, disconnected entities.

Likewise, we are dissociated, largely by design, in the Horizontal realm: our selves are dissociated from our communities, and our communities from Gaia--the larger matrix of their existence. This is "by design" because this dissociation of self, community, and nature serves the interests of Glomart (my coinage for the money-based Global Market Economy). Glomart gains--that is, sells more products and services--to the exact extent it can turn us into isolated consumers, alienated from our communities (so that, for example, we need to buy our own lawnmower, rather than borrowing our neighbor's). And likewise, it thrives when our communities of whatever sort--our schools and colleges, our corporations, our cities and states--are insulated from the adverse ecological consequences of their habits of consumption. In short, Glomart seeks, by its single mandate (the profit motive), to turn citizens into consumers, communities into markets, and our living planet into "resources" devoid of any value until they are transformed into commodities for sale. As a consequence we are dissociated both vertically and horizontally.

My friends and acquaintances, as well as the many people I read regularly, fall broadly into two broad (and often mutually exclusive) categories: those who are focused predominantly on Vertical healing (i.e. reintegration of body, mind, and spirit), through such disciplines as yoga, tai chi, and meditation, and those who are focused predominantly on Horizontal healing (through social and environmental activism). While there is some overlap, these two types of people are largely distinct: many of my Buddhist friends, massage therapists, and other "cultural creatives" are so caught up in their own and others' spiritual (vertical) healing that they give little thought to getting involved in larger social or environmental issues, as they sip their bottled water and drive their SUVs to "Hot Yoga" classes (burning who knows how much coal for the convenience of sweating profusely). Conversely, many of my social activist friends, both "lefties" and environmentalists, are so passionately involved in righting social and environmental wrongs, exposing the evil-doers, and rallying to shake their fists at the oppressors and polluters, that they ignore their inner development altogether, succumbing to chronic rage, bitterness, and burn-out.

However, we need both--Vertical and Horizontal healing--in order to bring about any possible spontaneous remission of the Cancer of the Earth. Is it possible to integrate them? It is indeed, but no one ever said it would be easy. We must strive to emulate the role models who have managed this integration of Vertical and Horizontal healing most effectively: people like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Soo Kyi of Burma, and Wangari Maathai of Kenya.

This brings me back to my recurrent fantasy. Imagine setting up Dharma Gaia circles, open to people of all faith traditions, which are dedicated to just such an integration of Vertical and Horizontal healing. The core practice would be, of course, my Dharma Gaia mantra, which moves on a roughly diagonal axis from the embrace of body/self (Breathe, Observe, Let Go) to mind/community (Be well, Do Good Work, Keep in Touch) to spirit/Gaia (Learn, Teach, Heal, Create). The idea would be to create groups that begin with this meditation, then go on to do shared readings, and conclude with a discussion of outreach strategies. I plan, this fall, to start a prototype of such a meditation/reading/action group at the community college where I work. I probably won't call it "Dharma Gaia," however--I live in an overwhelmingly Christian state, and this "heathen" terminology would frighten away most, if not all, of my students. So instead, I'll simply call it something like "Interfaith Healing Meditation and Reading Group," and our first reading will not be "environmental" at all, but rather, it will be Karen Armstrong's newest (and easiest) book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life, in which she finds common ground in the practice of compassion among all the religions of the world, and especially the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Call it Skillful Means...My goal, if it is to be authentic, must not be to make everyone "see like me, feel like me, and be like me"--but rather to help them, within the context of their own religious culture and background, and according to their own knowledge and skills, to become a healing agent on our planet.

Life without Hope

This morning, I was watching clips from a 1936 Russian film called "The Girlfriends" (Podrugi) with a score by Shostakovich. The film, a typical propaganda piece, features three young girls and a boy who get caught up in the chaos of World War I and the revolution. At the beginning, however, they are working at an American-owned rubber factory, when the oppressed workers call a strike. The children, desperate for any income at all, make an unsuccessful attempt to sing at a beer hall frequented by the workers and are booted out, but later, aided by a quirky old guy who befriends them, work their way back in, where they sing a beautiful and touching revolutionary anthem called "Tormented by a Lack of Freedom," when they are joined by all the men at the tavern. I looked up a translation to the lyrics to this anthem, which are filled with hope and defiance as they sing of a martyred leader:

"Like you, we may simply become

The soil for the new people,

Or a terrifying prophecy of the new,

Imminent and heroic days..."

