Butterflies Are Free

I remembered when I was a kid, I picked up a chrysalis and kept it in a jar until the butterfly started to come out.  So I broke open the cocoon to make it easier for the butterfly. When it finally came out, I noticed that it flew sort of feebly.  And then it died. Then I found out that it’s the struggle the butterfly makes trying to break through the cocoon that makes its wings strong.

Shepard Rifkin, Shepard, The Murderer Vine

The buddha nature that exists as wisdom-potential within our being is like a caterpillar.  When a caterpillar has completely grown, they form themselves into a pupa, also known as a chrysalis.  Within the chrysalis, the caterpillar undergoes an extraordinary transformation, called ‘metamorphosis.’  When metamorphosis is complete, a butterfly emerges, perhaps one with strong, beautiful wings.

Two elements are necessary for this process to be successful.  One is transformation.  The other is struggle.  In terms of Buddhism, a person who does not change cannot become a buddha.  A person who does not struggle, in the sense of making effort, cannot become a buddha.  Since we are talking about sentient beings and not insects, there is a third element that is crucial and that is the aspect of mind.

To ordinary persons, buddha potential, located within the mind, is obscured by illusion.  An ordinary person does not yet have the ability to see the true aspect of reality, much less his or her own enlightened nature.  However, a buddha sees through the veil of illusion and knows the world as it truly is.  And, a buddha recognizes that all living things are also buddhas, or potential buddhas.  A potential buddha must undergo some struggle and develop their their mind, in order to have strong wings and free themselves from illusion.

In the Anguttara Nikaya, the Buddha states:

“This mind is luminous, shining brightly, but colored by our delusions.  Ordinary people do not understand this, and so they do not develop the mind.  This mind is luminous, shining brightly, and free from delusion.  Noble wayfarers understand this well, so for them there is development of the mind.”

Development means effort, work, struggle.  In a religion like Christianity, “works” or good deeds can never win salvation.  Only faith in God, only through loving God.  Potential buddhas do not need to call upon supernatural beings and deities.  If a wayfarer trusts the potential within the mind and expends effort to develop that potential, then we call that person a realized buddha.  This, to my thinking, is the most potent form of empowerment.  We call it jiriki or “inner power.”

“Your destiny is shaped according to the combination of conditions pre-determined at birth and other factors that you are able to change through your own efforts.”

–Ryuho Okawa, The Essence of Buddha

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A Single Voice can Change the World

Toward the end of his life and career, Lenny Bruce, perhaps the most influential comedian of the 20th century, had been busted for obscenity so many times that dealing with the court cases became a full time job. It became an obsession. It was all Lenny could think about or talk about. It took over his act. During his performances, he’d go into long rants about his court battles. He’d read aloud from the trial transcripts. Watch the Lenny Bruce Performance Film and you’ll see. He was no longer “Dirty” Lenny and he wasn’t funny. He had become unhinged, unfit to be a comedian.

I had never watched a Trump rally until the other night. Just saw sound bites. I was curious, so I tuned in. Trump took the stage in Phoenix and began his long rant about his battles, his foes, his feuds. At one point, he read aloud from a transcript of his Charlottesville remarks. It was astounding. Unbelievable. It reminded me of Lenny. Trump is unhinged and unfit to be President.

During the 16 minute reading of his Charlottesville statements, Trump was interrupted by a protester, who was immediately led out of the arena by security.

“Don’t bother,” Trump said, as the crowd booed. “It’s just a single voice. And not a very powerful voice.”

Actually, a single voice can be very powerful. Just one voice can change the world. You probably already know this, but if you’ve forgotten, today I will remind you.

Galileo was just one voice. He said that the Earth and planets revolve around the Sun. He was tried by the Inquisition, forced to repudiate his view, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. In the beginning, Gandhi’s was but a single voice, and not a very powerful one physically, and yet that voice led his country to freedom through a non-violent revolution that still stands as a focal point for inspiration for all people. Rosa Parks was just one voice, and when she said “No” and refused to move to the back of the bus, she changed the world. Lenny Bruce was a single voice; his obscenity-laden performances were protests against a repressive society that censored free speech.

And Malala Yousafzai is a single voice. A human rights activist and an advocate for education for women,  the Taliban tried to silence her, murder her, but she survived. Her single voice inspires the world.

51 years ago, June 1966, during the height of apartheid, Robert F. Kennedy gave a speech in South Africa to the National Union of South African Students on the occasion of Cape Town University’s “Day of Reaffirmation of Academic and Human Freedom”.  Many have considered it Kennedy’s greatest speech:

“Each time man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

– Robert F. Kennedy

There is always a ripple when one person with courage stands up and raises a single voice in protest.

