All beings tremble

All beings tremble before violence.
All fear death.
All love life.
See yourself in others.
Then whom can you hurt?
What harm can you do?

-The Dhammapada

Suffering arises when we see our selves as separate -- from the initial moment when our consciousness is aware of itself and mistakenly thinks that means it is separate from the ground of being rather than the truth, that it is an expression of the ground. Suffering is intensified when we solidify our selves and see them as separate from other selves, when we see others as a threat, when we think -- not that they love life and fear death, just like us -- that they want to harm us. We become guarded and defensive, maybe aggressive because we think it's better to avoid the threat by eliminating what we think is the source than to wait and see if the perceived threat is real.

Suffering is reduced when we see our interdependence, recognizing that we all have the same nature -- which is the same nature of the ground of being.

When I hear the words of the families of those killed at Emanuel American Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, spoken to Dylann Roof, the man who murdered them, I hear the grace that comes from that recognition. Speaking in court, while Roof was held in jail and listened over a video feed, they offered forgiveness.

"I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you," a daughter of Ethel Lance said. "And have mercy on your soul. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people but God forgives you, and I forgive you."

I hear sadness and pain, but not anger and righteous, not defensiveness and isolation. We are all one in God, the families of those murdered at a prayer service said, and God, not us, will judge you.

Not like Dylann Roof judged them. Judgment creates separation, isolation, suffering. It closes us down. Interdependence opens us up, lets us witness the separation and take action to overcome it.

Good and evil exist on the same plane, and operate by the same calculus. Evil is good covered over. Wherever we ourselves, in our confusion and in our unwillingness to look at life as it actually is, with all its pain and difficulty, commit acts of evil, we add to the covering. And whenever we have the courage and the calmness to be with life as it is, and therefore, inevitably, to do good, then we remove the cover. We transform evil into good. This is the human capacity. Evil is not a part of reality that can be excised, cast out and overcome. Evil is a constant part of our world because there is only one world, there is only one life, and all of us share in it.  

Norman FIscher, writing after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon

#IamAllBeings

It would feel dishonest not to write about the events of the past week since that's what's been on my mind and in my practice. But it's very raw and fresh and confusing, and there's already been so much written in an attempt to make sense or explain or understand.

In a week like this past one -- 20 people dead after terrorists attacked a satirical newspaper and a kosher market around Paris; "innumerable" people killed by Boko Haram in Nigeria; an NAACP office bombed in Colorado -- it's easy to fall into dualistic thinking, to see "us" threatened by "them." To feel that safety requires retaliation or revenge. To make those who created such suffering suffer themselves.

That only increases the general level of suffering in the world -- and in your mind.

Wishing misfortune on someone does not cause that misfortune to happen. Instead, because the yearning for another person's suffering is itself an unwholesome mental action, it immediately places unwholesome imprints upon our own mind and guarantees our own future suffering if those imprints are not purified.
-B. Alan Wallace

In the wake of the horrific massacre at Charlie Hebdo -- imagine sitting in your office and having people with automatic weapons come in and start shooting -- people starting using the phrase #jesuischarlie (I am Charlie) in a show of support and identification with the victims, an expression of sympathy and outrage, an acknowledgement of shared humanity. But some people didn't want to align with the newspaper, which published satire bordering on hate speech.


Even a social media expression of solidarity quickly became divisive.

Now there are hashtags supporting a Muslim police officer who was killed at the office and a Muslim grocery store employee who saved hostages there. It's a reminder, probably wise, not to condemn all Muslims because some are extremists. We tend to need reminders that the lines we draw should be dotted ones, not walls, to allow us to see the humanity among those we fear.

The best thing I read had nothing to do with this situation but with last month's crisis: Ebola.Ashokha Mukpo, an American contracted Ebola in Liberia and recovered in the US, talked at length about his experience -- including the fact that Ebola has largely dropped off the Western radar as it's now largely an African problem. Go read the whole thing at the link.

Sometimes, Buddhists have a tendency to fall into this trap where they think that personal development is the number one priority. Then they tend to sometimes forget about the need to be aware socially and aware of the impact of their lives, and to see what they can do to help, financially or professionally, to alleviate suffering.

For me, the central guiding principle of Buddhism is compassion and concern for the world in which we live. It's the idea of interdependence—that our actions dictate the experience of others. I don't think everybody needs to run out and join an aid organization and everyone should feel bad that they're not doing more for people in need. But I would like to see Buddhists have a braver relationship to engaging with the world—and also, potentially, a smarter one. We're trained to develop our intellect and develop our wisdom, and it's not worth very much unless you put it into practice.

It's sometimes very easy to feel disempowered, but what we can do is educate ourselves as much as possible about what's happening in faraway places so that we get a sense of our own position and our own role in the world, and our own privilege. Beyond that, it's important to really think hard about which charities you support and why.