Later, Shostakovich ironically incorporates this anthem, as a kind of dirge, in his Eighth Quartet, where it is both surrounded and interrupted by a terrifying, percussive three-chord sequence that immediately would recall, for the audience, the feared "knock on the door" during the Stalinist Terror.

Watching this clip, and thinking about these children in that dark time, and the hope and defiance they manifested for a better future, coupled with Shostakovich's later, bitterly ironic reflection on this early hope in the Eighth Quartet, I was also reminded of a comment made by one of my students at Hampton University several years ago, who remarked, about her enslaved ancestors, that "We are living our ancestors' dreams today."

And so we are--most of us in the middle classes and in the affluent North, anyway--who live in a globally interconnected world where we take computers, the Internet, cellphones, fast food, mobility, freedom, security, and general affluence for granted in ways that none of our ancestors could have dreamed.

And yet...we are also teetering on the brink of an incremental global apocalypse that will eclipse all previous catastrophes by a large margin--one where there is no escape at all--driven by three huge, interrelated terminal crises:

• our collapsing, debt-ridden global market economy, which is only the most visible symptom of...
• the inexorable peak and decline of the fossil-fuel based net energy upon which that global market economy is entirely dependent.
• a simultaneous global ecological collapse, driven above all by irreversible climate change from global heating, coupled with overpopulation, pollution, collapsing fisheries worldwide, depleted groundwater, the collapse of bee populations for pollination, deforestation, desertification, etc.

Anyone who takes a hard look at these current realities has little reason to harbor any hope for the future at all. Especially since our political systems, both here and throughout the world, have been hopelessly hijacked and corrupted--bought and sold--by large multinational corporations and their front groups like the Koch Brothers-funded "Tea Party" movement in the US, who, through the strident, hate-filled demagogues they sponsor on Fox News and Clear Channel radio, have stirred the TV-addled lumpen-proletariat into a frenzy of hatred and "patriotic" paranoia, thereby electing a fanatical congress who will destroy our government altogether before they allow it to raise the taxes of the super-rich or enact legislation protecting the environment or serving the public interest. The only branch of government they will leave untouched is, of course, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Military-Industrial complex, who will go about their business as usual, committing mass murder, torturing suspects in secret prisons, and sending drones out to terrorize Afghan villages that refuse to bow to the Karzai puppet-regime they have set up.

Where is all this headed? Nowhere, fast: a corporate-dominated mass media that maintains the illusion of democracy, by creating bread-and-circus elections and creating a consensual "reality" that bears little relation to anything real; meanwhile, well below the artificially generated, corporate-sponsored radar screen of public awareness, a corporate feeding frenzy on resources worldwide will wipe out any and all environmental protection. The Arctic ocean, Atlantic and Pacific will be open to offshore drilling, while oil shale fields, commercial fishing, hydrofracking for natural gas, mountaintop removal mining, and deforestation proceed without constraint; meanwhile, unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness, and general desperation will proliferate, along with crime, drugs, and random violence, while the middle and upper classes barricade themselves within gated communities--all prey, however, to rapidly rising fuel and food prices, layoffs, and more foreclosures...and anyone who attempts to mobilize the poor and destitute against the rich and well-protected will be ferreted out by internet surveillance and cellphone tapping, and be quietly spirited away and eliminated by paramilitary goon squads. Finally, we will face, worldwide, the grim specter of shrinking islands of fiercely defended affluence in the midst of a turbulent sea of random violence, despair, madness, starvation, disease, and chaos, while the climate gets steadily hotter, drier, and more turbulent, going into a self-accelerating feedback loop.

