Christmas as Cultural Oppression

Despite about our many hopes and fears about the current political situation, Christmas is barreling down on us all like a Mac truck driven by an insane maniac in red pajamas. We are all pedestrians in the crosswalk of the dream who can’t quite move fast enough to get out of the way. For many of us, Christmas easily becomes a time of enforced gaiety and compulsory consumption. I find myself skating on the thin ice of the pond of resentment and loneliness. The holidays are a perfect time to feel terminally different and fully left out.

Whatever we are planning or doing can never live up to the images many of us carry: an unblemished nuclear family sitting around a meticulously decorated Christmas tree (neither too big nor too small) opening truly thoughtful presents that bring great joy to all. Who can compete with the images of holiday perfection that tramp through our heads like malicious sugar plum fairies?

For me, it takes an intentional act of defiance to break through the oppression of these cultural expectation and stay human amidst the rush and flurry.

One friend told me she spent last Saturday making Christmas decorations—in itself not a very remarkable activity. But she said she did it with a Syrian refugee family that recently moved into her community. She made the trip to Michael’s and came prepared with all the supplies. The whole family gathered to spend the time trimming the tree while the mother sang Christmas carols in Arabic. Who knew that even in Syria, Christmas is celebrated as a secular holiday.

Another friend has decided to spend Christmas alone. Though he has several offers, he has decided to spend a quiet day at home with his friend. I was amazed to hear of his intention as I wasn’t aware that this is was an allowable option in polite society. Of course we are always alone wherever we go. Even in the midst of friends and family, we are still an island of consciousness in the midst of the large sea of life. But we are also always part of the family of human life—touched by the nourishings waters of aliveness at every point of our circumference. Whether separate or together, we are always held and supported by each other.

I like the original meanings of Advent better: a time of waiting in the dark—with hope. Not so much about the baby Jesus or about the presents, but about the deepening darkness. The days grow shorter and we truly don’t know what is coming. Our job is to wait in the darkness—to wait right where we are.

The cultural myth and the truth of human experience is that only through this dark waiting will the light blossom and our new life begin.

The Middle Way

“Personally, I’m still figuring out how to keep my anger simmering — letting it boil over won’t do any good, but it shouldn’t be allowed to cool. This election was an outrage, and we should never forget it.” This was the conclusion of Paul Krugman’s op-ed piece* ‘The Tainted Election” in the NY Times on December 12^th.

Since the election, I have been torn between acceptance and outrage. I want to go back to my normal life. If Clinton had won, I would take a passing interest in her cabinet appointments but already be fading back into a kind of benign and general approval. But now I read the NY Times every morning as a way of staying engaged. It’s a little like waking up and sticking my finger into a light socket.

Every morning, I get shocked. I try not to overdo it. Being lost in despair is not helpful. One of my coping strategies to balance my emotional state is to escape to the sports page. Fortunately, my New England Patriots (those paragons of virtue and steadfast excellence and trickery) are doing well. But then I suspect myself of being the Roman citizen who distracted himself from the excesses of the empire by following the gladiatorial games at the coliseum. It’s all tainted.

My other strategy is meditation. Stopping and breathing. In the stillness of formal meditation and throughout the day, I make a practice of consciously turning toward the immediacy of life. This sensation. This emotion. This person.

Times are dire. The forces of greed, anger and ignorance have been unleashed in terrifying channels. But this is not new to human experience. These are the times that call us to practice more deeply what we say we believe in.

Not all the news is bad. Ten members of the electoral college have asked for an intelligence briefing on Russian intervention in the election before they have to officially vote Trump in. And Republicans are defying Trump’s irrational dismissal of evidence of Russian hacking and calling for an independent investigation.

This buoys my spirits, but then I think of the turmoil that would ensue if the election results are overturned by the electoral college. And Trump would not sit idly by as Clinton has done.

How do we behave with integrity in a system that has been compromised? How can we support our underlying democratic system and resist the forces that have taken it over so successfully?

Of course, the system was taken over long before Trump arrived on the scene. The forces of greed, ignorance and fear have been driving our democracy (and human behavior) since its inception and have merely been magnified over the years. Trump’s current ascendancy is both reaction to and culmination of the economic oligarchy that pulls so many of the levers in our wonderful and flawed country.

Let us be vigilant and keep our anger at injustice simmering. Let us recommit to the preciousness of life and to using our power to relieve the suffering of so many around us.

Probably good advice, no matter who is president.

Full Krugman Article

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness: A Very Brief Presentation

The Buddhist teaching of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness was first set out in the Satipattana Sutra as part of the large collection of texts known as the Tripataka. These texts, that purport to be the words of the Buddha, were first written down in the first century BCE in northern India. The four foundations of mindfulness are one of the sources of the modern mindfulness movement that has become such a cultural force over the past decade.

Modern mindfulness is often confused with feeling better. Time magazine periodically runs a cover story on mindfulness that shows an attractive young woman serenely hovering above all worry. She is the same iconic image that is used to sell everything from diamonds to deodorant. Now the image of youth, ease and beauty is offered in the service of selling the latest way to be happy and calm.

It is true that we all like to feel good and that the practice of mindfulness can lead to an improvement in our appreciation of our life. But the original mindfulness teachings were offered as a way for helping us see into the true nature of human experience and thereby find our freedom.

The first three foundations of mindfulness are: 1) awareness of breath and body, 2) awareness of the rising of the gut reactions of like, dislike and neutral, and 3) awareness of mental states. The fourth foundation of mindfulness is experiencing the Buddhist teachings through our own experience. This points to one unique aspect of Buddhist teachings; they are not presented as doctrine that we are supposed to believe but rather they are pointers to help us move closer to our own experience.

