the buoyancy of non-harming

“It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”  Albert Einstein

 True attention is rare.  This is an unfortunate truth.  It’s hard to make the sacrifices needed to stand naked before your reality.  This has certainly been my experience in the spiritual  journey.    It has also been my experience in going vegan.  I have been unwilling to grant true attention to the plight of  the  gentle creatures that live among us,  have been in unspoken complicity with the factory farms and with the shortened, tortured and pitiful existence of their prisoners.  I’ve been willing to place my own comfort and ease above seeing things as they really are and possibly becoming  inconvenienced.  Possibly having my world turned upside down. 

Which it has.

What is amazing to me is how wonderful this upside down world is!  How good I feel!  How light – as if a heavy load has been taken off of my shoulders.  I recently read about a spiritual practice called Tikkun Olam (at awake is good).  This is a Jewish tradition of putting back together the broken world.  Looking around at the violence, fear and suffering, it is easy to become overwhelmed.  With Tikkun Olam, one picks up one tiny misplaced piece and tries to find a way to put it back in place.  Maybe not change the world, but change one tiny piece of it.  That is what I feel I am doing.   I am picking up a tiny piece of thread and reworking it into the tapestry of life. 

Stanley Sapon defines veganism as : “an ethic that is committed to reverence and respect for all life and the planet that sustains it… bringing with it the joy of living with peace of spirit, and the comfort of knowing that one’s thoughts, feelings, words, and actions have a strongly benevolent effect on the world.”  That sounds like repairing the world to me.  That sounds like a way to live a more compassionate life, one that resounds with harmony and empathetic living by seeing and respecting the interconnectedness of all life.  I like knowing that my choices are having a benevolent effect on the world, animal and human.

I’ve been thinking of the yamas and niyamas, (which I understand to be less a list of dos and don’t than a declaration of who we are when we are connected to our true nature).  The very first of the 10 is the idea of non-violence, the ethical call to gentleness with both yourself and all of creation.   In my mind it has become the mantra of non-harming or compassion. 

This sense of being tender and withholding violence, judgment and criticism extends to myself and to all I encounter, as we are all part of  one living, breathing creation.  To harm you is to bring pain to myself.  To see myself in others is so freeing.  To just be with them, without having to stand judgement over them, is liberating and refreshing.  We are the same - we have the same obstacles and difficulties, we suffer both necessarily and needlessly, we want to be happy, we long for clarity and meaning in life.  I find myself loving people quickly, finding something interesting in those I see at work, daily or maybe only that one chance meeting ~ two eggs over-light, hold the grits.

I’ll not keep on about this change…it’s  just that this is quite momentous to me.  It reminds me of a moment I felt was life-changing in the past – deciding during a class on world religions when in my early 30s that there may be something out there…after being an agnostic since my early teens – this felt life-changing.  And, truly, it was.  I think I got off track a bit for a few years by letting myself get too drawn into conservative churchianity.  Yet, I think my heart was in the right place.  I constantly hungered for God and ran after Him with all I knew to do.  I prayed, I studied the sacred texts.  I tore apart the words in the original languages, as best as a lay-person can.  I studied the Bible, memorized it, prayed it, sang it.  I fell in love with the early mystics, found the echo to my longings in their words.   They wrote of a similar yearning to be ravished by the One. 

Perhaps one day I will find my way back to a connection with what some call the Divine.  I don’t have it now, although I long for it and pay  homage to it with my Kwan Yin and my Om Mani Padme Hum.  And in my head, I sometimes still converse with what I think of as the Witness.  I don’t know if it’s habit or sentimentality or something more sacred.  I just know that there is still that desire in me to have this conversation and I’ve  recently been relenting on my silent treatment.  I find myself  enriched and restored by this occasional conversation, so I let it be, without understanding it.  I just let it be what it is.  No expectations for more, no need for promises of anything at all to come.  Just the sharing of insight or wonder in some simple moment. 

Hmm.  The tone of this blathering on went from going vegan to going sacred.  I guess that is because I feel somehow more harmonious, more peaceful.  My palate has begun to feel, well, cleansed.  Simple food is becoming delightful to me and I feel excited by the prospect of a more healthy attitude towards food in general.   And, surprising me, this change has also worked within me a renewal of my committment to living a compassionate life.  I’ve been reminded of the need to give true attention to the ethical precepts of non-harming, truthfulness, generosity, sexual maturity, non-possesiveness… the yamas.  And also the niyamas… trying to keep always the observances of simplicity, contentment, spiritual practice (the clearing of daily residue that  can blur my perception), self-reflective awareness and also an awareness of  what I have come to think of as the Witness.  I didn’t expect my soul to expand like it has from this one decision, but I am certainly feeling buoyant beyond anything I have felt for a very long time.

the face on your plate

Isn’t man an amazing animal?  He kills wildlife – birds, kangaroos, deer, and all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes and dingoes – by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed.  Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and eats them.  This in turn kills man by the million, because eating all those animals leads to degenerative and fatal health conditions like heart disease, kidney disease, and cancer.  So then man tortures and kills millions more animals to look for cures for these diseases.  Elsewhere, millions of other human beings are being killed by hunger and malnutrition because food they could eat is being used to fatten domestic animals.  David Coats