This is a future I would not wish on my worst enemy, yet it is the future we have created for our own children and grandchildren. And while I used to harbor a residual optimism that somehow a rapidly proliferating Gaia movement could somehow turn all this around before it is too late, that optimism has now vanished, particularly in light of this toxic, corporate-funded, neofascist "Tea Party" phenomenon, that is bringing out the worst in everyone: greed, willful ignorance, hatred, denial, and despair.

All of which, as always, begs the question: while our planet is going to hell, what is a Gaian Buddhist to do? My short answer is the same as it ever was:

Breathe, Observe, Let Go.

Be well, Do good work, Keep in touch.

Learn, Teach, Heal, and Create.

The slightly longer answer is this:

"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is no other than emptiness, emptiness is no other than form. The same goes for feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness..."

Breathing in, I take on my own, and everyone else's vast suffering, both now and in the future (and the past as well.)

Breathing out, I send forth friendliness, compassion, joy, and equanimity to myself and to all other living beings: my family, friends, students, total strangers, those who annoy me, those I despise, and every living, breathing being on the planet and throughout the universe.

(Repeat as often as necessary)

And let us remember--the Present is all there is--ever. The future is a mental formation only, and everything, including our body, our society, and our planet, is impermanent. The important thing, always, is to cultivate wisdom and compassion in the present moment, and then to take care of everyone and everything, and abandon no one and nothing...

As the English poet and Anglican divine George Herbert, a true Bodhisattva, once put it:

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridal of the earth and sky;

The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,

For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;

Thy root is ever in its grave,

And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,

A box where sweets compacted lie;

My music shows ye have your closes,

And all must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,

Like season'd timber, never gives;

But though the whole world turn to coal,

Then chiefly lives.

Two Homilies

A number of years ago, I wrote a piece for my Humanities students, which I still use, called "The Four Paths to the Sacred." In it I made the case that all the religious and spiritual traditions on the planet could be classified according to the four directions:

1. SOUTH--The Path of Learning (Ancient and Indigenous religious traditions, involving their own culturally specific mythologies and traditions)
2. EAST--The Path of Teaching (Far Eastern religious traditions, involving ramifying lineages of teachers and students of the Dharma).
3. WEST--The Path of Healing (The Abrahamic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam--all positing one Creator God, and involving themes of redemption and healing played out through their sacred history).
4. NORTH--The Path of Creating (The modern, secular traditions that emphasize human reason, freedom, and creativity--from the European Renaissance to the present).

I concluded with the view that our best bet, in this time of global crisis and the need for global healing, would be simultaneously to nurture our own chosen spiritual orientation, while remaining open to, and learning from, the wisdom available from all four paths, worldwide. The Buddha speaks of 84,000 Dharma doors--and of course "84,000" is simply a metaphor for an infinite number. The point is, of course, that good Dharma teachings can be found in all four of these paths--in every spiritual tradition on the planet. (This view has also been embraced and promoted by many modern-day Bodhisattvas, such as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh.)

Pursuant to this, I would like to share two short Dharma teachings from the Western Path of Healing and the Northern Path of Creating. The first is from a Seventh Century English nun, St. Hilda, a talented, spiritually accomplished woman who founded the magnificent Whitby Abbey in north Yorkshire as a joint monastery for both monks and nuns. While on a walk through the Yorkshire countryside several years ago, my wife and I came upon a tiny village, almost a ghost town, called Ellerburn, and there we found an ancient roadside chapel, smelling of mildew, which was dedicated to St. Hilda. At the front was a slate tablet inscribed with a short homily from St Hilda, which provides some basic instruction to novice monks and nuns. Here it is:

A Homily of St. Hilda

Trade with the gifts God has given you.

Bend your minds to holy learning

that you may escape the fretting moths of littleness of mind

that would wear out your souls.

Brace your wills to actions

that they may not be the spoils of weak desires.

Train your hearts and lips to song

which gives courage to the soul

Being buffeted by trials,

learn to laugh.

Being reproved,

give thanks.

Having failed,

determine to succeed.

