What Is So

"The core  is (being) without-thought, the basis is without-characteristics, and the root is without-abiding.

Without-characteristics is being free of characteristics while in the midst of characteristics.

Without-thought is not thinking in regard to thoughts.

Without-abiding is the true nature of being human."

The above is a loose translation from the Platform Sutra attributed to Huineng, the Sixth Ancestor of Ch'an.

Our choice this moment is to be what is so - or to skillful respond when we are not being what is so, despite being what is so.

(c) 2011 Elihu Genmyo Smith

"Pretty Patterns That Camouflage a Poison"

Before using any recently purchased Chinese-made pottery (as well as Mexican-made pottery) for food, please check the following story regarding a sampling of those bought in the Philadelphia area in which "more than a quarter of the samples tested positive" for lead.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/health/29ceramics.html?nl=health&emc=healthupdateema2

JAPAN DISASTER RELIEF

Here is a list of some vetted charities that don't require sending a check but only a quick click:

http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/interaction-members-support-japan-earthquake-response

For donations directly to the Japanese Red Cross, see:

http://www.jrc.or.jp/english/relief/l4/Vcms4_00002070.html

Notes For A Dharma Talk:

We are not conditions and circumstances nor other than conditions and circumstances.

Because we are truly free of conditions and circumstances, we can be conditions and circumstances.

Not clearly seeing conditions and circumstances as they are, we believe thoughts and feelings about conditions and circumstances.

Believing conditions and circumstances, we are hindered by conditions and circumstances, limited in conditions and circumstances, suffer as a result of conditions and circumstances.

Actually, because we are free we must be conditions and circumstances. Otherwise, we are not free.

Being conditions and circumstances, we are free of conditions and circumstances.

Here is an appropriate verse I came across after jotting down the above notes. 

This is Hakuin’s verse on a painting of Manjusri:

“I venerate this painted image of the flawlessly

Pure Dharma-body of the Great Sage Manjusri;

If you see him there on the surface of the paper,

You are digging a well-shaft to find white clouds;

If you seek him apart from the painted image,

You are traveling eastward in pursuit of the sun.

Do you see!

I venerate the Great Sage Manjusri."

(c) 2011 Elihu Genmyo Smith

Buddha's Face Cream

"They do not sorrow over the past,
Nor do they hanker for the future.
They maintain themselves with what is present:
Hence their complexion is so serene."

Buddha, Devatasamyutta 10:18

Abortion Reflections After Inquiry

Abortion brings up this fundamental matter of interdependence and interbeing which is the core of our life. It is so whether or not we recognize it or live it.

Abortion is a life death koan to clarify, actualize and manifest. It is a koan for the mother/father, and if the father is not involved, it is a koan for the mother.  It is very unfortunate that some of the time the decision about abortion has to be made only by the mother - as this adds to the difficulty of clarifying this. In truth, it is koan for the mother/child, but since the mother actualizes this I say it is for the mother. Abortion is this Great Matter, fundamental practice. 

Abortion is a personal choice that the mother, the father, must make; hopefully after deep consideration and reflection on causes and consequences. It is past, present, future causes and conditions coming together as this moment. There may be fear and suffering in the midst of unknown future consequences of action or inaction. And choices and actions radiate in all directions. It is not at all easy. This is not something someone else can do or even see clearly for the mother, for the father. We do not live in their moment, do not sense the cause/conditions/habits/fear that are their body mind world. And we must support and nurture them in this life practice, doing what is skillful and appropriate to enable them to do their life.

As a matter of public policy, of law and as a matter of practice, I do not want the government  involved, neither in forbidding abortion nor in encouraging it.

As I said, unfortunately, much of the time this decision has to be made only by the mother, which adds to the difficulty of the choice. Having a child has lifetime consequences – and having an abortion has lifetime consequences. Nevertheless, despite it being a personal decision in which I do not want the government involved, I also am clear that abortion is a form of killing. In fact, in living we are all in a web of killing living. This web of interdependence, of the interbeing manifested in our actions, is our opportunity to clarify and deepen our appreciation of what our life is. Where there is birth there is death, to paraphrase Shakyamuni Buddha.

In the Buddhist tradition the fetus is considered a life. Many, including myself, do funeral and memorial services for the fetus of a miscarriage and of an abortion. There are important practices at various Zen Centers which the parents can and do engage in for themselves, and as part of a Sangha community. This is being this life death process. This is not a simple matter; it has deep roots and consequences.

We are dependent upon the killing of other beings for the life we live. Do we truly appreciate this?

Even vegetarians and vegans are part of the web of killing beings in the growing and transporting of their food – just drive on a country road in the summer and see what your windshield looks like afterwards. Or do you privilege life to exclude the insects on the windshield, the road kill and the insects of the earth the food is grown in? This killing as part of living is just what we must do, is just what happens in the process of this body functioning - and we get to make choices of what to do and not to do. Often we think little of the vegetation we kill. And we can talk of the killing on a microscopic level that is part of animal life, vegetable life, of the flora and fauna within our body. 

Are you a vegetarian with a dog or a cat? Their food often has meat. And if you allow your cat out of the house to roam, that results in the killing of birds, small mammals, lizards and snakes.  The cat is doing it for sport, since you are feeding it and giving it medical treatment and so forth.  Therefore the cat does not really face the balance of nature’s web whereby only the best hunters survive, and others die due to hunger and disease, which would give the birds, small mammals, lizards and snakes a better chance of life.

