Watching my mind

This afternoon, as I was grading papers,  I noticed, yet again, how often some aspect of my consciousness subverts my determination to stay focused and on-task. There are many times when I am gripped by this temptation to get distracted--whether by trips to the refrigerator for...whatever presents itself to eat, or by various thoughts, obsessions, or fantasies, or--even worse--the temptation to simply google something for the hell of it, and get drawn into the endless, often craven distractions of the Internet or YouTube. Often after indulging in such idle and pernicious distractions, torpor sets in, tempting me to go take another brief nap, which often--despite setting the alarm--ends up being anything but brief. And so important tasks get postponed, again and again.

While I am by no means alone in this tendency to give in to distractions, I may have it worse than many, for--had the diagnosis existed when I was young--I would most certainly have been labeled "ADD"--Attention Deficit Disorder. (When I mentioned this to my Dean one time, she--in her unflappable coolness--said "Of course; I knew that.")  I generally don't go in for such labels--they seem inherently abusive and simplistic, reducing a complex personality to a mere set of symptoms, assumed to be genetically embedded and hence inescapable.

Buddhist teachings suggest otherwise. The Buddhist texts list and classify these as "afflictive emotions" personified as Mara, and their antidote is, as always, neither to repress them nor to indulge them, but simply notice them as they arise, and practice simply acknowledging their existence, and then (when you are ready) letting go of them.  These afflictive emotions include also the feelings of self-loathing and self-flagellation that often arise in the wake of getting seized by a distraction or temptation and lured away from our responsibilities--we can simply observe and let go of those feelings as well.

This is not easy, of course; if it were, we would not have anywhere near as many crazy, screwed up, neurotic, self-destructive, demoralized people walking around out there.  But nor is it impossible. Like everything else in Buddhism, it takes practice, and we can always start over, no matter how times we have failed or relapsed into bad habits.  No matter what happens in our interior weather--even in the tornado-like vortex of despair and self-loathing--we can always start over--by breathing, observing, and letting go.  This is, for me, one of the greatest gifts of Dharma practice: our ticket out of Hell.  The minute we return to focus attention on our breath, we are no longer in the grip of distractions or afflictive emotions--we simply can observe them like a movie--watch the mental impulses toward distraction arise and dissipate, neither acting on them nor wishing they were otherwise, but simply watching our own minds with the same patience and compassion we aspire to extend to everyone else--and then, when ready, returning to doing good work and keeping in touch.

Over the Rainbow

Lately, my good friend and office-mate Michael Tarpey, a philosopher, and I have had a grand time discussing all sorts of philosophical questions. In the context of these conversations, mostly focusing on the perennial question, as Bob Dylan put it, of "what's real and what is not,"  I observed that certain things we take for real are merely artifacts of perception--that is, things we perceive, whether with our eyes or our mind, and therefore assume to be real, but which in fact, are simply a virtual reality,  a consensual concept which we have agreed upon to be "real" in order to better organize our experience and behavior. As an example of such a perceptual artifact, I cited the rainbow--something we can see, but that isn't really "there" because it is simply the perceptual consequence of a temporary convergence of sunlight, rain, and point of view--that is, only those who stand between the sun and the sheet of rain perceive a rainbow, opposite the sun, and everyone's rainbow is in a slightly different place from everyone else's, depending on where they are standing. (Therefore, Dorothy could dream all she liked about "somewhere over the rainbow" but she'd never get there--since the rainbow would move with her!) In this way, a rainbow, though it appears to be "real," is in actuality no more real than a shadow or a heat mirage (both likewise artifacts of perception).

Looking more deeply, we find that artifacts of perception can be found not only "out there" in the world, but also in our minds. By this I refer not only to dreams or mental images, which are obvious examples of insubstantial perceptions, but also to a whole array of concepts that most people take to be, in some sense, real, and which form the pretext for many of our actions, but which on closer examples are no more "real" than a rainbow, a shadow, or a mirage.