All Buddhist teaching, as I suppose all spiritual teaching, is a path to help us see into the true nature of reality. The ultimate purpose of the study and practice of the four foundations is not about feeling more comfortable, but about being free. When we see clearly what is so, everything may remain the same, but we are free right where we are.

Practicing the four foundations, we can begin to see for ourselves that everything is continually arising and passing way—the weather, our feelings, the mountains, and even ourselves.   We can also notice that dissatisfaction is unavoidable—sometimes we like what is happening in and around us, and sometimes we don’t. We also can realize that even the person we think we are is constantly changing—we too are of the nature of appearing and disappearing.

We can also know for ourselves that human life is shot through with grace—that even in the midst of difficulty and dailyness there is the possibility of seeing through the veil of ordinariness. And maybe, just for a small moment, we forget ourselves and remember that we have never been separate from the mysterious source that sustains and holds us.

Alone Together

Yesterday, we spent the day here at the Temple studying and practicing. In the morning we explored the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness, then we ate lunch together and did some caretaking work around the Temple. In the afternoon we practiced together in silence: sitting and walking meditation along with listening to a Dharma talk and meeting individually with a teacher.

We always remind ourselves at the beginning of every retreat that ‘Everything is practice.’ We might also say: ‘Everything is sacred.’ While this is always true, in our daily lives we’re often so caught up that we forget. So yesterday was a retreat day—a day of stepping away from the rush and flurry of our lives. A day of coming together to consciously turn toward something deeper. A day of remembering that every moment of our life is precious.

Now I must confess that a day like this sounds quite different than it actually is. The truth is that any retreat includes the whole range of human experience. You don’t get zapped by a magic wand and walk around feeling spiritually uplifted. (Though that does sometimes happen.) When we say ‘everything is sacred,’ the key word is ‘everything.’ This is not an invitation to try to be holy or deeply centered, but rather to meet our ‘ordinary’ experience in a new way. Everyday life is an utter miracle. The source of the breath is unknowable.

This conscious coming together to turn toward something deeper is, I believe, the essence of religion and a necessary element of any spiritual practice. Though there are individual practices—the hermits in the deep mountains and the desert fathers in the wilderness, even a daily solitary prayer or meditation; these all take place in the context of a larger tradition that gives meaning and support to the activity.

And even when we come together, we each must walk our path alone. We each must work out our lives ‘in fear and trembling.’ But we are alone together. This is the gift of community. When we find that our anxiety and self-doubt are shared by others, we are no longer alone in our aloneness.   This is the gift of joining together with other human beings to turn toward the unimaginable source of our lives.

So I would encourage us all to find ways to do these two things: 1) take time at regular intervals to step away from the dailyness of our lives to turn toward what is most important, and 2) come together with other human beings in ways that can help us remember we are not alone–we are alone together.

Appreciating Disturbance

Yesterday I wrote about Trump as the devious one who is disturbing so many of us – both in the world around us and in our own psyches. My friend and colleague James Ford even claims that Trump has somehow rented a room in his mind and is causing trouble there.

From the Process Work perspective (thank you Arny Mindell), anything that appears in the world and in our awareness is necessary in some way. Our true human work is not about trying to control what is happening, but rather to understand and support the deeper wisdom of what is arising.

So when something appears that is disturbing, rather than blaming the disturber or even trying to smooth out the disturbance, we are encouraged to ask “What is it in our world that needs to be disturbed?” “What is it in me that needs to be disturbed?” Buddhist teacher, writer and thinker David Loy asked these same questions in a wonderful and provoking talk he gave on November 22^nd in Boulder, CO:

So how much has the election of Donald Trump shaken us up, and maybe, in the process, is it waking us up in a way that the election of Hillary Clinton would not have done? I am struck by something that the philosopher-provocateur Slavoj !i”ek expressed very succinctly: “The real calamity is the status quo.” In which case, if people are responding, showing their dissatisfaction with the status quo, even if they are doing it for different reasons than I do, is that expression of dissatisfaction what’s needed? Loy Talk

Loy goes on to reflect on how difficult it is for those of us who are so comfortable to wake up to the urgency of our global environmental situation. Most of us agree we are in the middle of a catastrophic change in the capacity of our planet to sustain life as we know it. Ice caps are melting. Species are disappearing. Weather is destabilizing.

But, day-to-day, our lives are pretty comfortable. This morning, I sit in an old plush chair in my warm house. The sky is dark but a lamp lights the room. I drink a cup of fresh tea and tap away at my laptop, reflecting on the political situation of the moment from a comfortable distance. How can those of us who have such privilege understand the urgency of things? How do we overcome fierce power of our relatively comfortable status quo?

I don’t have any good answers to this question.

We human beings actually control so little of what happens in our lives. But we do control, to some degree, where we give our energy and attention. Perhaps we can begin (and continue) to turn our attention more directly to the very real suffering in our world and of our world. The vast majority of the world’s population does not live in the opulent circumstances that many of us do. Though clean water effortlessly comes out of the tap in my house, can I remember this is not so for everyone and may not always be so for me? How can I remember this vividly enough to be disturbed?

It might also serve us well to remember that all of us are in the rather desperate situation of a terminal medical diagnosis. All of us will die in the near future. The status quo will not continue. We will certainly lose everything we have. Whether in one week or one year or eighty years, I guarantee that when death comes to each one of us, it will be too soon.

So in our brief time here on this surprisingly fragile planet, let us allow ourselves to be disturbed enough to come together to take action that expresses both our courage and our compassion.