When Practicing Zazen

When I sit, I usually let thoughts just come and go the way they do, as someone said, "Like clouds in a clear blue sky." And as I've sat through this practice period, thoughts have gradually diminished to the point where almost an entire sit will take place thought-free. Hard to describe what that's like, but it happens. 

I don't sit generally more than 15-20 minutes at a time, though on occasion, I have sat longer. The shorter sits are for me the more positive, I guess. Practicing zazen is by its nature both ridiculous and useless. So we do it anyway, and sitting is itself the point, not any great gain or accomplishment. You just sit. 

A shorter sit is for me the more positive because like in the Old Days, I've been getting closer and closer to The Void (as I call it) when I sit, and I'm not going back there without a guide or teacher, and that hasn't happened yet in this practice period. 

But this morning's sit that I was late for made me think more about where I've been and where I'm going with this ridiculous and useless sitting. An image came to me early in my late sit. 

More like a movie clip, really. As I tend to do, I just let it come. At some point I figured it would go. Away.

Oh. 

I was walking toward Union Square on Geary, not far from my apartment between Leavenworth and Hyde. I got to the square and saw space on a bench facing I. Magnin and the City of Paris (tells you how long ago it was), and I sat down on the bench.

At the other end was a craggy old Chinese man in clean but somewhat tattered gray pants and jacket and we nodded and smiled at one another, and after a moment or two, I assumed the sitting zazen pose, and he saw and assumed it too, and we sat. He was my sangha for the moment, I was his.

For I don't know how long, we sat together-apart on the bench in Union Square facing I Magnin and the City of Paris while pigeons and people swirled around us, the cloudless bright blue sky overhead, and the sun somewhere shone into the Square. 

After a time, I don't know how long, I got up from my sit and bowed to the Chinese elder sitting in his gray tatters at the other end of the bench. He continued his sit, he didn't bow back. And I walked around the Square, counterclockwise, feeling strangely integrated with everything, everyone, even the pigeons all a part of me, I was a part of them, even the Square itself and all around it, out into the Bay and vastly beyond.

I walked around the Square to Powell, in front of the St. Francis and walked down Powell through the flower sellers and crowds and smelly trash in the street by the curb, down to Market and I thought of taking the cable car to North Beach Fisherman's Wharf but the line was so long and the day was so nice, I decided to keep walking down Market as far as Taylor then up Taylor through the Tenderloin to Geary and back to my apartment between Leavenworth and Hyde. 

As I got to the wrought iron gate of my apartment house, the clip stopped and started over.

It was in a loop and it was going to keep playing, over and over, and it wouldn't let go of me or I wouldn't let go of it, so I stopped the sit and went into the other room and had some coffee and sat for a few minutes before I started writing this. 

That was a memory, strangely complete and colorful and lively, of something that happened when I was living in San Francisco in 1976 or maybe a bit later. That day stayed with me for sometime, and then it faded and eventually was gone, and this morning there it was again.

In my mind and memory, not in "reality."

Buddhism teaches that we create reality in our minds, and that is the only reality most of us ever know. Buddhism teaches us ways to penetrate the mind's reality to reach what I'd call a "ground state." The truth behind the mind's reality. And I've been there. 

It happened in San Francisco, and in a sense it's never left me -- on the principle that once "there" you can't go back. But then the principle is also that you're always "there" -- you just don't know it.

And this movie-like clip that started playing during this morning's sit that I was late for was a kick from behind reminder. As so many things are these days.

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So I mentioned this episode from my morning sit to one of the Dharma teachers that afternoon, someone not quite of my age but close enough who knows San Francisco well enough and saw, in her own mind, some of what I saw, and after some consideration, she said, "You know, that story of what happened during your morning sit sounds more like a dream."

They say in this process you will encounter satori "sudden enlightenment" over and over and over again, and in the past I certainly did until it became almost routine, subliminal. Almost any encounter was an encounter with satori, to the point where I didn't notice it any more.

And then when she said, "You know, that story of what happened during your morning sit sounds more like a dream," it hit me, hard, that's exactly what it was. I was dreaming-awake. I was/am quite sure the incident and others like it actually happened, but at this great distance in time, it doesn't matter whether it had a physical "reality" or not. It was something I dreamed while awake, while sitting zazen that morning, and the instant of that realization, I could start to let it go. I haven't completely let go of it, obviously, because I'm still writing about it, but I don't relive it. 