Here are a few noteworthy examples: money, the past, the future, and the United States of America. We all assume money to be real; we can, after all, buy real, tangible things with it. But money is, in actuality an empty, arithmetical signifier, whose value depends entirely upon a shifting consensus within a community of buyers and sellers.  It is, as Gregory Bateson might have said, a transform of information about the relative value of commodities in the market. And "commodities" themselves can often be quite virtual, quite nebulous. What, for example, is an "insurance policy"? A legally binding agreement between insurer and insured. But if the insurer goes belly-up, what happens to that contract? It becomes a worthless piece of paper.

But surely, you might argue, the past and future are real; we have artifacts to prove that the past in fact actually happened, and we can make reasonably accurate predictions about the future--weather forecasters do it all the time.  While I agree that the past and future can be useful concepts, whether for reflection or planning or imagining, they still lack any substantive reality. The past is gone an irretrievable; the future hasn't happened yet.  All we actually have is the ever-shifting present moment. Both the others are imaginary constructs.

We can take this further, of course. While the past is gone and irrevocable, the future can be influenced, up to a point, by our actions (or inactions) in the present moment.  But it is still an artifact of our imagination, for no matter how carefully we plan, something could happen in the next moment to completely eradicate those plans, or at least require a major change in them. Or, of course, we could die--at any time--rendering all such plans and dreams null and void.  That notwithstanding, our actions today will still influence the shape of the future, with or without us. And if the Buddhist teachings are right about a continuum of mind that pre-exists our birth and transcends our death, then we--or some version of ourselves--will reap the karmic fruits of our actions anyway.  But even that, if or when it happens, will not be "real" knowable until it becomes the Present Moment, whether for ourselves or for another "self" we cannot even imagine. After all, this concept of "self" we have and cherish is yet another perceptual artifact, no more real than a rainbow.

Equipoise

Grace

When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
in the fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

--Wendell Berry

This lovely poem by Wendell Berry, one of my favorite modern poet/essayists, was sent to me by my dear friend Catherine Larson, who lives in Eugene, Oregon, and is one of my oldest and best friends. It evokes one of the most important fruits of mindfulness: equipoise, or the ability to hold in balance grief and joy, agony and peace.   It invites us to acknowledge our shared fears and despair at the horrors of existence in this apocalyptic time--the vast sufferings wrought by greed, ignorance, hatred, and denial, and the ongoing, seemingly unstoppable devastation of the only living planet we will ever know and all her creatures. But then, on the other hand, invites us, as a refuge, into the quiet beauty, magic, and tranquility of Life in the present moment.

Such equipoise, the ability to fully embrace both the horror and the beauty of life simultaneously, will become an ever-more important skill as we all draw inexorably closer to the bitter end--of our lives, of our security, of our social fabric, and of our planet's climatic stability--as our sustaining ecosystems shrivel and die. Let us therefore remember, at all times, to practice the Five Remembrances and the Four Immeasurables:

The Five Remembrances:

I, my community, and Gaia are of the nature to get sick. There is no way we can avoid getting sick.
I, my community, and Gaia are of the nature to grow old. There is no way we can avoid growing old.
I, my community, and Gaia are of the nature to die. There is no way we can avoid death.
I, my community, and Gaia are of the nature to lose everything we cherish. There is no way to avoid the total loss of all we love.
My actions are my only true possessions. Therefore I shall strive stand on, and live by, my actions; to assume total responsibility for everything I think, say, do. Until my last breath, may all my actions serve to promote the health, competence, and resilience of myself, my community, all others, and Gaia.

Mantra of the Four Immeasurables:

• (on the in-breath) "Breathe"--in gratitude and benevolence toward all living beings, without exception. (Visualize--the sun, the trees, the crops, all who work hard to provide for you, all whom you encounter)
• (on the pause at the full) "Observe"--with compassion for all living beings who suffer. (Visualize some who suffer the most, but also those whose inner suffering manifests as evil or cruelty--may all be healed)
• (on the out-breath) "Let Go"--with sympathetic joy for all living beings who share with me the miracle of life in this moment.
• (on the pause, emptied of everything) "Abide"--in perfect equanimity and peace, at one with all of life, all things, all the universe, the Sacred.

Such practices can be helpful, when we are overwhelmed with grief, rage, or despair.

Reflections on Community and Sustainability

Recently, my friend Al Markowitz, a local syndicated journalist who writes deeply reflective and insightful articles on current political issues, asked me for some reflections on the topic of "sustainable communities," which he is working on for his next article. As a long-time admirer of Al's writing and thinking, I am happy to oblige.