A voice that is always angry, that creates division, that is insincere, belittles others, spreads bigotry and hate, may seem powerful in the short run. However, history shows us that such voices are eventually silenced. Truth and justice are undefeated in the long run.

The power of a single voice is encouraging, emboldening. When we unite to make our voices heard, the resulting chorus becomes a potent and unbeatable force for change.

A single voice can inspire the world. A single voice can change the world.

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Phil Ochs had a rather smooth and engaging voice, yet there was a edge to it, provided by his sometimes stinging words.  He was a songwriter, a protest singer, an outlaw like Lenny, a revolutionary like Gandhi, a voice for peace like Malala Yousafzai.  His is a largely forgotten voice today, but listen to his songs and you’ll hear a voice that resonates with likable temerity and timeless truth.  An unsung singer, a single voice…

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PBS Mindfulness Goes Mainstream

A few nights ago, I watched a new PBS documentary Mindfulness Goes Mainstream.  The program explores the spreading mindfulness movement and the transformative power of mindfulness practice.  It features remarks from such people as singer Jewel, journalist Dan Harris, “mindfulness” pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn, Don Siegel,  Jack Kornfield, and clothing designer Eileen Fisher.

Viewers will learn about how many different sectors of our society are embracing mindfulness.  For instance, the NBA, NFL, corporate America, US Marine Corp, and law enforcement.  There’s also a nice summary about the scientific evidence behind mindfulness benefits.

The modern mindfulness movement has received criticism for being a diluted form of Buddhist meditation.  I am more or less in agreement with this, and yet, I find it hard to disparage the idea of so many diverse groups learning to calm their minds.  Police officers using mindfulness to resist anger and stress seems a very positive thing.   I am inclined to agree with Dan Harris who remarked, “I do believe that if you get a broad enough swath of people to do this it has the potential to change the way we are as a society.”

It did bother me that the program did not once mention the Buddha, Buddhism or dharma.  I feel that a sort of creative commons license applies to mindfulness and other aspects of the teachings – you are free to use any portion you like as long as you attribute it to Buddha-dharma.

And while I’m all in favor of corporate America getting mindful, I do wonder if the real purpose isn’t just to make more productive employees.  To me, they have some warped notions.  One person, Chade-meng Tan, former “Jolly Good Fellow” at Google, talked about mindfulness in corporate American and made the argument that compassion leads to better business.  He said, “The way to do that is align compassion with success and profit.”

Right.  Two values the Buddha routinely affirmed were success and profit.  So, here is one of the possible dangers of mindfulness sans Buddhism, distortion.  What is intended to dispel illusion because a creator of illusion.

Another problem I had with the program was that the filmmakers seemed to oversell the practice. Several time they tell viewers that mindfulness can change “every aspect of your life.”  And in as little as 2-8 weeks.  While studies have shown that short periods of exposure to mindfulness practice can produce neurobiological changes, improve concentration, reduce stress, and so on; to change every aspect of your life, to affect lasting change in how we think and feel and how we deal with persistent life tendencies, takes patience and a real commitment to the practice.

Mindfulness Goes Mainstream is the kind of show you’ll find on 20/20 or Dateline NBC.  It struck me as representative of the mindfulness craze itself.  Kind of lightweight.  However, to be fair, it was a lot of ground to cover in one hour.  Viewers would be better served if each segment of the show were a 30-60 minute episode.

Watch it if you’re looking for a pleasant way to kill some time.  You may be encouraged by some of the personal stories.  But if you’d like a more detailed and realistic explanation of mindfulness, you would be better off reading a book like Henepola Gunaratana’s Mindfulness in Plain English.  The first chapter of the book begins with these words:

“Meditation is not easy.  It takes time and it takes energy.  It also takes grit, determination and discipline.  It  requires  a  host  of  personal  qualities  which  we  normally  regard  as unpleasant  and  which  we  like  to  avoid  whenever  possible.  We can sum it all up in the American word ‘gumption’.  Meditation takes ‘gumption’.  It is certainly a great deal easier just to kick back and watch television.”

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Four Statues of the Apocalypse: Washington, Jefferson, Jackson and Lee

I’m stuck on what happened in Charlottesville.  Can’t get it out of my mind.  I am so disappointed that we haven’t been able to make more progress in diminishing the presence of racism, hate and violence in our country.   I’m frustrated.  There isn’t much I can do.  Except share some thoughts, if you don’t mind.  I warn you though, I may repeat myself…

Yesterday, Trump complained about the removal of Robert E. Lee statues.  He said that he’d heard Stonewall Jackson was next.  What then, he asked.   Are we going to take down statues of Washington and Jefferson because they were slave-owners?