And there are very real, very significant, differences between killing a human and killing other beings.  Just as there are very real, very significant, differences to be faced in comparing actions in different circumstances. This interbeing interdependent life in the midst of differences, in the midst of nonduality, is exactly what fundamental practice is.

So we all make choices about killing in living.  Being in the midst of this web of killing and giving life, being entangled in this web, what is the next step? Do we entangle more? Do we see the entanglements and how to live in the midst of them, to be and act freely in the midst of entanglements? Who to kill, what to kill, how to kill, when to kill; this is the fundamental matter at this moment to clarify and actualize.

Intention, choice and clear effort is the essence of this practice.

The choice of abortion is a most difficult one, since it involves a lifetime and a human life. Does the mother, or parents, have the ability and capacity to give birth and raise the child? What are the options? I do not say this is simple or easy. This is why abortion or giving birth needs to be deeply considered before it is undertaken. Having clarified this as best we can, we act – doing our best right now.

© 2011 Elihu Genmyo Smith

Congress Rides Buses and Trains

Public officials should be required to ride public transportation.

Public officials, whether elected or appointed, tend to live in a very different world than most of us. Even when they are financially middle class, they have benefits that allow them to avoid the circumstances of life which we, middle and lower class people, regularly encounter. Unfortunately for the public interest, most of them are much wealthier than middle class. And because they do not live with the same conditions and circumstances of most of the people whom their decisions effect, even when they are trying to be empathetic it is primarily a conceptual, theoretical and political process.

It does not matter where in the political spectrum officials are. The issues among those on different sides of the political spectrum are about what to emphasize, which aspect of a decision or the consequences of the decision to focus on. For instance, a generalized question might be, do we focus on the benefits of spending or on the burdens of taxing? Another instance, do we focus on the need to maintain and increase national security in the face of potential enemies or do we focus on concerns about the effects of military industrial coalitions in terms of power corruption and wasteful spending, as well as unnecessary violence?

We lack a way to allow those who make the decisions, especially the legislative and administrative officials on all levels of government, to experientially sense the consequences of their actions. Therefore they miss seeing many sides of the issues and potential options. Instead, often it is only the limited conceptual and ideological positions which are the focus of their attention.

Public officials should be required to ride public transportation. Similarly, when rules are made for airport screening, this should apply to ALL – including administrative officials, legislators and even TSA officials. ALL means rich and poor, doing away with special privileges to those who pay extra. Then all might experience a bit more what the results of their actions are for people on a daily basis. And therefore they might reflect more deeply on what rules and decisions they make, whether these are appropriate and will accomplish what is desired without too many negative side effects. If they experience the results of their rule making then what is done politically and administratively would reflect this. It is good to have all walk in the same shoes – and take off the same shoes.

No more special planes for government officials (except maybe for the President and VP for security reasons). Even the press corps, those who opine and attempt to lead the public thinking on various matters, should have to be part of the public if they want to speak for and to the public. Similarly, the decisions about highways, traffic rules, parking and public transportation funding and regulations should only be made by those who live the talk, taking away special parking permits and reserved parking of public officials in crowded cities, taking away the chauffeured vehicles  and the many other ways that these officials avoid the rules they impose on everyone else.

These are just the tip of an iceberg of finding ways to insure that political leaders and rule makers experientially live the changes they make in our societal and cultural life.

This sort of approach is relevant to a number of different areas, including some recent or longstanding political conflicts. For instance, regarding illegal immigration, here are just a few of the questions we could look at:

What is it like for citizens in communities and states who now face increased tax burdens and decreased publicly available services because of an increased population of illegal immigrants, most of whom do not and have not been paying their share of the taxes to provide these services? 

What must it be like for the immigrant who is facing a life of poverty and other hardships in their homeland to take the risks to enter the US illegally and living as an illegal resident, with the potentials for arrest and limited opportunities? 

And what does hiring of the illegal immigrants do to the moral fiber of all of those involved? 

What happens to the society where the rule of law is flouted? 

Unfortunately, in the political debates on this issue, in the difficulty in finding an appropriate solution, of finding a skillful means to address the reality of the conditions on the US border and within the US, often we tend to focus on only one perspective. There is not the willingness by most public officials, the media or even scholars to encompass the many different perspectives, to see them all as legitimate for some individuals, and to see that what is done needs to at least acknowledge them all, despite the fact that there will always be those who do not like any decision, who will feel that they “lost. ” 

Do we need to believe that decisions will be a zero sum game – where if one wins that means the other losses?

This sort of experiential creative empathy approach that I am writing of is also relevant to thorny and long standing areas of conflicts. For example, between the Israelis and Palestinians there is a conflict that is about two peoples having two very different perspectives, history and claims to the same land. Around abortion in the US the conflict is between the rights and life of the woman verses the life and rights of the fetus/unborn. (Notice that even the way of framing these issues can generate disagreement.) It would be interesting to explore these issues from an experiential empathy perspective. Because of the complexity of the issues it would take more than just a paragraph to clarify this matter, so I will write about those in future blogs.

Creative empathy is not simply “walking in someone’s shoes.” Regarding public policy, it is on an ongoing basis not exempting the rule-makers from the rules, enabling them to truly be part of the greater public, living their life, seeing with their eyes. Then, even in the midst of political and ideological disagreements and compromises, they can truly act with the public interest, for the public interest.

Lest we forget, these sorts of issues with public officials are not new: "The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall." said Marcus Cicero   - 55 BCE.

© 2011 Elihu Genmyo Smith