As I pondered this topic, it brought up my long personal history of reflections on our global crisis from a lifetime dedicated to environmental advocacy and the elusive quest for eco-sanity. In my younger years, back in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, my thinking on the plight, and fate, of our planet was infused with the idealism of those times. From the time, in 1970, when my youthful hero Stewart Brand published the Whole Earth Catalog on the premise that a truly global, ecocentric community was emerging, I saw myself in the vanguard of this movement, dedicated to pursuing personal and planetary regeneration and empowerment in tandem.  In  1980, I was living a brief but idyllic existence in a geodesic dome in an olive grove on the outskirts of Athens, Greece when I received as a gift the 10-year anniversary volume of the Whole Earth Catalog (called "the Next Whole Earth Catalog" after the "Last" one in 1970). This second volume first introduced me to the Gaia Hypothesis, formulated by independent British biochemist James Lovelock and his colleague, American microbiologist Lynn Margulis.

For me, Gaia theory was a revelation--it struck me then, as now, as the central metaphor we had all been looking for: the Earth as a single, dynamic living system of which we are all a part. Coupled with the iconic image of the Whole Earth from Space, it seemed at that time to be a new nodal idea that heralded a worldwide quiet revolution, a shift of polarities, which would inevitably displace the toxic ideologies of nationalism, militarism, and global corporate industrial consumerism--the "Cancer of the Earth"--with a compelling new cultural sensibility based on identification of Self with Planet, of Humanity with Nature. In short, I dedicated myself to the prospect that Gaian consciousness would go viral, bringing with it a worldwide transformation of cultures, as we all learned to live within our ecological means and restore the health and resilience of the only living planet we will ever know. I heartily embraced a slogan coined by environmental scientist and activist Norman Myers at that time: "We have two choices: a Gaian future--or no future."

Needless to say, the Gaian future never happened. After the brief flowering of global, ecstatic Gaian consciousness in the 70s and 80s (mostly on the West Coast, where I then resided) the Empire struck back--big time--first with Reagan and Bush, then with the rampant consumerism of the Clinton years, and then with the hijacking of our democracy by the toxic and hegemonic, oil-industry dominated, virulently anti-Gaian Bush regime, and now, under the bought-out Obama administration, with the Trans Pacific Partnership threatening the corporate takeover of the entire planet and the end of any real democracy altogether.  Meanwhile, of course, fossil fuel-induced climate change has risen to the tipping point where it is now self-accelerating and irreversible, dooming our entire planet to a hideous future of global ecological collapse, swarms of environmental refugees, violence, and starvation, while our fished-out oceans revert to jellyfish--their original inhabitants (prior to the Cambrian Period, some 550 million years ago).  In such a bleak and desolate world, any further talk of a Gaian future or of "sustainable communities" begins to remind me of a sad line from Lennie, the simpleton in Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men":  "Tell me about the rabbits, George!"

So is "No future" our only remaining choice? While our past (and present) collective greed, ignorance, and denial have badly foreclosed our options for the future, they haven't eliminated them. When I face the grim prospect that our present generation may see the final days of human civilization before our global support system, Gaia, collapses into a whole new hostile climate regime that no longer supports humans or any other large vertebrates--a possibility that Lovelock and other Earth system scientists no longer discount--my only refuge is that of any condemned man: to let go of the future and fully inhabit every present moment of my life.  After all, the future itself is just a mental formation--it has no real existence, and it is rooted in the decisions we make in the present moment.

So what decisions can or should we make, right now, regardless of whether or not we have a future? Many, of course, will take a "carpe diem" approach--abandon any thought of sustainability, go to the mall, run up their credit cards, get drunk...But such an approach is an admission of defeat, and can lead only to despair. If we assume nothing can be done, nothing will be done.  My own option therefore, and the one I try to pass on to my students, is for us each to become agents of the spontaneous remission of the Cancer of the Earth.   To do so, we must embrace and transform despair--not into hope (which is illusory) nor into anger (which is corrosive and futile) but rather into  mindful courses of action that promote global (or Gaian) awareness, understanding, and responsibility, while also following Gandhi's advice to "renounce the fruits of action"--that is, not to be concerned with whether we succeed or fail, but simply to do what needs to be done--mindfully, strategically, compassionately, and relentlessly.