These remarks alone show that Trump has zero understanding of the problem of race in America.  Yes, all four men had owned slaves.  However, unlike Jackson and Lee, Washington and Jefferson were not traitors to their country.  Jackson and Lee were military men who attempted to destroy the Union, split our country in two.  And it is for that alone they are remembered.

Washington, on the other hand, led the colonial troops into battle for the purpose of establishing a new country free from tyranny.  Washington and Jefferson were founders of our nation. But their efforts were directed toward something greater than merely the formation of another country, they envisioned the creation of a new society based upon freedom and equality and the sovereignty of the people.

They were involved, as Tagore put it, in the “constant struggle for a great Further…” our “ceaseless adventure of the Endless Further.”   The difference between them and the two Confederate generals should be obvious.

While looking up some information on Stonewall Jackson, I ran across this quote from James Robertson, the preeminent scholar on Confederate Lieutenant General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson:  “[In] his mind the Creator had sanctioned slavery, and man had no moral right to challenge its existence. The good Christian slaveholder was one who treated his servants fairly and humanely at all times.”

I suspect that this was the predominate rationalization for slave owning among whites at that time.  I hope most Christians today reject the idea that God would sanction the bondage of any of his creatures no matter how well they were treated.  But Jackson and the others lived in a different time.

Jefferson denounced slavery, and yet he was unable to free himself from what he called its “deplorable entanglement.”  His relationship to slavery is still debated by scholars.  But the important thing is that some 48 years before Stonewall Jackson was born, Thomas Jefferson had this to say about the Creator, the most revolutionary words ever composed:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The American Declaration of Independence, the real shot heard round the world.

On July 9, 1776, several thousand Continental soldiers had come to New York from Boston to defend the city from the British.  General George Washington ordered them to gather at the parade grounds in Lower Manhattan at six o’clock to listen to a declaration endorsed by the Continental Congress declaring American independence from England.

When the troops heard Jefferson’s inspiring words about equality and the right to pursue happiness – the right of self-determination – and then heard the list of grievances Jefferson compiled of King George III’s tyrannical violations of those rights, the soldiers were motivated to march down Broadway where they toppled and decapitated a statue of George III.  They melted the statue down and made bullets to use against the British.

It appears that removing statues is another old American tradition.

A year before he died, Jefferson wrote in a letter that his stirring words were “intended to be an expression of the American mind.”

Some 80 years later, Abraham Lincoln’s mind was inspired by the same words.  In 1856, he said, “Let us revere the Declaration of Independence… Let us readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices and policy which harmonize with it.”  In his own declaration, The Gettysburg Address, Lincoln proclaimed that our nation was “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Franklin Roosevelt, a great admirer of Jefferson, was obsessed with building a memorial to him.  He laid the cornerstone in 1939.  He ordered all the trees between the Memorial and the White House cut down so that he would have an unencumbered view of the memorial every day.  In 1943, during his address at the dedication of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. , Roosevelt called Jefferson the “Apostle of Freedom”:

“The Declaration of Independence and the very purposes of the American Revolution itself, while seeking freedoms, called for the abandonment of privileges… [Jefferson] believed, as we believe, in certain inalienable rights.  He, as we, saw those principles and freedoms challenged.  He fought for them, as we fight for them.”

The fight Roosevelt was referring to was the World War, the struggle against fascism.  We are still fighting that fight for fascism has not disappeared from the earth and we are still struggling to abandon privilege, the privilege of being born into wealth, of being white or male.  What did Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee fight for?  The right to own slaves?  There were a number of issues that caused the American Civil War, taxation and States Rights, but most scholars maintain the primary cause was the South’s desire to protect the institution of slavery.   Not a just cause.

George Washington, in his Farewell Address (1796) as president, warned that the establishment of political factions, “sharpened by the spirit of revenge,” and would lead to “formal and permanent despotism.”  We have not heeded this warning and we have fallen short of fulfilling the promise of Jefferson’s ideals.   We have to heal the wounds of division because as Lincoln said “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”  And we must stand.  We must stand up for the ideals of equality and stand against this new wave of hate and racism.

Jackson, Lee and all the other Confederate leaders and supporters were traitors.  They betrayed our “American Mind.”

Jefferson and Washington, though imperfect men, sought to build a nation not tear it apart.  Jefferson’s words continue to inspire us 241 years later as we work to create a more perfect and just union.  And this is why their statues and memorials won’t be coming down.