We talked about many other things and she asked if I had practiced zazen since the morning sit, and I said I had, and it was fine. She just nodded, sagely. Then we shared stories about her brother and my sister, and we both might have choked up a bit. 

Later that evening another Dharma teacher Zoomed in from Illinois, not only an ordained Zen priest but an ordained and working Unitarian Universalist reverend, and she spoke movingly about many of the things I had spoken with the other Dharma teacher in the afternoon. Her topic was ostensibly "Meditation."

I'll leave it at that.

Daniel Murphy March 22, 2012 Facing Off With Police At Union Square, NYC

A rant:



A transcription was requested by ThD at FDL who was arrested with Daniel in the notorious raid on the Chicago NATO protestors in May of 2012; the trial of the NATO 3 -- the only ones who were tried in connection with the raid -- recently concluded with "not guilty" verdicts on charges of terrorism, but guilty verdicts on charges of mob action and possession of materials to commit arson, convictions which carry maximum 30 year penalties.

My balky transcription of Daniel's address to the NYPD heard in the video above follows:

[Daniel Murphy, to the NYPD, in progress] You'll probably beat us...

Ain't that right? Were you guys here last night? So was I. It was great.... 

Then you assholes came back at 9:30. I had just gotten to sleep. It would have been great if you'd a waited a little longer, but you chose not to. 

I'm here because I wanted to ask you guys a question: How many times do you ask yourselves, "Why the fuck am I here?"

Do any of you ever stop to think "Maybe what I'm doing is not actually great? Maybe what I'm doing is actually quite possibly immoral?"

 Do you ever think... [unintelligible; there is laughter and a voice over on the video saying: "This is the kid that was arrested twice in one... uh, a couple of days..."]

 [Daniel continues to the cops:] How many times do you go home and say, "Maybe I shouldn't have hit that guy over the head, maybe I shouldn't a pushed that woman to the ground, maybe I shouldn't have tied that guy's cuffs on so fuckin' tight so he can't feel his fingers a week later." That guy is me. I still can't feel my fingers, assholes. Thanks a lot.

And for what? What did I do? God knows. I guess we'll go to trial, maybe the charges will get dropped. [Unintelligible...].... the fuckin' videotape, ain't that wonderful. But you sure held me in jail for two days, wasn't that great, right? I loved the food in there, too, so I'm probably gonna go back tonight. You know why? Because you assholes just follow orders and never question why the fuck you do what you do.

I invite you to stop being mindless zombies, and quite possibly, once in a while, take off your uniforms and engage in conversation. I think if you thought of us as human beings and not as objects, you would stop beating us, but instead, you're trained to dehumanize and to think of us as criminals, when really what we're doing is not wrong at all. Legality does not equal morality. Just because something is the law does not make it right. Just because we break a law does not make us wrong.

You should go fuck yourselves and stop following orders -- only zombies and robots do that.

You are human beings. You are just like us. Except when you put on your uniforms, you turn into pieces of shit. I don't understand why.

I wear a "uniform." It's the only set of clothing I have. You guys are free to take it from me and everything else I have, cause you try to every day. But I kinda still have the last shred of dignity.

You know why? Because I can stand up here and talk to you, not because I think I have more power than you. You have guns, and if we lived in a different country, you would have killed me long ago. But we're in America.  There's still a little bit of protection. I don't think that's gonna last too much longer. I think, pretty soon, as we continue to break the law, you will have to shoot us, cause we'll get tired of you beating us. When we get tired of you beating us, we're prolly gonna fight back.

Wouldn't that be an amazing sight?

 I hope we wait until you beat us so badly that the public joins us, cause you're prolly so stupid that you'll wait that long.

I think you should change your minds. I think you should join us. There is no one else here who will fight for your pensions or your wages or any other measly benefit you get for having such shitty jobs.... [Daniel continues unintelligible...]

 [Fades....]

 Sorry if I missed anything...

