Listen to the wisdom of anger

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up

      like a raisin in the sun?

      Or fester like a sore—

      And then run?

      Does it stink like rotten meat?

      Or crust and sugar over—

      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags

      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?

"Harlem" by Langston Hughes

This week, with its dream of justice denied, Ferguson, Missouri, exploded. A grand jury declined to indict a white police who shot and killed a black teenager. Riots started immediately -- buildings burned, police fired tear gas, looters stepped in, the media covered it all, and commentators condemned the rioting, forgetting the spark and the underlying fuel that fed the fires.

It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. Martin Luther King Jr.

What is the sound of an unheard scream of anguish? Violence. A riot demands to be seen, the pain it expresses cannot be ignored.

Anger is an intelligence and an energy. It needs release. Or it explodes.

What if there was another way to be heard? What if there was space for that energy to flow without being met by a countering aggression?

What if, during the six or seven hours between when the grand jury said it had made a decision and the announcement of that decision, President Obama had flown to Ferguson and promised to stay there until everyone was heard? If he sat behind a table and invited people to line up and speak -- and he would listen -- sharing their emotions but focusing of how the process could change to include them? If he called the Secretary of State back from wherever in the world she was and brought in VP Joe Biden and the attorney general or a top representative? If he convinced CNN to carry every minute of it live until everyone had their say?

What if we made space for the anger, acknowledged it, and respected it instead of trying to repress it and shame those who feel it? Could we then find the wisdom?

In Tibetan Buddhism, there are masculine and feminine aspects, both of which must be present in all genders for their to be balance. The feminine aspect is space, and the masculine is action. For centuries, the world has been dominated by the masculine -- an action demands an immediate reaction -- and space, which allows for other possibilities, has been closed off. That needs to change.

In the Tibetan Buddhist system of wisdom energies, anger and clarity arise together. If we get stuck in the anger, we can't see clearly what is there and what needs to change, let alone how it can be changed.

The wisdom energies are arranged in a mandala -- the Tibetan word, khilkor, is more descriptive. It means center and swirl, and it presents a way of understanding how energies move or get stuck.

At the center is the Buddha family, whose wisdom aspect simply allows things to arise, without filters; the confused aspect is ignorance or ignoring or suppressing. In the east is the Vajra family of clarity and anger. To the south is Ratna, equanimity -- respect for all things equally -- or pride, valuing one thing above others. To the west is Padma, which is desire for a particular outcome or thing in its confusion but is discriminating awareness in wisdom; Padma sees the best option. And Karma, in the north, is all-accomplishing action, carrying out the option Padma sees. Or its envy of those who have it with no movement to accomplish it.

If the energy swirls through, a new state arises and the process begins again.

I imagine that enlightened people move through that at lightning speed. The rest of us get stuck. This can be a useful way of seeing where -- and what's needed to get the energy moving. Stuck in anger -- what is it pointing to, what is the clarity? Stuck in envy? Look with discriminating awareness at what you want.

The first step, though, is to listen -- personally and as a society. Where are we stuck? What can we do to move to the next step? Then do it.

That is for you

One of my first encounters with Tibetan Buddhism was a weekend program with a lovely lama from Ohio. She was wise and funny and relatable. It was spring, and she brought in a chocolate Easter bunny to put on the shrine. I liked the idea of the chocolate bunny up there -- the gold foil made it fit in -- but I wasn't so sure about some of the other items. Relics? Really? The Buddha's fingernails or some such thing? C'mon.

I left the dharma center with a 10-page handout on how to set up an altar, what to put on each of the many levels and so on. It seemed overwhelming and suspiciously similar to Roman Catholicism, the altar and the gold and the relics and all that. As a former Catholic, I preferred the simplicity of Japanese Zen settings.

In another moment that tickled the dusty back realms of my brain, she recommended a practice of offering everything to the buddhas and bodhisattvas -- the beautiful day, the new grass, the chocolate bunny.

It was an interesting practice of noticing things to offer up, finding beauty in the world, but who was offering and what was the offered and who was it being offered to? How was this different from giving all glory to God because I was unworthy of it?

