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The Jizo Chronicles Switchboard

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Maia Duerr
Telephone operators, 1952

Flickr Creative Commons / Seattle Municipal Archives

I used to work on a switchboard like this in my college dorm, connecting calls with student rooms. This post is kind of like that… relaying announcements and messages that I’ve gotten via this blog recently:

  • From Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi: “Please make it a point to come to Washington DC on October 6th. This is our chance to change the direction of this country, and thus the world. Especially our Buddhists: Exclusive ‘inner peace’ is no solution for a world burning with the fires of greed, violence, exploitation, poverty, and injustice. Put your peace and compassion into action and help uplift those who weep with misery and despair.”
  • From Jennifer of Nyingma Trust: “I am a volunteer for Tibetan Aid Project and Nyingma Trust in Berkeley, CA. Buddha’s Englightenment (Saga Dawa Duchen) on June 15th is coming up, and I’m trying to get the word out there for folks to send in prayer requests. All energy and intentions are magnified 10 million times during the Tibetan Saga Dawa, and we want to help others by praying for their intentions and needs. See:  http://nyingmatrust.org/NyingmaTrustWalks/trustWalk.html“
  • P. Delaney of Dublin, Ireland, reports that Buddhist scholar and author Ken Jones will be featured at an event titled “What has Buddhism got to offer in relation to the global crisis of capital?” on June 24, as well as leading a workshop titled “Transforming self – transforming society” on June 25, both in Dublin. See the Calendar for more details.
  • Paul of Joplin, MO, left a comment on this post about ways to help in the aftermath of the tornado that hit that part of the U.S. last month. He writes: “I am a resident of Joplin. It would be great to talk with other Buddhists in the area but this is more bible country. Any suggestions? Anyone know of any Buddhist groups which may be in the area?” If you want to connect with Paul, leave a comment below and I’ll point him in your direction.

And finally, I am deeply grateful to everyone who responded to my last post, a letter inviting support for The Jizo Chronicles. I am very moved by your generosity, and I look forward to making a donation of 10% of those proceeds to the Cambodia AIDS Project, a very very worthy cause.

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Bodhisattvas in the Trenches

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Maia Duerr

In honor of Vesak Day (the day that commemorates the Buddha’s birth), I thought I’d share the stories of three “bodhisattvas in the trenches” who are doing good work around the world. A deep bow to all of them for the dedication and their practice, in the service of liberating all beings.

Beth Goldring is an American Zen nun who founded Brahmavihara/Cambodia AIDS Project in 2000.  Beth works closely with her Cambodian staff to ensure that AIDS patients with little to no resources are able to have access medical and pastoral care.

The Project has made a tremendous difference to many people, serving a caseload of about 400 patients. They’ve provided transportation, food, financial support, and have even built houses and repaired water systems.

Even with all that, though, as Beth writes, “the essential point of our work is chaplaincy: helping people realize that the Buddha’s compassion is already fully present, even and especially in the midst of their suffering.” The team visits the sick, offers ceremonies for the dead and dying, and also provide massage, Reiki and healing touch.

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Katie Loncke is a young woman in the San Francisco Bay Area who is exploring the edge where dharma meets community organizing. She works closely with the Faithful Fools, an interfaith community center addressing poverty and homelessness in San Francisco. And she’s also an active member of the East Bay Solidarity Network, a mutual support network of workers and tenants who use collective direct action to stand up to exploitative bosses and landlords.

Katie brings a radical, feminist, Marxist analysis to the work. In her writing on her blog, shes grapples with tough questions and wonders “…whether and where there is room for compassion within direct actions that make a target uncomfortable — or ‘harm’ them (major scare-quotes) economically.”

Katie goes on to write: “I believe it’s possible to speak and act very forcefully against a perpetrator (I’m experimenting with saying ‘perpetrator,’ rather than ‘enemy,’ to guard against the typically dehumanizing crystallization of enemyism, and to invoke the work of radical anti-sexual-violence communities that seek to transform both behaviors and systems) while still maintaining compassion for them.”

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Sarah Vesaki-Phillips studied closely with Joanna Macy before heading out on her own to support communities in the Appalachians as they struggled with the devastating practice of mountain-top removal by coal mining companies.