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NOTE: I originally posted about Daniel Murphy and the very public torture he was subjected to on the streets of New York back in March of 2012, during the demonstrations against police brutality -- which featured heaping helpings of police brutality, not only to Daniel Murphy but to Cecily McMillan and many, many others.

I didn't know that Daniel Murphy had gone to Chicago in May of 2012, to attend the NATO conference protests, or that he had been arrested with TarheelDem and the others initially referred to as the NATO 9 (two of whom were undercover cops, two of whom were Polish nationals who were promptly deported, two of whom were TarheelDem and Daniel Murphy, and three of whom were later tried for terrorism and other offenses, and who were recently convicted of those 'other offenses' only) until I happened to Google Daniel's name and ran across a Pacifica Radio interview with him recorded shortly after his release from custody. I don't know where he is now or what has become of him, but I imagine he's found an ashram somewhere -- do they still have ashrams? -- and is doing good works building his community.

That's what I would imagine, anyway...

Wrestling With Demons

While watching OWSHDTV Livestream from Union Square last night, I came face to face with some of my own demons of the movement, and I thought I'd spend a little time today discussing it.

After all, I've had no problem discussing some of the demons other people have been confronting in their interactions with the Occupy Movement. It can be tough to wrestle with and deal with what we really don't want to see or hear or have to face. We're used to objectifying and abstracting so much of our outer experience, it is easier than it should be to demonize that which we don't like or don't understand in others. I do it, though I try not to, or rather, I think I'm trying not to. But I know I fail.

So what I saw last night brought me up short. I began watching the livestream shortly after 9:00pm Pacific Time, midnight in New York, when "the park is closed" and the barricades go up around Union Square. (How quickly we become used to new procedures!) Apparently the livestreamer had recently been in an altercation of some kind with a police officer; from what I understood from the exchange going on between them, the officer had pushed the livestreamer out of the way in order to emplace the all-important barricades at the bottom of the first set of steps; the officer was apparently kicking items left by people on the steps down to the lower pavement.

The livestreamer was taunting and insulting the police officer, and he was challenging him to justify his behavior. Ordinarily, this type of citizen behavior toward Authority wouldn't bother me, but it did last night, because the livestreamer went from taunts and insults to threats against the officer and his family. The officer didn't become violent or abusive toward the livestreamer, but he did respond verbally. I couldn't catch much of what he said, but I did hear him say "my family" and "my house." It seemed at one point that he issued a challenge to the livestreamer, but I couldn't hear the exchange well enough to be sure. After some back and forth, a supervising White Shirt came over and whispered to the officer; shortly thereafter, the officer refused to engage the livestreamer and ostentatiously pretended not to hear his additional taunts, insults, and challenges.

What bothered me about this episode were the implicit or explicit threats against the officer and his safety by a livestreamer. There have been instances of people getting in officers' faces and physically struggling with them when they are abusive (which in New York seems to be a daily occurrence now that Occupy has re-emerged.) But this was different. From what I heard, at any rate, apparently the officer had simply disrespected the livestreamer by pushing him out of the way as he went about his task of setting barricades. The task itself is idiotic as far as I'm concerned, and the very idiocy of "protecting" a public park from access by the public night after night with hundreds of police officers in attendance ought to be embarrassing enough to the NYPD officers who participate in it. As it seems more and more to be.

But this time, a livestreamer took it on himself to challenge this particular officer to justify his behavior (which I have no problem with), and appeared to threaten him (which I do have a problem with.)

The officer, for his part, stayed cool but he appeared to be rattled, and if the White Shirt hadn't intervened, it might have turned ugly in ways I don't think we want to see, at least not under these circumstances. Either the officer might have physically attacked the livestreamer. Or it might have gone a different way had the livestreamer kept bullying him. That's what he was doing. He was bullying. The officer might have had a breakdown -- which can be very dangerous. The man is armed, after all, and if he is goaded and bullied enough, there's no telling what he would do. At any rate, he was clearly upset enough to be thinking...

An argument can be made that the officer was only getting some of his own medicine, but in this case, I think it went well beyond that. The livestreamer did not try to do anything to the officer physically; he was using psych tactics to goad him and get his goat by threatening him and his family with "internet exposure" and "anonymous attacks." I'm sure NYPD discusses what can happen to officers who are targeted by Anonymous (Officer Bologna anyone? Sounds like Officer Lombardo is in the cross-hairs as well) or by other groups -- CopWatch was mentioned during the exchange described here -- who make it a point to expose and publicize wrong-doing by Authority. And the implication was that physical consequences were possible.