One way to do this is to understand that all living organisms, for survival, depend on three values: health, competence, and resilience. The next is to understand that we all depend on communities for our survival, and that our communities all depend on a healthy ecosystem and planet for theirs. Knowing that, we can deduce what I like to call a "Gaian Categorical Imperative:"

In every decision you make, strive to promote the health, competence, and resilience or yourself, your community, and the planet.  Any benefit to ourselves that is harmful to our communities will ultimately harm ourselves as well (and usually get us thrown in prison); any benefit to our communities--including benefits conferred by multinational corporations--that is harmful to Gaia may make us billionaires, but is equally harmful to our own and our children's survival.

Such an ethic embodies the enlightened awareness that what is best for our planet is also best for our communities and ourselves. That is the starting point of true sustainability.

To take but a single example of people who are living out this Gaian categorical imperative, consider Will Allen, the founder of Growing Power, the urban farm market cooperative in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Living in an urban "food desert," Allen, a lifetime gardener, used the skills he had inherited from his sharecropper parents to buy a few old run-down greenhouses in downtown Milwaukee and convert them into a thriving farm market that has made him nationally famous, and that has enabled him to hire hundreds of local citizens, grow topsoil from compost gathered from area restaurants, and provide fresh, organic produce to citizens while providing both hands-on education and volunteering opportunities for their children and youth, while teaching them, in turn, the skills they need to start their own gardens, and starting up a national network of urban gardeners (including our own Bev Sell in Norfolk.). He is one of thousands of such Gaian visionaries, well below the radar of corporate media, who are out there today, growing gardens, growing communities, growing awareness, and thereby--as the name of his cooperative suggests, "growing power."  With a present like that, who needs a future?

The Three Poisons

In Buddhist philosophy, the “three poisons”—that is, the three underlying causes of all the distress and suffering in the world—are identified as Ignorance, Greed, and Hatred. These are common tendencies within all of us—though with practice, these tendencies can be brought to our awareness, seen for what they are, and let go, leaving space for our innate capacities for benevolence, compassion, joy, and equanimity to flourish.

Ignorance is the root of our problem—but ignorance of what? Above all, it is ignorance of the plain, readily observable fact that, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality… [where] whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” In simpler terms, whatever goes around, comes around—especially on a finite planet!  And this goes not only for our use of resources, but for our concern—or lack thereof—for others.

Greed arises from ignorance—it is simply the toxic belief that we ourselves are more important than others, that more is always better, that there is no such thing as “enough.” Unfortunately, this toxic  ideology is embedded in our economic system, for money is nothing but an arithmetical transform of information about the relative value of commodities—of things that can  be separated from their matrix in order to be bought and sold. And the money system operates according to only two basic rules: (1) more is always better; (2) what is mine is not yours.  On an infinite planet, an unregulated free-market economy would work exactly as those on the right claim that it does—fostering innovation and creativity, rewarding the most talented, and causing a rising tide of affluence that lifts all boats. But on a finite planet like the one we inhabit, where “whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly,” the money game behaves exactly like a monopoly game—wealth and power are concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, until finally one player has everything and the rest—nothing.

When Greed and Ignorance combine, they create Denial—which is willful ignorance, a refusal to acknowledge facts that threaten one’s self-serving ideology.  Denial takes many forms, such as racism—the belief that one “race” is superior to, and therefore entitled to rule over, enslave, exploit, or oppress another “race.”  Another form of rampant denial today is refusal to accept overwhelming scientific evidence that threatens your interests, such as the reality of climate change, or the simple fact, validated by every law of physics and confirmed by irrefutable evidence, that on September 11, 2001, the sudden and catastrophic collapse of the Twin Towers and Building 7 had to be caused by controlled demolition charges planted in advance, not by terrorists hijacking airliners.

The other spawn of ignorance, greed, and denial, of course, is hatred, especially of those who hold the mirror up to our ignorance and greed—like black people who refuse to play the subordinate role to which they are assigned, environmentalists who reveal the horrific biological consequences of my greed, or “lib’ruls” who would take my money away to provide food, health care, and education for the poor and destitute, or even “terrorist sympathizers” who question the ongoing policy of invading and brutalizing the Muslim world (and therefore are unpatriotic because they don’t “support our troops”), or who realize that the official story of 9/11 is arrant, unscientific nonsense.  