Sarah has been pioneering the field of Eco-Chaplaincy (along with members of the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Program that I support) which she describes as “a form of inter-religious and secular ‘spiritual’ support for people engaged in environmental and social justice work to help prevent burn-out and inspire and sustain long-term vision.”

Sarah bases her approach in Joanna’s “The Work That Re-Connects” to support local people in organizing to end mountain-top removal and restore pride in “mountain culture.”

Sarah’s next project is to join a 60-mile march in West Virginia this June, commemorating the 1921 Miner’s March when over 12,000 coal miners converged to recognize the United Mine Workers of America. Sarah writes, “we are marching, again, in the steps of those brave miners to draw national attention to the atrocity of the current conditions for workers and the environment.”

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And finally, a tip of the hat to the Tzu Chi volunteers in the Southeast U.S. After the April 16 tornadoes that touched down in Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, Tzu Chi volunteers prepared breakfast for families still living in the tornado-struck area with nowhere else to go. They distributed blankets, packs of daily necessities, and large bags of food to the local residents. Tzu Chi is a Buddhist-based international humanitarian organization who have been doing good work since 1966.

If you know of other “bodhisattvas in the trenches,” people embodying the vision and purpose of socially engaged Buddhism, I’d love to hear about them to feature in the future.

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If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to visit my other website: The Liberated Life Project — a personal transformation blog with a social conscience.

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Calendar of Engaged Buddhist Events: Updated

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Maia Duerr

Just a quick note to let you know that this morning I added a number of events to the Calendar that I maintain on this site.

Of special note are a few that are happening later this month, including:

  • April 24: Dhamma and Society: Working from the Inside Out in the U.S. and Burma at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California with U Pyinya Zawta, Alan Senauke, and Tempel Smith
  • April 25 – May 12: Path of Freedom webinar training with Sensei Fleet Maull. An online training for those interested in prison dharma work.
  • April 29 – 30: Healing Ecology, A Buddhist Perspective on the Eco-Crisis with David Loy in Olympia, WA.

For more details, see the Calendar.

As always, please let me know if you have any events to add to the calendar. The criteria I use is that the event must in some way apply dharma to an issue of social concern.

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More on Japan: Joanna Macy and Thich Nhat Hanh

Posted on March 20, 2011 by Maia Duerr
ZIZO-BOSATU(KSITIGARBHA Bodhisatva) wood colou...

Jizo Bodhisattva / Image via Wikipedia

This past week, both Joanna Macy and Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh have written some beautiful words in response to the crisis in Japan. Each of them helps us to remember the larger context of this disaster, and of our lives and practice.

First, the letter from Joanna, who is no stranger to the dangers of nuclear power and radiation. In 1992, she spent time with the people  of Novozybkyov, a village about 100 miles from Chernobyl. Joanna and her late husband, Fran Macy, have been dedicated to the cause of nuclear disarmament and guardianship for many years.

Dear Ones,

In this hour of anguish we reach out to our Japanese colleagues and all beings of that noble and stricken land.  As our hearts unite in prayer for them, we experience our own non-separation from the immeasurable suffering inflicted by the successive earthquakes and tsunamis, and by the nuclear catastrophe these have triggered.

Having just begun the last week of my three-month retreat, I break silence to give voice to my solidarity with you all.  By speaking to you, I remind myself of what we can remember in this time of grief and fear.

It helps me to remember what I learned in Novozybkov with survivors of Chernobyl: that is that there are two basic responses to massive collective trauma.  One response is to let it destroy our trust in life and in each other, plummeting us into division, blame and despair.  The other is to let the shared cataclysm strengthen us into greater solidarity, and deepen our knowledge of our mutual belonging in the web of life. Your communications are evidence already of that second response.  Indeed the Work That Reconnects has been preparing us for it.

We remember to breathe.  As we have practiced, we breathe through the reports as we hear and the images of disaster. This helps us simply take in what is happening, and not be blocked by horror or the desire to fix or flee.

We also breathe with those who are caught up in this tragedy, in the intensity of panic, shock, and loss. Feel how this breathing-with helps your heart-mind fearlessly and tenderly embrace them.

You see, if we understand and accept the Great Unraveling, we can let it break us open to greater realizations of our innate solidarity.  That this realization in itself is a kind of “enlightenment” has been brought home to me in my retreat by two great teachers of Japan.