This is pure, 200 proof Dharma--aside from the obligatory Western reference to God, it could as easily have been written by Pema Chodron as by St. Hilda.

The other piece is from Walt Whitman's introduction to the 1855 version of Leaves of Grass--a wonderful, visionary example of the Path of Creating--the Sacred as the autonomous self--which characterized the Romantic movement in both Europe and America:

This is what you shall do

by Walt Whitman

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

Amen to both Hilda and Walt!

Edgar's "Mustardseed" sermon.

In recent years, I have been mulling over an idea for a novel, which, given my habitual inability to stay focused on a long-term project, may never come to pass. The idea features a protagonist by the name of Edgar Markham, who is my alter-ego, (named after the character Edgar in King Lear), a Buddhist practitioner who--as fossil fuels become exhausted and our industrial society collapses into chaos, fanaticism, predatory violence, and resource wars--creates a grassroots mass spiritual movement, known as Dharma Gaia, based on the propagation of his (and my own) Dharma Gaia mantra:

Breathe, Observe, Let Go

Be well, Do good work, Keep in touch

Learn, Teach, Heal, Create.

Soon enough, however, Edgar realizes that if he promotes himself as yet another Buddhist teacher, he will reach only Buddhists and others, such as yoga and tai chi practitioners, who are already well-educated "cultural creatives," sympathetic to Far Eastern wisdom traditions, and that these, at least in America, are a vast minority, while most ordinary people continue to be seduced, especially in times of growing stress, by huge megachurches promoting a toxic, hateful brand of narrow-minded, intolerant right-wing fundamentalist Christianity. Unless Edgar can break through to such people, his movement will remain a fringe phenomenon, invisible to the media and hence incapable of creating any kind of healing cultural shift toward Gaian consciousness--that is, awareness of ourselves as part of a planetary community of life, in which "whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

Edgar therefore undertakes a radical solution. Knowing that no fundamentalist Christians would ever pay any attention to a self-proclaimed Buddhist, and embracing the line from his namesake in King Lear, "Edgar I Nothing Am,"--a radical realization of emptiness--Edgar abandons his outward identity altogether, leaves his few remaining possessions behind, and becomes "Tom the Preacher," a Christian missionary wandering from one church to another, preaching the Gospel. At the megachurch of one Brother Randolph Masterson, Edgar (i.e. Tom) gains permission to address the congregation, giving them a sermon on the Parable of the Mustard Seed (Mark 4:30-32; Matt 13:31-32; Lk 18-19). Here is what he says:

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Our text for today is from Mark, but it also has versions in Matthew and Luke. It is the Parable of the Mustard Seed, and it goes as follows:

Whereunto shall we liken the Kingdom of God?...It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth:

But when it is sown, it groweth up and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches, so that the fowls of the air may lodge under it.

Now then, most of you who are gardeners know quite well that mustard seeds do not grow into large plants or trees which shelter birds. Mustard is a weed, which grows quickly, goes to seed, and proliferates in bright sunlight, close to the ground. So why did Jesus choose this particular simile for the Kingdom of God? Nothing, after all, could be more humble and commonplace than mustard plants. Was Jesus ignorant of basic botany? Not likely, since He lived in an agricultural society, where most farmers were familiar with mustard plants, and most likely regarded them as weeds to be removed, rather than anything of value.

Some will say that mustard greens, when cooked, add a nice, tangy flavor to foods, and that mustard seeds, when ground or spread, add the same tangy flavor, in more concentrated form, to other dishes. So maybe Jesus is referring to the Kingdom of God as adding a certain zest to our food?

(Laughter)

In which case, what about the birds of the air? Where do they come in? Many theologians have come up with dramatically different interpretations of this parable, all struggling with the obvious contradiction between what Jesus says about mustard seeds, and what anyone who has a garden already knows. Others claim that Jesus was doing a parody of the conventional, lofty Cedar of Lebanon metaphor for the divinity, so show his readers that the Kingdom of God is ubiquitous, all around them, if they would open their eyes.

So here is one more attempt at interpreting this parable, from yet another gardener.