Today’s Republican Party, with the  aid of their corporate-funded propaganda machines, Fox News and Clear Channel Radio, has therefore adopted Greed, Ignorance, Hatred, and Denial as their party platform, and is busily sowing these poisons into the minds of ignorant, resentful white people everywhere, spawning the insurgent, neofascist “Tea Party” movement that has hijacked democracy itself in order to enforce its will on the rest of us.

So what can be done about this appalling situation? First—and whenever necessary--breathe, observe, let go, and abide.  As equanimity is restored,  remember that our nation and world order, just like our bodies, are impermanent, and are of the nature to get sick, grow old, and perish—that we will lose everything we cherish sooner or later, including our democracy, our freedoms, our security, the topsoil that grows food we eat, the water we drink, the biodiversity that sustains us, our families and friends,  the beauty that surrounds us—all are impermanent.

By embracing impermanence fearlessly, we embrace and transform our despair and rage, regaining the equanimity, hence the courage, to practice Satyagraha—the  discipline practiced by all the great Gaian Bodhisattvas of our past century—Gandhi, King, Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, Aung San Soo Kyi, Wangari Maathai,  Vandana Shiva, and many, many others. Satyagraha begins, as Gandhi said, with renouncing the fruits of action—doing what needs to be done, without worrying about success or failure; that is, letting go of the illusory future and focusing on the present moment, which is all that ever exists.  Satyagraha consists of three strands of discipline:

1.       Swaraj, or self-rule. This means beginning with ourselves, casting off the ignorance, greed, and hatred in ourselves, and cultivating the health, competence, and resilience of ourselves, our communities, and our planet, through relocalization—growing gardens, growing communities, and progressively withdrawing our money from Glomart  (the corporate order that thrives by promoting Greed and Ignorance) and re-investing it in Gaia (a healthy garden, healthy local economy, and healthy planet).

2.       Satya, or truthfulness. This means the ability to speak truth to power, and do so mindfully, strategically, and relentlessly—calmly and skillfully, without hatred or resentment. This is easier said than done, but when done, it can be immensely effective. It demands a high level of self-discipline, which means constant practice, honestly investigating our own motives before we say anything. All of the great Bodhisattvas have cultivated the patience to master this difficult art of speaking truth to power until power could no longer resist the truth they spoke.

3.       Ahimsa, or resolute nonviolence.  This is the difficult art of resistance without hatred or attachment. Contrary to the opinions of many, nonviolence is not simply a tactic to be abandoned for guns, knives, or rocks when it no longer works.  Rather, it is the foundation for effectively subverting the three poisons—Greed, Ignorance, and Hatred—both in ourselves and others.  In political terms, nonviolent direct action campaigns are always a last resort, after all efforts at negotiation have failed.  And their purpose is to create pressure on those in power so they have no choice but to negotiate. Any other purpose is futile and self-indulgent. To be successful, a nonviolent direct action campaign involves four distinct steps, outlined by Martin Luther King, Jr.: Investigation, Negotiation, Self-Purification, and Direct Action. Investigation establishes both the existence and the nature of the harm being done; Negotiation is the good-faith effort to persuade those in power that it is in their self-interest to right the wrongs that have been revealed by investigation.  Only when negotiation fails do the latter two steps become necessary. Self-purification, through meditation or collective spiritual practice, is an essential prerequisite to leading an effective nonviolent direct action campaign. Without it, rage and frustration can quickly set in, leading to hatred and self-defeating acts of violence or sabotage.  And Direct Action should violate laws only when absolutely necessary, for there are many forms of direct action, such as sit-ins and boycotts, that do not violate any law, but still apply the needed pressure for negotiation.

