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

Going Backwards

Imagine having to reverse a car down the highway, and calculate the turns in the road based on where you had just been, and with a tiny mirror catch occasional glimpses of the road ahead. Wouldn't that make driving very difficult?

People often understand meditation practice as a way of learning to live in the present moment. But living in the present moment does not mean that you cannot dream, imagine, or plan for the future.

Living in the present moment may not be a panacea for all your troubles!

Traditional psychotherapy has often been accused of dwelling too much on past causes. Meditation practice (specifically traditional buddhist practice) trains you to live in the present moment, and to create the inner flexibility needed to effect changes.

Our coaching model helps you brings past, present, and future together; to understand causes of the past, to be fully alive and present here and now AND to create and build a vision for your future, and USE the specific skills that can turn that vision it into reality.

To learn more go ahead and sign up for our "questions to effect change" series.
Click here.

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.

Struggle means brighter colors and longer life

Have you heard this quotation for Anais Nin?
“And the day came when the risk it took to remain closed in a bud became more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

Probably you are familiar with the metaphor of the butterfly, emerging from the chrysalis ~ life emerging from what appears static and lifeless.

Some time ago some lepidopterists (that’s the name for those who study butterflies), were experimenting with the development of butterflies inside their cocoons. They even cut some out prematurely to see what would happen.

They learned that butterflies who had to struggle to free themselves from the cocoon had brighter colors, were healthier, and stronger, and lived longer than those who were cut free prematurely and did not have to experience that struggle.

Sometimes, when we feel stuck and frustrated, and life seem more difficult than it should be, we can remember that the process itself, whatever we’re going through, can strengthen us in ways we may never understand until much later.

Sanctuary. An Ongoing Training for Activists.

An activist is someone who takes action - in order to bring awareness to and to change situations of injustice.

An effective activist is someone who takes action while at the same time challenging their own limiting habits, expectations, judgments, and fears.

The ongoing commitment to transform the world and the ongoing commitment to transform ourselves is, in reality, the same thing. We can’t do either one effectively without the other.

We are called to be practical, adaptable, and open. A doctrinaire approach self limits. The time is over for rigid adherence to doctrines - Buddhism, Marxism etc. Such things are best used as filters, rather than articles of faith.

We are better off learning from multiple sources. To do so is not to dilute the truth of what we know. It is to go ever deeper into an understanding that works systemically. It is inclusive, and it is essentially creative. It includes those we may have thought we must oppose, it moves toward win-win solutions, it is rooted in basic human values of kindness and mutual co-operation. It is the essence of Anarchism in its original sense. Call it original anarchism. Eros out of Chaos . . .

Look for Kropotkin: Mutual Aid
and Alfred Wallace: The Malay Archipelago
Mix gently and simmer.
Season with Audre Lorde's essay on Uses of the Erotic.

Mmmmm delicious!