Category Archives: Ruminations…

I just want to take a moment to thank my readers who responded to the Jizo Chronicles donation letter from the beginning of this month. I am very moved by your generosity, and am so deeply grateful for your support of the vision of this blog.

As things currently stand, I’ll be making a $30 contribution to the Cambodia AIDS Project, as promised. My plan is to contribute 10% of the total donations received by June 30 to this wonderful organization — so you still have a few days if you’d like to contribute to this effort. The donation button is included below, and thank you again!

~Maia

"Walking the Kora" by epidemiks (Flickr Creative Commons)

You might remember that back in April I wrote a post on the 3 Things That Really Bother Me (about myself). In that post, I shared three behaviors I engage in that are out of alignment with my professed values as a human being and socially engaged Buddhist:

1) I pay taxes.

2) I drive a car.

3) Many of my purchases support huge corporations rather than people right in my community.

And I vowed to make some changes.

Read the rest of this entry →

Alms Bowl/image from Wikipedia

Dear readers of The Jizo Chronicles,

As spring turns into summer (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere), I want to thank you for your ongoing support. I’m grateful for the chance to connect with so many of you via this medium. There are many people doing bodhisattva work in the world, offering their practice and compassionate action to help alleviate suffering, and I am honored to feature some of their stories here.

I created The Jizo Chronicles a year and a half ago and continue to maintain it and the features here, such as the Calendar of Events, as a labor of love. This site is freely offered as a contribution to the socially engaged Buddhist community (and really to everyone who cares about people, the planet, and mindful/heartfelt social change) and I deeply appreciate your readership.

If you value the content on this blog and the effort I put into it, I’d be grateful if you would consider making a donation. This is the first time I’ve ever asked this, but there are a few expenses involved in maintaining a blog as well as the time that I invest in research and writing, and your support would help.

By making an offering, you have an opportunity to practice the paramita of dana and you get to support a sincere dharma practitioner, particularly as I focus on a student loan debt that I’d like to pay off before I reach 60! (Not an exaggeration–I’m 49 years old and have devoted my life to working in nonprofits, so it’s taking a long time to pay that loan off!)

In the spirit of paying it forward, for the month of June I will give 10% of whatever donations I receive to the good work of the Cambodia AIDS Project.

Here’s the virtual alms bowl, should you feel so inspired. And of course it’s fine if you don’t make a donation at this time… I am grateful to have each and every one of you as readers!

With much gratitude,

Maia

maia.duerr [at] gmail [dot] com

The biggest news, by far, over the last day is the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Susan Piver, a Shambhala meditation teacher and author of Wisdom of a Broken Heart, wrote a very eloquent post today here: http://www.susanpiver.com/wordpress/2011/05/02/osama-bin-laden-is-dead-one-buddhists-response/ .

She invites us to look at our own reaction to the situation:

Was there even a hint of vengefulness or gladness at Osama bin Laden’s death? If so, that is a real problem. Whatever suffering he may have experienced cannot reverse even one moment of the suffering he caused. If you believe his death is a form of compensation, you are deluded.

Susan considers her own response, and writes:

rather than cheering on this day, I’m going to rededicate myself to the idea of brotherhood towards all, even those that want me dead—and not because I’m some kind of really good person. I’m not. Because I know it’s the only way to stay alive—in the only kind of world I want to inhabit.

I noticed that my own first thoughts about bin Laden’s death and watching reactions to it are informed not by Buddhism but by my root religion, Catholicism. Which is strange to me, because I rarely “think like a Catholic” any more. After getting pretty disillusioned with Catholicism in my 20s, I never really looked back. But I guess twelve years of Catholic school instilled some pretty deep values in me.

Because my first thought was: Wow, we are still stuck in an Old Testament view of justice: an eye for an eye. More than 2000 years later, we still haven’t grocked what Jesus was teaching. Hmmmm. We are slow learners.

So I went to look it up. Here’s the original teaching, from Matthew 5.38-48:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ ³⁹But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; ⁴⁰and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; ⁴¹and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. ⁴²Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

⁴³“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ ⁴⁴But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. ⁴⁶For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

A deep bow to you, Jesus.

Okay, this is your chance to chat with me and the co-author of this blog, Lucy.

VYou is an interesting new beta site where you get to ask someone a question and then watch their recorded answer. My friend Roshi Joan Halifax turned me on to it; you can ask her questions here.

So I thought I’d give it a spin… feel free to click on my VYou page and ask me anything about my thoughts on engaged Buddhism, or anything at all. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll just have Lucy respond for me.

Yep, three things that really bother me… about myself.

This post has been brewing for a while. Over my years of being more involved in social issues and engaged Buddhism, I’ve become aware of three behaviors that I engage in that really drive me nuts about myself and have me feeling like a hypocrite. In fact, I am a hypocrite because of these things.

Right, I know we should have compassion for ourselves, and I do. Really, I do. When I say this to you, it’s not because I’m being overly hard on myself. It’s because I’m trying to be honest with myself and aspire to something better. (Which I realize is not exactly a Zen perspective, although Suzuki Roshi did once say something like, “You are perfect just as you are, and you can also use a little improvement.)

So here they are:

1. I pay taxes. All of them.

Somewhere between 20% and 54% of our federal income tax goes to support military expenses, depending on who you believe and how it’s counted. See these pie charts from the War Resisters’ League.

It’s been said that if you pay tax, you’re paying for war. Let’s face it, my dollars are going to support a military-industrial complex that I do not agree with. It’s not the people who are in the military that I am against, but it is the deeply ingrained assumption that we need to resolve conflicts with massive amounts of arms that create massive devastation. My tax dollars are helping to fuel that behavior.

And yet, I still pay my taxes.

2. I drive a car.

Those of you who know me know that I can go on a big rant about the harm caused by automobiles and other gas-powered vehicles.

This kind of automotive use has led to:

• a depletion of non-renewable energy sources, and therefore to our military presence and aggressive intervention in the Middle East to “protect our interests;”
• air and noise pollution;
• miles of precious earth paved over with asphalt;
• loss of life (37.5% of accidental deaths in the U.S. are attributed to motor vehicle accidents);
• and more (like I said, I can go on and on, but I’ll spare you here)

For two years, from 2002 – 2004, I did live without a car, quite happily, in Northampton, MA. I bought a car when I moved back to California, and I have that same car here in Santa Fe, NM. I drive it pretty much every day, often for trips I don’t really need to be taking.

3. Many of my purchases support huge corporations rather than people right in my community.

Sure, I try to shop local as much as I can, but the truth is I can get pretty mindless about my consumption. I’ll head to Target if I’m feeling lazy and don’t want to spend the time trying to find what I need at a locally-owned store, or searching through Craigslist. I usually buy from Amazon rather than a local bookstore. And even this website links to an Amazon page.

And yet… change is always possible. Sometimes we have to start small.

One of the wonderful things about blogging is that you become accountable in a very public way. So I want to use that public accountability to make three promises to myself. And I’ll check in with you about them in six months, October 2011.

1) As a first small step to exploring tax resistance, I’m going to stop paying the federal excise tax on my phone bill.

2) I promise myself to give myself one car-free day each week.

3) By October, I will change the Jizo Chronicles online bookstore from Amazon to BetterWorld Books, a company that donates millions of dollars to support literacy initiatives around the world and is committed to recycling books and other materials.

Keep an eye on me and hold me to my word.

How about you — what’s on your “this is really bothering me” list?

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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.