But above all, Satyagraha direct action campaigns must be disciplined and strategically intelligent in order to be effective, and they must be conducted mindfully, strategically, and relentlessly. However, most of us are not called to such courageous activism, nor do many of us have the courage to speak truth to power—for power can and will bite back when threatened.  Nevertheless, the rest of us can do our part by practicing Swaraj or self-reliance through three simple practices:

·         Good Buy—assuming responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of the money we spend. Seeing money for what it is—a transform of information about the value of commodities—of information about what we actually value. With this knowledge, we start to see the dollars we spend as a vote, and we start “voting”—every day--for locally produced, sustainably grown food, local enterprises that recycle our money into the community in order to create jobs for our friends and neighbors, and sustainably produced, fair-trade merchandise—whenever possible. Remember that a dollar invested in Gaia is a dollar denied to Glomart;  that every time you spend money in a socially and ecologically responsible way, you make it easier and more cost-effective for everyone else to do likewise.

·         Good Work—assuming responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of the money we earn and the work we do.  This is the next step—it is what the Buddhists call “right livelihood”—finding ways to earn a living in ways that regenerate the health, competence, and resilience of our community and the planet. The Benefit Corporation concept, for example, is an excellent approach to this, but Good Work can be any livelihood that involves learning, teaching, healing, or creating a better world. If the work you do does not involve these, and if it merely enriches the super-rich while despoiling the planet, it is a form of slavery to Glomart—and you should emancipate yourself from it as soon as possible, no matter how little or how much you are paid.

·         Good Will—assuming responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of your attitudes toward others—including those you resent or despise.  In Buddhist theory, there are four adaptive attitudes we can cultivate toward everyone, all the time: (1) Benevolence and gratitude; (2) Compassion or caring awareness of suffering; (3) Sympathetic joy, or quite simply, a good sense of humor; and (4) Equanimity, or the ability not to let people or situations “get” to you.  You can practice these at any moment on the four parts of any breath, using the following guided meditation:

o   Inhale (“Breathe”—with benevolence toward all you see and gratitude toward all who have made your present living moment possible);

o   Pause (“Observe”—with compassion and understanding, realizing that all bad behavior originates in inner suffering of some sort, so both perpetrators and victims need your compassion and understanding);

o   Exhale (“Let Go”—with joy and humor, “breathing out” good will toward all around you.)

o   Pause (“Abide” in equanimity—the “peace that passeth all understanding.”)

You can also use these four adaptive attitudes as a repertoire of behavior toward anyone you encounter:

1.       Your default mode is benevolence and gratitude—simply smiling quietly and authentically—without any agenda--toward everyone you encounter.

2.       If the person you see is obviously suffering, do what you can to alleviate it with active compassion—initially, just by listening and acknowledging their humanity, but then by seeing what you can do to help.

3.       If you see someone who is beautiful, happy, overjoyed, or full of fun, smile again, this time participating in their joy and validating it—again without any personal agenda (especially sexual—it is important for men especially to keep a mindful oversight on their own testosterone!).

4.       If someone gets in your face, snarls at you, or otherwise offends you, maintain your dignity and go back to your breath immediately, so you resist the temptation to lash out, and abide in equanimity until you have let go of your hurt or anger, so you can resolve the issue peacefully, if necessary. Don't repress your anger or seethe in resentment; rather, observe it, acknowledge it, and let it go, one breath at a time.

None of these practices are easy—they all require continual reinforcement and scrupulous honesty with ourselves, to prevent self-deception or self-aggrandizement. But our larger agenda—triggering the Spontaneous Remission of the Cancer of the Earth—makes it all worth it, no matter how long it takes.

What does Dharma mean today?

Dharma is a Sanskrit word, derived from the proto-Indo European root *dʰer- which means "to support" or "to hold."  Thus its basic meaning is "that to which we adhere," or "that which supports and upholds us." The term has evolved, throughout Hindu and Buddhist history, to carry a range of connotations (as listed in the Wiktionary from Wikipedia):

1. (Hinduism, Buddhism) the principle that orders the universe; one's conduct in conformity with such a principle
2. (Hinduism) one's obligation in respect to one's position in society
3. (Buddhism) the teachings of the Buddha as one's personal path to enlightenment [quotations ▼]
   • "Dharma practice in the tradition of the Theravada Buddhist masters enabled me to quit smoking and improve my relationships, oh, and by the way, to achieve nirvana."
4. (Buddhism) the teachings of the Buddha as a practice to be promulgated and taught.

