Monday, September 16, we will meet online.
Dear Friends,
Thich Nhat Hanh & Martin Luther King, Jr. Statue at Magnolia Grove
This week we will meet Monday evening, Sept. 16, from 7-8:30PM EDT online, Wednesday morning, Sept. 18, from 7-8AM EDT in person at our meditation space (3812 Northampton Street NW), and Friday, Sept 20, 12-1PM EDT online.
Our Monday night sangha will be hosted by Magda with guest facilitator John Bell.
John shares: Ever since I was a boy growing up in a small working class shipyard town in the great Pacific Northwest, near Seattle, I have experienced jaw-dropping beauty of the natural world and human kindness overflowing, right alongside of heart-numbing horror of human cruelty, war, racism, and environmental damage. It never made sense to me, so I found myself on a life’s mission to find ways of helping to heal my own brokenness and reweave a broken world.
I came to social justice work through the civil rights and peace movements of the 1960s, and over the past 50 years I have had the good fortune of helping to create several national organizations engaging low income youth in self-development and leadership service to their communities.
Over my years in the Plum Village community, I helped start the Earth Holder Community, served on ARISE’s core group, and in the recent period, have shepherded development of the Beloved Community Circles, a network of small, local groups of practitioners engaged in mindful action. All of these efforts are still part of that life’s mission forged in my youth.
So, arriving in the present, in our world today, to me it is clear that suffering is deepening, the center is not holding, and our relationships with the earth and each other are out of whack. If you are like me, knowing this breaks our hearts, and we naturally want to help. We also carry deep in our hearts notions of the world we want—safe, compassionate, generous, just, sustainable, creative, and caring. The “beloved community” is a term that embodies this aspiration, adopted by Martin Luther King, Jr., and embraced by Thich Nhat Hanh, two of my primary teachers.
So, arising out of my lifetime of service and social justice activism, I just published a book called Unbroken Wholeness: Six Pathways to the Beloved Community (Parallax Press). It explores interconnected ways of helping to make the beloved community a reality, pathways which integrate social justice, emotional healing, and spiritual practice. The book offers stories, frameworks, and practical tools from my life’s work and learning. I hope it is of benefit to our miraculous and hurting world.
Here are the six pathways that the book explores (I think of them as nodes in Indra’s net, rather than the linear way listed below, where each node reflects all the other nodes, the mark of interbeing):
1. Cultivating wise view: Grounding our actions in spiritual depth, asking what is the story we are telling ourselves about the world we are in, and who we are.
2. Healing hurt and trauma: Releasing grief, despair, fear, and powerlessness so that we may think, act, and love more deeply.
3. Transforming racial and social oppression: Linking climate justice with racial justice and economic justice to break habits and structures of exploitation and foster human unity.
4. Building deep local community: Creating dependable spaces to recover, refresh, and renew ourselves in the face of environmental and social suffering, and to deepen solidarity.
5. Living ethically: Practicing reverence for life, deep listening, kind speech, and mindful consuming so that we nurture our compassion to counteract hatred, blame, and “othering.”
6. Engaging in mindful social action: Individually and collectively taking action that is nonviolent in methods, transformational in vision, and aimed toward realizing the Beloved Community.
On Monday, September 16, I am happy to join the Opening Heart Mindfulness Sangha to explore these six pathways with you. In dharma sharing, we might want to reflect on a couple of questions:
How do you embody or integrate any of the six pathways into your life presently?
Which of the six pathways is most challenging for you, and may need more development?
For you, what is appealing or what would you add to these six pathways?
In gratitude,
John Bell
Chan Dieu Tri / True Wonderful Wisdom
(Below is a short excerpt from the book.)
Current Crises Are Doors to Beloved Community
During the battle of Sarajevo in 1992, a cellist named Vedran Smailović went to the public plaza while the fighting was going on and began playing his cello amid the rubble. He did this every day for twenty-two days. The soldiers asked him, “Why are you playing where we’re bombing?” He asked back, “Why are you bombing where I’m playing?”
I love this story because it says that our viewpoint matters. Do we focus on the violence or the beauty? Our view shapes how we feel, think, and act. Regarding the climate situation, racism, economic injustice, or other social ills, what is our view? What is the narrative we are telling ourselves? How is that narrative affecting our feeling, thinking, and acting? What might be a wise view that leads to more wholesome outcomes? Wise view is a first crucial step on the path to deepening our consciousness because it sets the direction. If we hold wise view, no matter how long the journey is, we’re heading in the right direction. Without wise view, we can get stuck or wander in the wrong direction for a long time.
In relation to climate change, for example, many narratives are of the gloom-and-doom variety. They say things are bad and getting worse, or that we have passed the tipping points, or that we should buckle up for worse hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and seawater rise. These narratives are based in science, but they are also interpreted and shared by thought leaders who may be caught in a mindset of threat or worry, and publicized through a news media that makes money by breaking news based in drama or fear. The negative stories can be counterproductive by making people feel overwhelmed to the point of giving up. It is vital to nurture empowering narratives that encourage people, corporations, and governments to see possibilities for a global renewal rather than collapse.
I have found it useful to ask questions about my views. Which views are based in ignorance, hurt, or oppression? Which perceptions lead toward peacefulness, appropriate action, and wellbeing? In the absence of certainty, which narrative or view leads in the most life-affirming direction, as far as I can tell?
First, I need to keep reminding myself that all views, including mine, are wrong or incomplete because all views are partial. No one has the whole picture. Climate science points to a bleak future. Media outlets are feeding us daily doses of bad news about the world. All of this hooks our unhealed and often unrecognized reservoirs of despair and fear, feelings from childhood and generational trauma, which were there long before we knew anything about climate change or extractive capitalism or fake news. We are prone to projecting those old feelings onto today’s predicaments and say they are too big to change. But how might this be different if we had healed those old hurts? In truth, we do not know how this climate story ends.
Trying to hold my view with a certain humility, here is the story I am currently telling myself. I am deeply grateful to be alive at this moment in human history because the better angels of our nature are being called forth. Life is offering us an opportunity to ask fundamental questions about who we are. We might think of it as a collective hero’s journey that is asking us to unflinchingly face the truth of our predicament, overcome our demons and dragons, and call on the forces of love and courage to help bring us through this perilous time. It’s obvious that we need a collective awakening for civilization to continue, and that we need to evolve as human beings. So, I find it helpful to cultivate the view that curbing climate change and securing racial justice and ending poverty are doors of awakening, and steps toward realizing the Beloved Community.
What does that look like in action? What would it mean if each of us took full responsibility, self-defined, for the wellbeing of the Earth and its creatures? It would mean we do everything in our power. Do no harm. Deepen inner peace for outward action. Act as loving change agents. Practice compassion, inclusion, and forgiveness.
What are we called to do that is currently covered by feelings of confusion, despair, grief, and anger? What if we make the healing of those feelings paramount, in order to transform our timidity and confusion, in order to unlock our fuller collective power? What if we vow to do our best to choose love over fear in each situation? Might we begin to see a flourishing of compassion; a deepening knowing of our interdependence; a beginning anew in mending our ruptured racial relationships; a developing economy of sharing, enhanced collective power toward stopping the degradation of nature; a growing harmony among nations; an increasing wisdom about living lightly on Earth; and an enlivening ability to enjoy the present moment? And, oh yes, the end of bombing while cellos are playing?
No guarantees, but the effort is surely worthy of our noble nature.