One is the 13th century Zen master Dogen.  He illumines our connections with the ancestors and the future ones, so that we can experience these connections in the immediate present moment.  So does the other figure, the archetypal bodhisattva Ksitigarbha, who is beloved in Japan, where he/she is known as Bodhisattva Jizo, with images .everywhere  Both of them help us realize that we are not alone in this moment of time, but surrounded by past and future generations ready to help.  We who inhabit the present can do what they cannot: that is to make choices and take action/  But the past and future ones are right at our side with support and guidance.

Also, to hold steady and open in this anguished time, try the Spiral of the Work That Reconnects. As I take in the catastrophe in Japan, the Spiral serves to ground my heart-mind, and widen its dimensions.  It brings gratitude for all those at work to bring support and clear reporting.  It helps me honor the heartbreak, to simply open to it and let it reveals our true nature and mutual belonging. It shows me how solidarity can move us forward, and offer us practical, immediate steps to alleviate suffering and enact safe, sustainable, and sane energy policies. An obvious urgency is to stop US Government subsidies and loan guarantees to nuclear industries, including bills that are before Congress now.

As radiation from Fukushima spreads, I know that protection of self and family is on our minds.  I’m asking Anne to append here two kinds of information: about health measures, and some links to breaking news from Japan. See our page dedicated to this issue: http://joannamacy.net/nuclearguardianship/fukushima-dai-ichi-2011.html

Love,
Joanna

And here is the letter from Thich Nhat Hanh:

Dear Friends in Japan,

As we contemplate the great number of people who have died in this tragedy, we may feel very strongly that we ourselves, in some part or manner, also have died.

The pain of one part of humankind is the pain of the whole of humankind. And the human species and the planet Earth are one body. What happens to one part of the body happens to the whole body.

An event such as this reminds us of the impermanent nature of our lives. It helps us remember that what’s most important is to love each other, to be there for each other, and to treasure each moment we have that we are alive. This is the best that we can do for those who have died: we can live in such a way that they continue, beautifully, in us.

Here in France and at our practice centers all over the world, our bothers and sisters will continue to chant for you, sending you the energy of peace, healing and protection. Our prayers are with you.

Thich Nhat Hanh

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If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to visit my other website: The Liberated Life Project — a personal transformation blog with a social conscience.

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Great, Big, Crazy Love — Bodhisattvas Abound!

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Maia Duerr

2011 Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Graduates (photo by Lynette Monteiro)

I’m in the midst of an intensive training time for Upaya Zen Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Program, so I’ve been absent from the blogging world for a while.

This past Sunday, we graduated 18 inspiring people who are re-defining what it means to be a chaplain. I’m so proud to be involved in the program and a witness to each of their journeys. One of those graduates is Penny Alsop, who has created a beautiful website called Great Big Crazy Love. As Penny writes,

Great Big Crazy Love is the virtual manifestation of bearing witness to the joys and sufferings of our world. Born of the inspiration of an improbable Buddhist chaplain trained at the Upaya Zen Center, trips to the Gulf of Mexico in response to the explosion of the Deep Water Horizon rig, visits to prisons and the desire to help fund spiritual first-response efforts, she drew the circle wide enough for everyone’s story.

I invite you to enjoy Penny’s Great Big Crazy Love to see and hear more of the stories of these people that I am proud to call my friends and colleagues. And go out there and create some of your own great, big, crazy love!

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If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to visit my other website: The Liberated Life Project — a personal transformation blog with a social conscience.

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The Buddha and the Budget — Continued!

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Maia Duerr
Mediation Bridge

Photo: Mark Riechers / Flickr Creative Commons

Something amazing is happening in Wisconsin. If you’ve been following the news, you’ll know that for the past two weeks, tens of thousands of protesters have been gathering in and around the Statehouse in Madison, expressing to Gov. Walker their passionate support for public employee unions and the right to collective bargaining.

From everything I can see, it’s been a nonviolent movement — which I believe is what lends it power and credibility. And over the last few days, I’ve gotten some indication that at least some of the folks there are using mindfulness practice to ground their actions.

This morning, Sharon Salzberg tweeted this photo from the New York Times, and the photo above is one that I pulled off of Flickr (it was taken on February 22).

