On Monday Annie will facilitate our sangha.
Dear Friends,
For our month of contemplating solidarity together, I will share some thoughts about the practice and insight of sunyata – aka interbeing/emptiness/boundlessness and how this insight can help us understand solidarity and act in ways that serve all beings.
adrienne maree brown says:
“In nature, we see so clearly how the healthiest ecosystems thrive in biodiversity. There are as many ways of being, growing, processing sunlight and rain in life as there are species. When something threatens the trees, the mushrooms spread the warning and the forest adapts to protect the tree, knowing that each tree is part of the health of the whole – mushrooms flower on the tree’s trunk, sparrows nest in the tree’s branches, fecundity bursts forth in the tree’s shade. No creature or plant in that healthy ecosystem functions as a monopoly, or as an individual. They make it as long and as far as they can grow together.” – from Disrupting the Pattern: A Call for Love and Solidarity (online)
When we know that we inter-are with others, we know that there is no separate giver and no separate receiver of our gifts. We simply are together and naturally work together in solidarity.
If we believe that there is a self and a separate other, then the idea of objects existing outside of ourselves also arises and we can become attached or aversive to those objects. When we are caught in attachment, we reinforce our misperception of separateness and our fear keeps us clinging to our possessions. We think there is a way for our “self” to be safe. But the only way for us to truly be free from fear and clinging is to be in solidarity with the whole cosmos. This is the foundational teaching of the Buddha and our teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, meant to liberate us from our prison of self.
In the Discourse on the Better Way to Catch a Snake, the Buddha asks his monks, “Is there anything you can hold onto with attachment that will not cause anxiety, exhaustion, sorrow, suffering, and despair?” The monks answered, “No.” The Buddha goes on to say, “Whenever there is an idea of self, there is also an idea of what belongs to the self. When there is no idea of self, there is no idea of anything that belongs to the self. Self and what belongs to the self are two views that are based on trying to grasp things that cannot be grasped and to establish things that cannot be established.”
On Monday, I’ll share a Zen story, a Broadway story, and a personal story about solidarity. I’ll also share some quotes from the 8th Century teacher poet Shantideva on how we can become a Bodhisattva and learn to act in generosity and solidarity.
If with kindly generosity
One merely has the wish to soothe
The aching heads of other beings
Such merit knows no bounds.
-- Verse 22 of the chapter on the Excellence of Bodhicitta in The Way of the Bodhisattva by Shantideva
We will then ponder together some questions:
What gets in the way of our understanding and acting on inter-being and solidarity? Where are we generous? What are we still clinging to?
With much love,
Annie.
True blue lake.