I don't see any strategic value in that sort of implied or actual threat against police officers or any other authority figure. I admit, however, that this is my personal belief; others may see it differently, and in the case I was witnessing, it's more than likely that the livestreamer was running his mouth rather than making any kind of conscious threat at all. It did not appear as if he understood how his words might be taken.

At any rate, the livestreamer moved on and for a time he joined a mic check soapbox group who were speaking out against the police and offering their testimony about police brutality and other issues. There was one apparently drunk young man who returned over and over to say that he had been "beat down" by the police, he was fed up, and all he had to say to the police was "suck my dick!" And anybody else could suck his dick if they didn't like it.

Over and over and over again. Other people were also speaking out against the violence and thuggery of the police, but most were trying to find alternatives to the way things were and had been, and some spoke of how indirect confrontation could work better than direct confrontation in dealing with police violence. One said, "The thing they hate most is for you to smile at them (paraphrase)." Every time somebody made a positive suggestion, the apparently drunk young man got up on the soapbox (a plastic milk crate) and went into his "suck my dick" routine.

I found it offensive and disturbing. The police don't care, not in any fundamental way, if someone mouths off like that. The people who might care were those around him who were hearing this over and over. One said, "I like dick sucking." Others said, "Sucking dick is a good thing" as a way to deflect his rage, while one suggested playing games with the police as a way to undermine their authority.

The drunk fellow was having none of it. I think everyone could understand his anger and frustration with the police; but even the livestreamer was offended by his approach, as was I. Eventually, the livestreamer moved on saying there were many other people in the park and he didn't have to listen to this guy going on and on about his favorite obsession.

I got to thinking about these incidents in the context of the offense many expressed against Occupy for the kinds of actions some people engaged in (the "Black Bloc anarchists" as Chris Hedges put it) that they found inappropriate or over the line. I got to thinking how absurdist some of that argument became ("wearing bandanas is 'violence' if people think it is or could be a symbol of violent behavior") . I got to wondering where to draw the line, or if there really is a "line" between what is and is not acceptable behavior in this nonviolent resistance campaign.

I was personally offended when I saw these two incidents last night; that does not in any way absolve the police or Authority in the abstract for their many acts of suppression and violence against Occupy demonstrators nor does it absolve them from their gross indifference and negligence toward people's suffering. They are responsible for that -- as a group, not simply as individuals. But when I see offensive actions by my comrades in this struggle, it can be bewildering and disorienting. Having witnessed this last night (albeit vicariously through a computer connection and a camera lens) I think I gained a little more sympathy toward those who are so wrapped up in their own sense of being offended because somebody broke a window or threw a bottle when time was.

Of course my recommendation is always to "let it go." There's nothing we can do about something that has already happened, nor is there anything we can do about virtual actions we witness on the livestream.

We can affect our own behavior -- and to some extent our own reactions -- going forward, that's all. If we can be aware of how we are reacting -- rather than focus so much on how other people are acting -- we might gain insight into how to find that "space between" that I mentioned in an earlier post. That almost unexplored territory that lies between polarities of beliefs and actions.

How can we wrestle with demons without becoming demons ourselves? How can we foster our better angels?

"There's No Way To Put The Genie Back In the Bottle..."

If mainstream media in this country weren't all about corporate and corporate/government propaganda, this brief news segment might have been made by American journalists. Instead, it was made by Aljazeera.



I've spent a good part of the morning reviewing video of the overnight eviction from Union Square in New York. Several times, the situation turned ugly, though at no time did I see the crowd turn violent. Instead, there were more incidents of police rioting.

The initial eviction was essentially unopposed; police announced the closure of the park at midnight -- witnesses said it was the first time in their lifetime that that portion of Union Square had ever been closed. Members of the crowd argued with the police, but generally, the situation was calm -- at least compared to the situation at Zuccotti/Liberty Park on Saturday.