One of the students in the Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Program, which I direct along with Roshi Joan Halifax, lives in Madison and sent the following a couple email of days ago:

We are truly at ground zero in this struggle for union rights and fairness in balancing the budget.  Susan and I just returned from the state capitol where we walked, chanted, laughed, and braved the snowfall with about 200,000 of our closest friends!  It is really inspiring to see so many people from every walk of life, and every age from babies to elders so unified in their intention.  There is definitely a war going on here, created by the union-bashing tactics of our newly elected Republican governor.  And at a deeper level there is a great feeling of unanimity, nonviolence, goodwill, and hope that is truly inspiring.  I believe we take one step backwards for every two steps forward.  Both are in clear evidence in Wisconsin, and in many other capital cities across America today.

As an antiwar and civil rights activist in the 60’s I organized and attended many rallies and marches.  We were young, and mainly without elders for guidance, so we often acted unskillfully.  Today it is very different.  Young activists have elders for guidance and stability.  The protesters enjoy a broad range of support.  We are nonviolent, committed, and having a good time, even with the stakes so high.  And our actions are informed by ethical principles and spiritual practices which act as beacons as we move into the confusion and darkness of backlash and regression.  This struggle will be a long and difficult one.  Thank you again for your support.

People often question what is “Buddhist” about socially engaged Buddhism. I think this is a wonderful case study in what it looks like. In a way, it’s almost irrelevant what political position, if any, these people hold on the budget issue and on unions. I’d like to think that their peaceful presence at the Wisconsin capitol is contributing to some kind of sanity in the atmosphere there, in what could easily become a volatile situation. I am grateful that they are holding a space of nonviolence and equanimity in the midst of everything.

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Looking Back at the Year in Socially Engaged Buddhism

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Maia Duerr

Buddhist monks praying for peace in Thailand, May 2010

This is the full first year that The Jizo Chronicles has been up and running, so it’s a good time to look back at what’s been going on in the world of socially engaged Buddhism in 2010. (To get an idea of what’s ahead for 2011, look at the Calendar of Events that we maintain here.)

It’s been quite a year, actually.

  • This was the year we lost Robert Aitken Roshi, fierce and dear Zen teacher, founder of the Diamond Sangha, and co-founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.
  • Mindfulness and meditation continue to find applications in all kinds of interesting realms, from technology (like the first-ever Wisdom 2.0 conference) and education. 84,000 dharma doors indeed.

In my own life, I continue to be blessed with being in such a close relationship with Roshi Joan Halifax and Upaya Zen Center, and Upaya’s chaplaincy program. I don’t have to go more than a few dozen steps from my front door to be able to sit in the beautiful zendo there, and to hear teachings from  Joanna Macy, Fleet Maull, Ouyporn Khuankaew, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Sharon Salzberg, Kaz Tanahashi, Norman Fischer, and Father John Dear (all visited Upaya this past year). I’ve also appreciated my long-distance dharma relationship with Shosan Victoria Austin of the San Francisco Zen Center and the sangha there.

My practice continues to deepen and I am ever more aware of the subtle power of the dharma to transform suffering into joy. As the old year comes to a close and the new one begins, I wish you and your loved ones great peace, great equanimity, and great compassion.

I’m sure I missed a lot in the above recounting. Please let me know your experience and memories of engaged dharma practice this past year… leave a comment below.

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If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to visit my other website: The Liberated Life Project — a personal transformation blog with a social conscience.

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Video: Aung San Suu Kyi: At the Crossroads

Posted on December 23, 2010 by Maia Duerr

Okay, this looks like a real gem. Coming from Al Jazeera in partnership with the Democractic Voice of Burma, here is a roundtable with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The dialogue includes [text from Al Jazeera]:

  • Maung Zarni, a Burmese dissident and an academic research fellow at the London School of Economics. His first-hand knowledge of Burma allows him to share his insights of armed conflicts, resistance, and the Burmese military.
  • Mary Kaldor is professor and co-director of Gobal Governance. She has written extensively on global civil society, how ordinary people organise to change the way their countries and global institutions are run.
  • Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political commentator and regular colomnist for the UK newspaper The Guardian. He is professor of European studies at Oxford University. His main interest is civil resistance and the role of Europe and the old West in an increasingly western world. In 2000, Aung San Suu Kyi invited Professor Garton Ash to Burma to speak to members of her party, the National League for Democracy, about transitions to democracies.

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If you enjoyed this post, I invite you to visit my other website: The Liberated Life Project — a personal transformation blog with a social conscience.

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