Mustard is a weed, which means that it quickly colonizes disturbed ground, and needs a lot of sunlight in order to grow. It is frequently used as a green manure, because it is a legume, meaning that it fixes nitrogen from the air, in symbiosis with rhizomes on the roots, and its roots also draw up valuable minerals, such a phosphorus, from beneath the topsoil. And of course, it can be eaten and provide good nutrition, as well as that tangy flavor. For all these reasons, mustard is a good example of the manifold blessings that God provides us, that we generally don't even notice or take for granted.

So while mustard cannot, of itself, provide shelter for birds, it nevertheless creates the ecological linkages between air, topsoil, and mineral substrate, that heals and rebuilds damaged topsoil, and creates the preconditions for larger plants and trees to flourish in succession. So in his short parable, Jesus is giving us all a lesson in ecology: Mustard seeds, which we are likely to regard as weeds, have an integral role in God's Kingdom, which is right here around us on Earth, as well as in Heaven, for the action of the mustard plant quite literally unites Heaven (the air) with Earth (the topsoil and minerals). And these larger plants, in turn, provide shelter for birds, who in turn disperse their seeds. In the natural world, as in the Kingdom of God, everything works for the benefit of itself and for everything else as well--whether they know it or not.

For this reason, from a deep reading of the Parable of the Mustard Seed, we may deduce a principle, a precept, and a practice:

The Principle was well articulated by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a devout Baptist preacher, when he said, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

--Just as the Mustard Seed creates the conditions, indirectly, for the shelter that the larger plants that grow in the topsoil it creates provide for the birds (who in turn disseminate their seeds).

And it also, of course, reinforces the Precept--the Great Commandment--which Jesus derived from this basic principle of interconnectedness: "Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and that which is like unto it: Love your neighbor as yourself."

So I am going to conclude today by sharing with you all a Practice, by which you, like a mustard seed, can help heal our land and bring to fruition the Kingdom of God, right here on Earth.

Please pay close attention.

1. BREATHE. As you draw breath and focus on it, reflect on the Holy Spirit that God breathed into Adam when He created him. Feel that same Holy Spirit within you, connecting you to all of God's creation.
2. OBSERVE. Open your eyes, and see, as Jesus taught us, that the Kingdom of God is everywhere around us, for those with eyes to see.
3. LET GO. Let go of your fears, your anxieties, and your hatreds--even of your own self-preoccupied thoughts, and rest within the Peace of God that passeth all understanding.
4. BE WELL. Take good care of your own body, for it is the Tabernacle of the Lord.
5. DO GOOD WORK. To get over any reluctance to do what you know you should do, simply say "Thy Will be Done." Then do your own part in realizing the Kingdom of God.
6. KEEP IN TOUCH. Just as the mustard seed grows into a plant that draws nutrients from both Earth and Heaven, and makes them available to other plants, be ready at all times to reach out to all others--to express your love of God in your love of your neighbor.
7. LEARN. Read the Scriptures prayerfully every day, and regard everyone you meet as a potential teacher, that you may "till" your own mistakes into the ground of your experience, as fertilizer for growing closer to God.
8. TEACH. Do not put your candle under a bushel. What you have learned, share with others, just as the Mustard Seed creates topsoil for the benefit of all other life.
9. HEAL. Our mission as Christians is to follow in the steps of Jesus of healing the sick, and healing as well the sickness of our society--just as the Mustard Seed restores damaged topsoil.
10. CREATE. Just as God created us all, let us use our own creative gifts, whatever they may be, to create the Kingdom of God, just as the mustard seed creates the conditions within large plants and trees can flourish, offering shelter to the birds.

May the Peace of God which passeth all understanding keep your hearts and mind through Jesus Christ Our Lord.

Amen.

--After delivering this sermon, Edgar plants Mustardseed Fellowships within each church he visits, to plant their own gardens, teach gardening skills to their faith community, reach out to the poor and needy, and practice (what they call) the Mustardseed Injunctions to stay on track.

Wouldn't it be nice??