The police massed and moved the Occupy-ers out of the park -- that is to say, they moved them down onto the broad sidewalk on the 14th Street side -- without, so far as I could tell from the videos, using any form of violence. Then they erected iconic NYPD barricades which the police stood behind the way they do. There looked to be a thousand or more Occupy-ers on the sidewalk. There was some verbal back and forth with the police and some of the Occupy-ers, and there was one incident in which an officer blocked the lens of an AP photographer's camera which touched off a minor to-do, but for the most part, for the next several hours, there was a relatively calm stand off.

Sanitation crews cleaned up the debris in the park and were cheered by the crowd.

There was a "speak out" assembly during which some really inspiring speeches were given by Occupy-ers.



Video streaming by Ustream

Then around 3:00am or so, the police moved from the park and onto the sidewalk. They were ordering people not to sit or lie down or they would be arrested, they were pushing the much smaller crowd into a confined area near the subway entrance, and they were blocking access to the rest of the sidewalk on the 14th Street side of the park. Then they started confiscating personal property reportedly including parts of the small library which the Occupy-ers had set up at the park. The police moved into the crowd en masse, grabbing and throwing people to the ground or out of the area. It was a melee, yet another police riot in New York City. One medic was thrown to the ground by the police and hit her head hard on the pavement, apparently knocking her unconscious. People pushed back on the police, insisting that they stop their violence and get out of the way while other medics treated the injured woman. Most of the police backed off, though a couple of uniformed officers stayed in the immediate vicinity of the injured woman while medics comforted her.

An ambulance was called, whether by the police or not, I couldn't say. It arrived within a few minutes of the incident, unlike the Cecily McMillan case on Saturday/Sunday at Zuccotti/Liberty where she was having seizures and hyperventilating and falling unconscious repeatedly for up to 20 minutes before Emergency Services arrived, while hundreds of police stood around gawping and preventing trained and licensed medics from reaching her.

As Emergency Services was about to put the woman injured by police at Union Square onto a stretcher, the police inexplicably charged into the crowd again, and started throwing people around, some of whom landed on the woman who was previously injured. Other people were injured in this assault as well. This action enraged the crowd, but they did not respond with violence of their own, they responded with utter contempt for the police.

The injured woman was eventually transported, and the police were eventually removed from harassment duty -- maybe an hour after the aktion started. By that time, there were only a few dozen Occupy-ers still there in any case.



Video streaming by Ustream

Luke Rudkowski, who is recording the video above and is describing what is going on, is completely dumbfounded by the behavior of the police, as he had been on Saturday/Sunday as Cecily McMillen writhed in seizures at Zuccotti/Liberty Park while police did nothing except prevent qualified paramedical personnel from attending to her. He seemed to think it was incompetence.

I would say, based on what little I know about these sorts of things, that the actions that were witnessed and recorded were quite intentional and strategic.

Part of the police strategy for controlling the Occupy phenomenon is fright. They are trying to scare people from joining the movement, from being anywhere near it, in fact. And among the tactics they use: demonstrating their violence toward and their indifference to the suffering of Occupy-ers. These are time honored tactics, often employed, particularly in confined situations such as we see with the Occupys (and in jails and prisons, too.)

They want the public to see and react to their violence and their indifference to suffering. That is what scares people, perhaps more than most anything else they could be doing apart from firing live ammunition into crowds.

Last night, they also had some representative from the anti-terrorism squad parading around attempting to intimidate the crowd with his presence. The police have other tactics as well. But it's not "incompetence" that makes them behave this way. It is planning and strategy.

It works to some extent, but only partially. The crowds turn out nevertheless for Occupy events, which are happening practically every day now, but now the crowds are mostly made up of the braver and angrier people. They fight back in a certain way, though they haven't quite figured out how to do it effectively. They're learning. Last night a number of people commented that the police were trying to provoke violence by the crowd, and of course they didn't succeed. If that's their plan, and it seems to be the case, they will be disappointed. What they don't seem to realize is that an organic and evolutionary movement is by its nature going to thwart them.

The American Spring is going to be very interesting indeed.

And I've heard two people now insisting that "at least 100,000 will have to die before this is over..."

I don't believe that, but some do.

Whatever the case, there is no way to put the genie of Occupy back in the bottle.