For my own practical purposes, then, Dharma comprises these distinct but interrelated meanings for us today:

1. Phenomenon or manifestation (usually used in the plural) as in "all dharmas are empty" (of separate existence)--a core teaching of Buddhism; by this definition, everything we see is a dharma. Or putting it more simply, a dharma is a thing.
2. Calling or Vocation--an individual's Dharma refers to the specific role in life which is ideally suited to that person's temperament, talents, and aspirations. Hence my Dharma is to teach English and Humanities; my wife's Dharma is to paint pictures and create artworks. To cite a useful term from African-American dialect, then, a dharma is your "thang."
3. The Sacred Truth, intuitively perceived--that which every sacred tradition on the planet has in common, understood (as the Dalai Lama has said) as a Principle, a Precept, and a Practice simultaneously. In short, the Dharma is "the thing itself," that which upholds us, that to which we adhere.  Here is my own favorite formulation of Dharma:
• Principle: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." --Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a succinct formulation of the Dharma as the abiding truth of the universe--combining impermanence, interbeing, and Oneness in one choice quote.
• Precept: "Take care of everyone, and abandon no one. Take care of everything, and abandon nothing."--Lao Tzu. This is the core ethical obligation--universal compassion--that follows directly from a clear understanding of the above Principle.
• Practice: "Breathe, Observe, Let Go."--The Buddha. This is the core injunction of Dharma Practice--the essential discipline taught by the Buddha and all other spiritual teachers, for letting go of ego-fixation and awakening to our essential Oneness with all life, all existence.

High Water Everywhere

"It's bad out there...high water everywhere."  --Bob Dylan.

Today, we are in Day Two of Hurricane Sandy, a huge, slow-moving weather system crawling northwards offshore, about to interact with two cold fronts converging from northeast and northwest to create a monster storm, with the Halloween-appropriate nickname "Frankenstorm" by the ever-cute mass media.  It is due shortly to bend westward and slam into the Eastern Seaboard--Delaware, Jersey, New York, and New England, by tonight or tomorrow, complete with high tide storm surges in the full moon--they are predicting 11-foot storm swells washing over Lower Manhattan, possibly even inundating the New York Stock Exchange.  Everyone in the media is calling it "the perfect storm"--the worst possible combination of hurricane, nor'easter, and tidal swells aimed toward the most densely populated part of the country--with power outages, flooding--the works--affecting millions of people all at once.

Here, we are relatively lucky--our lights are still on (for now) and while we've had some local flooding and sporadic power outages, it's nothing like what is in store further to the north. There have been wind gusts, but so far (in our area, and as far as I know) not a lot of damage or fallen trees.  I have spent the storm time grading papers and reading Anthony Burgess's novel A Dead Man in Deptford, a juicy fictional imagining of the life and times of Christopher Marlowe. A symphony (or some orchestral work) by Alexander Borodin just came on the radio.

A massive storm like this, coming a scant week before Election Day, is one more reminder, in case we need it, of how utterly vulnerable we are to the vagaries of wind and weather.  It is also one more indication, should we need it, that rising sea temperatures due to carbon-induced climate change are causing more erratic, turbulent, and violent weather patterns throughout the world. I can only hope, of course, that enough voters see this connection that they might reconsider  Romney, who is, like most Republicans, in total denial about climate change, and would give carte blanche to coal, oil, and gas companies for a feeding frenzy on the planet that would push CO2 levels right up over the tipping point, into a cascade of self-accelerating climate catastrophes that might well spell the end of civilization as we know it, leaving only scattered tribes of survivors, fighting over the remnants. This massive storm could, in effect, be part of our collective karmic debt--Mother Gaia's revenge for our collective greed, ignorance, hatred, denial, and despair.

But whenever I find my thoughts traversing these dark pathways toward immanent, incremental apocalypse, I try to bring myself back to the present moment--breathe, observe, let go--and renew my vow to take care of everyone and everything, and abandon no one and nothing.  To be an agent, that is, of the Spontaneous Remission (if such is to be, as God wills) of the Cancer of the Earth.  And even if that cancer is terminal, to embrace impermanence, interbeing, and oneness, knowing that there is, at the ultimate level, no birth and no death, no time, and that Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form.