Some Post-Practice Period Ruminations

It was good to get back into regular zazen practice, though my way is not exactly that of the Zen center. Of course, "my way" started with instructions from the San Francisco Zen Center c. 1965 -- before it became hip and trendy, before New Age, before hippies. Zen was still very Japanese in those days. We were followers of Suzuki Roshi's training, and he went way back in Japanese Soto Zen practice. I think he was made a monk when he was 11, and that would have been sometime around 1915 or so. He brought Zen in perhaps its strictest and purest form from Japan to the United States in the late 1950s, but it didn't really catch on until a decade or so later. Even then, it was still very Japanese.

It isn't any more. Not really. And I've struggled with that. Some of the forms are still observed -- robes and chanting in "Sino-Japanese" (the chants transliterated into syllables, but no translation as such). Zendos. Cushions to sit upon. In fact The Cushion seems to have become the central fact of modern Western Zen. Being On the Cushion is sometimes thought of as Everything. Ok. Well. That's interesting.

During practice period, we had three one hour sits a day and then during sesshin, sitting increased to up to 8 hours a day and could go longer. For me? No. 

Sitting is very important in Zen practice, necessary in fact. But... a wealth of caveats are necessary too. 

Remember, I took up Zen based on instructions from San Francisco Zen Center in the mid '60s. I wasn't at the Center, so I couldn't practice the way they did with such rigid and formal discipline. I wasn't a monk, and I couldn't be. Guess what? I was told I didn't have to strictly observe the forms, that learning how to sit and making time to sit regularly, and the study of the Sutras and Paramitas was essentially all a lay practitioner of Zen needed to do. 

Zen appealed to me because it was so lean and straightforward. You could sit zazen anywhere, any time for as long or short a time as needed. By studying the Sutras and Paramitas, by incorporating the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, becoming the Dharma as it were, you were doing all you really needed to do. 

The rituals that Zen monks and officiants engaged in at temples and monasteries and in this country at Zen Centers that weren't either temples or monasteries were akin to Catholic or other church services. Necessary for some -- some of the time -- but rarely appropriate for continual practice by lay-people.

Who have lives to live. The point is to get to a point in practice where "practice" is everything you do in life. 

There is nothing that is Not-Practice. 

So what happens when this rotten old bhikkhu (as I call myself sometimes) enters the more rarefied and ritualized modern Zen world, and I look around and say, "Wait, this isn't Zen."

And yet it's appealing for what it is, a sort of amalgam of psychotherapy, counseling, Tibetan Buddhism, and bits and pieces of a Zen tradition barely recalled or understood mixed with memories of Santa Fe New Age.

OK, fine, let's go with it, see where it leads.

It was a remarkable experience, and an astonishing reminder of not only where I've been in my wandering bhikkhu phase, but where I'm headed, too.

I learned, among other things, that so much I thought I had forgotten was still with me and had been so incorporated into my day-to-day life, I took it for granted and didn't notice.

Very vivid memories were brought back, and I learned that those memories ("Dreams" if you want) are guideposts. They're there to be recollected, yes, but also to point forward: this is where you've been, and where you're going.

None of what I learned over the years has gone away. It's all still there. And for whatever reason or no reason, I'm not quite done yet. 

I've never lacked for teachers or guides. The Void I entered all those years ago showed me a vision of Truth that has never gone away, and it never left me.

Being as isolated as I've been during this pandemic was disruptive to what had come to be my routine as "bhikkhu in the world." That's not a bad thing at all. 

I've already seen how my viewpoint and actions have changed since starting the practice period, and how much I've recovered, and how much more I need to get done.

Zen is there as a pivot point, but it's not a whole lot more than that, and by golly, it's not for everyone. Nor is Buddhism. It is simply a way among many to exist in the world and act on our better nature. 

🙏

What I Learned This Year -- Part The Third

Activism works.

Of course I knew that from long experience, but we have been living under a system which insists that only "approved" activism works. Color revolutions only, you see?