Those who brandish Nazi flags and swastikas, offer Nazi salutes, glorify traitors, preach hate and bigotry and try to divide our country, betray the American Mind.  And those who aid and comfort them are complicit in this betrayal.  It is, in a sense, a form of treason.

We must meet this treason with reason.  Once again, dialogue not violence is the best weapon against prejudiced views.  It is the only way to change their minds.

“Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.”

– Jane Goodall

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Not Hate, Fear

Mahatma Gandhi is supposed to have said, “The enemy is fear.  We think it is hate; but it is really fear.”  This is an unsourced quote and may not be legitimate; nonetheless, it speaks truth.  I think it helps explains what happened in Charlottesville, what has happened so many times in the past, and what will undoubtedly transpire in the future.

I think it is clear that we need a new approach to this problem.  First, though, it would be helpful to have a better understanding of the nature of the problem, an understanding rooted in compassion.

It is not hate, it’s fear.  The Dalai Lama says,

“If we examine how anger or hateful thoughts arise in us, we will find that, generally speaking, they arise when we feel hurt, when we feel that we have been unfairly treated by someone against our expectations.”

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, a hater whose support Trump refused to reject during the campaign, was there in Charlottesville, tweeting that “our people were peacefully assembling” but were attacked by “radical leftists,” and “So, after decades of White Americans being targeted for discriminated & anti-White hatred, we come together as a people, and you attack us?”

After two hundred years of Black Americans being targeted for worse things than discrimination, all we’ve been saying is let’s give equality a chance.  When one group achieves equality and freedom, everyone benefits in the end.  The plight of white people in this country doesn’t quite stack up against the sufferings endured by the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people, either.  Duke’s argument is just not reasonable, and yet behind it is palpable fear, emotion as solid as a stone statue of Robert E. Lee.  Income inequality, job loss, old and familiar values giving way to new ones that seem threatening and foreign, a world moving ahead too swiftly – these are real concerns for many people.  Not just in the South but all across America.  When people are for whatever reason unable to adapt and change, it produces fear and, in some cases, leads them into hate.

Speaking of General Lee, I’ve always thought it interesting that very few in the South have ever thought about the fact that these statues, like the one I used to see at Lee Circle in my old hometown of New Orleans, are monuments to a traitor.  Furthermore, Lee was a slave-owner, responsible for hundreds of thousands of war deaths, and a white supremacist.

I imagine that when black men or women pass by these statues of Lee it produces the same kind of emotion that Jewish men or women must experience when they see a swastika spray-painted on a schoolhouse wall.  It’s taken a long time for us to recognize that.  And it’s why General Lee has to go.

People in the grip of extreme fear cannot see this.  Fear is blinding, making it impossible to see oneself as others.

Reacting to the events in Charlottesville, former President Obama tweeted, “People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love…”

No one is born a racist.  It is an attitude that is acquired, learned around the dinner table, in school, in church, and nowadays, on social media.  Very little has changed since Bob Dylan penned these words 54 years ago:

He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
‘Bout the shape that he’s in…

But it ain’t them to blame… they’re only a pawn in a game, a game of fear.

At the time, civil rights activist and folklorist, Bernice Johnson Reagon told a journalist Only a Pawn in their Game was the first song that showed the poor white was as victimized by discrimination as the poor black.  We must understand this.  Not to the extreme that people like Duke take it, but to the extent where we aren’t demonizing anyone and we can see white supremacists as human beings whose liberation is our concern.

Offering up Nazi salutes is offensive.  Yesterday, as I watched the news from Charlottesville, I was eager to jump on the labeling-them-Nazis bandwagon.  But today, I’m not so sure…  On one hand, a historical perspective is crucial; we should never forget the terror of Nazism.  On the other hand, labels do little to promote understanding, which is the beginning point of compassion.

So, while we are right to denounce white supremacy, nationalism, hate and violence, unless condemnation is coupled with understanding of the fear that motivates their behavior and empathy with them as victims of fear, we won’t be moving forward anytime soon.

We can do it.  A 2016 study by David Broockman at Stanford University and Joshua Kalla at the University of California Berkeley found “that a single 10-minute conversation with a stranger could reduce prejudice toward transgender people and increase support for nondiscrimination laws.”  It’s conversation that involves what Thich Nhat Hanh calls ‘deep listening,’ the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person.  Through all this festering hatred and deep division our country is in danger becoming irrevocably torn apart.  We have tools, let’s use them and make this nation less brutal, less fearful, and a great country at last.

“May those whose hell it is to hate and hurt be turned into lovers bringing flowers.”

– Shantideva.

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Bob Dylan, at the historic 1963 March on Washington, is introduced by the late Ozzie Davis.

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