On the surface, not much. But, oh, there is so much below the surface. There is no offerer or offering or offered to. Nothing is permanent, you can't hold onto it, and you can't really give it away.

But you can let it go.

This probably was explained to me by the lama from Ohio, but I couldn't comprehend it at the time. When you give away the day, the light, the fluorescent orange maple leaves to the buddhas and bodhisattvas, you're relaxing your grasping mind, the one that wants to preserve the leaves, hang onto the day, save time in a bottle. You're seeing the impermanent, transitory nature of things, accepting that the satisfaction things bring is fleeting. And that you don't exist just as the buddhas and bodhisattvas don't exist -- but you do exist just as they do.

The deities in Buddhism are not separate from you; they are you. All beings have the same inherent, clear, compassionate nature -- buddhanature. In our human form, though, that's covered up by our humanity: Our fears, foibles, and judgments.

When you offer something to the buddhas, you're offering to your self and all beings rather than holding it in your grasp. 

“Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.”
-- Miranda July, No One Belongs Here More than You

Limping toward nirvana

I've been thinking about writing something about the IDP's Year-Long Immersion and Instructor Training  program since early December, when the early application deadline was approaching, but I wasn't sure what I could say. I was a graduate of the first iteration of the program, in 2011. (Originally, it was called the Buddhist Teacher/ Meditation Facilitator Training; my inner 12-year-old delighted in the idea of being a certified MF, but the name changed quietly during the year.)

I did not enter the program expecting to become a teacher. I was looking for a way to deepen my study of Buddhism, and this program appealed to me for a lot of reasons.

2011 was a transformative year. The IDP training was part of that, but I also did a two-week retreat with Lance Brunner, a fabulously kind and creative teacher; was a head oryoki server during that program, and did several weekend retreats in the Shambhala Sacred Path program. All of those things worked with other things, the warp and the woof of life and study.

Now I lead meditation and Buddhist groups. I don't really look at it as teaching -- I see it as sharing information that I've learned from studying and inviting people to explore how that works in their lives. Maybe that's possible because my groups are small. I don't live in New York, and to study and practice with people on a regular basis is difficult. Leading these groups gives me a chance to develop live sangha.

The Buddha said that you are your own best teacher. He told his followers not to take anything he said on faith but to try it for themselves and see if it was useful on the path toward the transformation of suffering.

And that's what the IDP program does -- help you find ways to teach the dharma, to yourself or others; in a class setting or through art, music, dance, blogging, or simply being at peace with yourself in a chaotic world.

Stephen Schettini is a former Catholic and Buddhist monk whose post on religion and righteousness on his blog, The Naked Monk, question life's big answers; expose yourself to doubt, caught my interest, partly because of this discussion on the IDP blog about the teacher training program

Schettini writes:

In Tibetan Buddhism, one’s teacher never gets angry or befuddled. Rather, he ‘manifests wrath,’ meaning that he puts on a show of anger because you need shock treatment, or silence because you’re unable to process the truth. You cannot be part of the community and question his motives. ‘The Path’ is itself code for steering clear of creative acts of discovery. When I eventually acted on the realization that I should find my own way or lose all self-respect, my connection to the community was severed. I was still there; I hadn’t yet even disrobed, but I was excluded from the circle of trust.

Buddhism, he says, was no different from the Catholic church is shutting down questions or challenges to its dogma.

Eventually, he writes, he went outside the organizations and back to study the lives of Jesus Christ and the Buddha. What he found were inspirational examples.

Buddhism was a crutch when I was psychically lame. The tools and the community healed me sufficiently that when the time came I was able to leap from my ivory tower and go on my way. Luckily, I landed on my feet. To ascribe it to destiny or karma is to retreat, pretending I have an explanation when all I have is a code word.

That's his story. It makes valid points, as does the IDP blog post. The Buddha -- who was reluctant to teach in the first place -- didn't set out to create Buddhism. I think he'd endorse using the path he laid out to find your own wisdom. But the path requires you to keep checking in, to see if your wisdom comes from your buddhanature or from dogma, and that's the value of it.

You will get something all your own out of the training. Intrigued? The application deadline is Tuesday, Jan. 15.

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