The revolt against police violence and abuse seemed to take the Powers That Be by surprise (putting it mildly), and they still haven't figured out what to do about it. My sense of the situation has been that they will try to crack down, hard and all at once, much as they did with Occupy, but something tells me now, before the New Year, that they may try a different tactic:

Taking out or buying off the "leaders" who aren't slippery enough to escape their grasp.

I've seen many signs of it already.

The massing of military style police forces, just like an occupying army would do, after James Boyd was killed in Albuquerque, then after Mike Brown was killed in Ferguson, along with the massing of police-troops all over the country to counter the protests that ensued became something of an embarrassment to Our Rulers given the constant rhetoric about freedom of expression and assembly and so on.

No, it wouldn't work.

Military-style forces were told to stand down, and for the most part they did, though in St. Louis they were held in reserve "just in case" the Negroes got too far above themselves. Faith leaders and even the New Black Panthers were recruited to manage the protest crowds instead. The police continued their false claims of being fired on and assaulted by members of the crowds of protesters, but for the most part, protests went on relatively unimpeded, except when the feelings of the police were hurt -- as in Berkeley (CA), Oakland (CA), New York, and St. Louis, where the po-po are always butt-hurt over something or other.

Direct assaults against protests were limited; the snatch and grab tactic along with arrests and/or smears of protest "leaders" were substituted. By taking out the most outspoken or the most eagerly followed activists, it was thought that the protests would collapse. Didn't happen though.

I remember at one point, Antonio French, who was seen as a leader of the protest movement -- he isn't though -- was arrested and held for quite a while, but it only further inflamed the protests, it didn't cause them to collapse. That was because Antonio French wasn't leading the protests.

A concerted effort was launched to smear Mustafa Hussein who had been valiantly livestreaming the protests for Argus Radio News.  So far as I can tell at this point, Mustafa has stepped back and is no longer in the vanguard of livestreamers from Ferguson. He was clearly hurt by the smears and other assaults he faced. But it didn't end the livestream coverage of the protests. If anything, there are more streamers now.

Another livestreamer, Bassem Masri, is currently being smeared. He's also been arrested a number of times on bogus charges, and there have been reports that he's been offered "something" to turn against the protesters or to serve as a mole of some sort. Whether any of that is true, I don't know. But he's still out there covering the actions as best he can, and not solely in Ferguson and St. Louis. He's been traveling quite a bit around the country, and has made a number of mainstream television appearances.

An outspoken member of the Ferguson Commission was arrested for something, I forget what, the day after he was at the White House meeting with the President; another outspoken activist was arrested for arson and burglary for setting fires the night Antonio Martin was killed in Berkeley (MO).

A livestreamer in Los Angeles, Bryan Hayes, was run down by a driver from Rhode Island the other night -- no consequences to the driver, apparently. The running down/running over of protesters has become one of the "things" anti-protesters do, as the protests have been blocking streets and freeways as civil disobedience tactics.

Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of protesters have been arrested since August. Some have been charged with felonies for trivial offenses. That too is part and parcel of the government tactics against this uprising

There have been reports that all of the protest "leaders" are being monitored by the FBI -- COINTELPRO on steroids.

The primary tactic, however, appears to be to wait out the protests on the premise that they will go away on their own. A few bones will be thrown now and again to divert attention from the problem of police violence and abuse, but nothing substantive will change.

Except that substantive changes are being made in the way the country is policed, and radicals are actually proposing and here and there implementing alternatives that will eliminate police as we have grown accustomed to them.

Big changes are afoot.

Peter Gelderloos has written a pretty profound manifesto regarding "A World Without Police." Whether we'll get there, I don't know. But his insight and powerful rhetoric on the topic will have an influence, no doubt.

Albuquerque's police culture appears to have changed dramatically in the last several months. New York's police unions are focusing on change there. We're seeing the spread of change throughout the national policing culture. Activism works.

It is a profound lesson that needs to be relearned from time to time.