Outside of that, maybe the best we can all do is try to live good, decent lives and be kind to people around us, be aware of the gifts that we have and the blessings that we have, and understand that not everybody has those. And listen for solutions. Don't get caught up in apathy and resentment about how difficult the situation is for our country and for our world right now.

Don't let the confusion cause you to check out or grab from some solid intellectual ground that you can defend against all others.  Be kind, be aware, be open.

 

The World in a Cookie

This has been a week of intense cookie-baking, which equates to infinite opportunities to see the dharma in action.

As the poet Thich Nhat Hahn sees the sky in a piece of paper, the baker sees the world in a cookie -- here are the people who grew the things that went into the Earth Balance vegan butter and those who came up with the perfect blend of gluten-free flour in Pamela's Artisanal flour mix. Here is the extraordinary interdependence of science and ancient grains and my grandmother's cookie cutters, all in one extraordinary bite.

It's a story of ritual and lineage, of  causes and conditions, of interdependence and impermanence, fame and ill repute.

Cookies.

You can practice mindfulness while brushing your teeth, Thich Nhat Hahn says. You can experience the truth of the whole of the buddhadharma while baking cookies: the suffering that rises when you are attached to the idea that things will happen a certain way and that the cookies will look like the picture in the cookbook; the attachment to a self that earns praise or blame for the results; impermanence -- the whole point of all the effort that goes into making cookies is that they will disappear. The paramitas are there: Generosity, proper conduct (I choose to use vegan ingredients), patience, exertion, concentration.

Buddhism isn't about how long you sit on a cushion or how many mantras you say, it's about how you walk in the world -- or do the dishes or make cookies or answer the phone. And that, to me, is the beauty of it. Don't believe anything just because a teacher -- even the Buddha -- said it. Test it.

There are lots of books that show how cooking illuminates the dharma -- Edward Espe Brown's cookbooks (they come with commentary) or Roshi Bernie Glassman's Instructions to the Cook are some of my favorites. This is from The Chocolate Cake Sutra by Geri Larkin.

A melt-in-your-mouth chocolate cake is the perfect metaphor for where we can land if we introduce the correct ingredients into our lives. When the ingredients merge and melt together, we become spiritual warriors, able to take the slings and arrows of planet life in stride, with grace and a grin.

Environmentalism is the act of a bodhisattva

"Preserving the biodiversity and the ecosystems of our region should be like the effortless practice of dharma for us. Our basic motivation to protect the environment should come from the pure desire to benefit all sentient beings on earth since without the environment, there can be no life."
-His Holiness the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa

 Ecospirituality is grounded in the principle of interconnectedness of all spiritual traditions, of all beings, and the interdependence of all life on Earth with the planet itself. Spiritual leadership is increasingly understood as being synonymous with environmental leadership.

Buddhist leaders, in concert with leaders across a broad spectrum of other faith traditions, are challenging their community members to fully engage with the reality of climate change, fossil fuel dependency, and the suffering that results. There is a growing recognition among faith and spiritual communities that their core teachings on extending compassion apply to actively safeguarding the endangered planet that we share. Further, faith leaders are recognizing the need to prepare themselves for the inevitability that people will turn to them for guidance as climate shifts accelerate the rate of change in their lifestyles.

The wonder of it all

Science and magic go for a walk in the woods on a perfect New England day. The air is crisp and clean. The sky is immeasurably blue, and the air is clear. Everything is high res.Here is their conversation.

Magic: Look at the rocks.

Science: There's a tree growing out of the rock. I wonder how that could be.

***

Science: I wonder why that canal is there. Who built it? Why?

Magic: Look at the moss.

***

Magic: Oooo ... a perfect fairy ring! (walking into a circle of tall trees whose trunks are spaced just far enough apart that she can spin around with her arms outstretched).

Science stands and watches.

***

They walk down what appears to be another main path, to see where it begins.

Science spots the tree growing out of the rock.

Science: We've only gone about a quarter-mile out of our way.

Magic: We don't have a way. We haven't gone out of it because there isn't one.

***

Science: I wonder how old this (reservoir) is? I wonder who built it? I wonder where it is on the map? I wonder ...
Magic (impatiently): Don't wonder why or how. Just be here.

***
This is a semi-real conversation between my spouse, a computer scientist, and me. He wonders what and why and how things came to be. I wonder that they are. He wonders what the bird is looking for. I watch it fly.We share our wonder as we walk through the woods. I point out tree stumps, sparkling water, colors. He remembers that we need to turn left to get back to the path to our car.

Science and magic aren't enemies, aren't opposites. They live symbiotically, interdependently, in a state of wonder.