Taking Action

An activist is someone who takes action. The intention behind the action is to raise awareness, and to effect change.

Is it possible that a truly effective activist would be someone who takes action while at the same time challenging their own limiting habits, expectations, judgments, and fears? Could we not learn to free ourselves from rigid political views and expectations; so they we are not limited by notions of right and wrong? Rather, is it possible to be driven by a deeper (let’s say, innate) human integrity and capacity for compassionate action?

What I want to suggest is that our ongoing commitment to transform the world and our ongoing commitment to transform ourselves is, in reality, part of a single process. We can’t do either one effectively without the other. And there’s no more effective way of free ourselves than by letting go of rigidity, political correctness., competition. What are the alternatives? – clarity, openness, a systems-view and the corresponding ability to act both collaboratively and with individual authority.

A key word here is Leadership. Which is precisely the theme of our week-long Sanctuary Training for activists at Manzanita Village in July, facilitated by Michele Benzamin-Miki and myself Caitriona Reed.
You can learn more at Sanctuary Training

Photo of Arundhati Roy from The Hindu May 18

What We Do at Manzanita Village

Engaged Buddhism is an oxymoron. Buddhism is engaged by nature, and so is life. What, after all, is disengagement? It is machinery that no longer works, negotiations that have broken down, relationships that are over, mental illness . . . Disengagement, at it’s very best, can be no better than indifference or disassociation.

We use the term “Engaged’ to make a point. The point being, that we are made whole through the world rather than by imagining the world to be tainted or broken and withdrawing from it – whether through spiritual practice, hedonism, or even activism.

Understanding the interconnectedness of all things, and cultivating that understanding, inevitably leads to a particular world view. As we cultivate that view, it becomes stronger; not like a conviction we hold, rather as a predisposition to trace new connections, and to revise our old views and opinions. It expresses itself as a willingness to grow, and learn, and change.

Compassion is energized by the recognition that we are more effective when we neither to blame imagined oppressors, nor try to 'save' apparent victims, nor even to change the circumstances that we perceive to be causing suffering.

Something more. . .

That level of understanding is scary. We must let go of ‘them’ and ‘us’, and look for solutions rather than drama. We can no longer be nourished by unhealthy relationships. We stand on our own feet. We are no longer just looking for a way to get by.

In short, we are engaged. . .
like a warrior preparing for the unknown, or a poet alert for the next flickering turn of sensibility, meaning, and sound.

Watercolor by Michele Benzamin-Miki

Story: Brighton Bookshop

This past weekend my good friend Susan Moon led a Writing Retreat at Manzanita Village. It's amazing how exquisitely skilled she is at bringing out the writer in everyone. Everyone's work was astonishing. And we all went home with a dozen or more short pieces we had written. Sue will be doing her Writing Workshop here in April of next year. Check out manzanitavillage.org
for dates.

Here's one of my own short pieces from the weekend:

Brighton Bookshop
Caitriona Reed

It was after I had read Lenny Bruce’s story about borrowing two warehouse coats, and driving across to the city with his friend, and loading a refrigerator from one of the big electrical appliance stores onto his friend’s truck. His wife had been nagging him about a new one for weeks. No one noticed them hauling the heavy refrigerator out of the store.

I was seventeen. I liked books a lot. I liked having them almost as much as I like reading them. I was in Crawley one day with Don and Zoë. We went into W. H. Smiths and I walked straight to the back of the store where they kept the oversized books. I took down a copy of Larousse’s Encyclopedia of Mythology, put it casually under my arm, and walked out without batting an eye. I still have that book today.

That was back when people talked about liberating books, private property being an aberration and all that. The Anarchist Party of Great Britain was going strong, the Diggers were alive and well, and we used to hang out at Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton – where we didn’t steal books, because we were in awe of Bill Butler, the tall American poet, who ran it with his boyfriend Mike.

A few years later, Tony and I opened our own bookshop in Brighton, when Bill and Mike moved to Wales to start a publishing co-op. We bought their stock and fancied ourselves Brighton’s answer to Compendium Books in Camden. We started importing books from the States; Steven Gaskin, Alan Watts, Fritz Perls, Philip K. Dick. We sold Marx alongside astrological ephemeris, R. D. Laing, and Chogyam Trungpa. Of course, we refused to sell Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs or anything that remotely resembled a best seller.

We paid ourselves five pounds a week and kept lots of books for ourselves. Then we noticed that books were disappearing that we couldn’t account for from sales or from our own personal library-building activities. Someone was ripping us off. Several people probably, big-time!

Then one afternoon we discovered one of our regular customers, a history teacher form the Poly, someone we used to chat with whenever he came in, leaving the shop with a very large bag of books he hadn’t paid for.

“Right! We’re calling the fuzz.”

“Oh come on man. Don’t do that.”

“Well you can’t just walk out of here with a bag full of books. How do you expect us to survive? You’ve done this before too haven’t you?”

“Oh, come on man!”

We led him upstairs to wait for the police. As soon as we got to the top of the stairs he turned, pushed past me, and taking three steps at a time charged downstairs and straight through the plate glass door. He shattered it, tripped, and fell onto the pavement with blood streaming down his face and arms.

“Oh no, now we’re going to have to fix the door too. What’s wrong with you, man?”

When Tony moved to the States, Richard bought him out. A year later the shop closed. It turned out that Richard had a gambling problem. One week he lost three grand on the horses and wiped us out.

Sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t all some sort of retribution for that Larousse Encyclopedia.

Three Meditation Exercises

Three Meditation Exercises. On What It Is Possible to Be, Do, and Have

Reflect on the single greatest obstacle in your life right now; the one that prevents you from becoming the person you might be, the one that prevents you from attaining what it is you most want. It’s best if you write it down. Go ahead. Imagine who you could be, and what you could do, if that obstacle was completely removed from your life.

Now reflect on what you would do if you only had six months left to live. Write it down. What would your priorities be if you knew that your time was limited?

Now reflect on what you would do if you were given ten million dollars, a hundred million dollars. Write it down. Write it down in as much detail as you like.

Now. Know that whatever you can imagine, you can experience.
You can, you really can BE, DO, and HAVE whatever you want. That is the nature of things. . . . If you want it . . . . The choice IS yours.

The idea that wanting is a bad thing is a punishing, life-denying notion. It is an idea with more affinity to Puritan repression than to any authentic spiritual instinct. Craving and clinging may lead to frustration and unhappiness. But Wanting, the setting of clear intention, planning towards the fulfillment of that intention, can bring freedom, joy, and effective ongoing habits towards action.

The thought leads to the word, the word leads to the action, the action repeated leads to the habit, anchored in a new mindset. The world itself is transformed by your desire. And all the living beings there . . . if you want it . . .

Jizo by Michele Benzamin-Miki