I just finished reading “The Face on Your Plate” and I must admit that my life is changed.  I’ve been leaning toward vegetarianism for such a long time now, but haven’t had the guts to make it happen.  This book is really good…only a few chapters long, it focuses on the damage done to the earth, the suffering of animals on factory farms, denial and living as a vegan.  Who was it that said the a mind stretched by a new idea never regains its former dimensions?  So true.  What you know, you can never “un”know.  Having read the chapter on the lives of chickens, cows and pigs, I can’t bear the thought of eating them ever again.  Knowing the details of their lives, the suffering they endure…I can’t bear to be a part of that anymore. 

I mean, I “kind-of” knew that things weren’t the way they used to be on the family farm.  Chickens don’t run around pecking and sunning, cows don’t roam the fields and suckle their calves, pigs don’t root and roll in the mud for the sheer joy of it.  I “kind-of” knew things must be much different than that now, but I wouldn’t let myself think about it.  Too late for that now.  Now I have the picture in my head of the calf ripped from its mother at birth, both of them bellowing and obviously in distress.  I see the mother in a pen just large enough to stand in her own waste, not even large enough to lay down.   I see the calf fed a sickening gruel that includes ground up cow(!), similar to what his mother eats.  I see him thrown into a crate, shipped off to become a package of veal.

I hear the cackling of chickens as they have their beaks clipped, right through nerve endings similar to our nail bed.  I see them crammed into cages smaller than a piece of notebook paper, where they live their whole lives, never seeing the sun, never running or pecking or sitting in a bush or tree at night. 

And I feel the sorrow of the pig who can’t get to her piglets below her in the wire cage where they can look up and nurse, but not be touched at all by their mother’s loving snout.

I’ll stop now.  I won’t talk anymore,even though there are more things like this in my head.  And the book doesn’t even talk about the slaughter of these animals, just the suffering of their lives.  It’s like my eyes just suddenly opened and I wept at the sight of how cruel we are to these gentle beings.  I don’t want to be a “born-again’ veggie…don’t want to be preachy…don’t want to force my convictions onto any one else.  I only know that I have been changed and I’m glad about it.  I already feel lighter, more spacious and free.  One of the main tenets I try to live by is to do no harm.   Thanks to reading this book, I think I’m doing a better job now of keeping that vow.

embryonic compassion

Some interesting thoughts on pain and suffering from Norman Fischer:

So this is what I learned…about the meaning of loss:  love rushes into the absence that is loss, and that love brings inspired action.  If we are able to give ourselves to the loss, to move toward it – rather than recoil in an effort to escape, deny, distract, or obscure – our wounded hearts become full, and out of that fullness we will do things differently and we will do different things.

He goes on to talk about that sore spot or rawness that is painful and that we try to cover over or protect.  He points out that, although painful and no fun, the sore spot is valuable.  He tells about how Trungpa Rinpoche call the sore spot “embryonic compassion”.   I love that.  Potential compassion coming from our wounds waking us up to love and to loving action.  This is precious and wonderful to me in the way it brings reason and purpose to suffering.

He then goes on to describe the darkness that descends on our thoughts and emotions after the shock of loss has passed and fear and despair arrive:

We are anxious about our uncertain future, over which we have so little control.  It’s easy to fall into the paralysis of despair, coming back to our childish default position of feeling completely vulnerable and unprepared in a harsh and hostile world.  This fearful feeling of self-diminishment may darken our view to such an extent that we find ourselves wondering whether we are worth while people, whether we’re capable of surviving in this tough world, whether we deserve to survive, whether our lives matter, whether there is any point in trying to do anything at all.

This describes perfectly how it feels when the dark veil falls – the thoughts reflect so closely what I’ve experienced.  He goes on to point out that this sense of loss, despair and fear is terrible, that we hate it, but that it is exactly what we need.  It is the embryo of compassion stirring to be born.  Birth is painful.  Like Jung said, “There is no coming to life without pain.”  Oh, how we resist this!  We spend much of our time administering our own personal versions of an epidural…alcohol, dope, food, tv, computer, books, busyness, and on and on…

Norman points out that instead of medicating, this is a perfect time for spiritual practice because now meditation (or your practice of choice) has gone from being a lifestyle choice or method of self-improvement to becoming a matter of survival!

I love the way Norman doesn’t diminish the power of darkness or try to cover it over with snappy spiritual slogans.  Instead:

The goal is not to make the thoughts and feelings go away:  when there is loss or trouble, it is normal to feel sorrow, fear, despair, confusion, discouragement, and so on….but it would be good to have some perspective – and occasional relief – so these thoughts don’t get the best of us and become full-blown demons pushing us around.

Hard times are painful and no rational person would ever think to bring them on intentionally, yet disasters are inevitable in a human lifetime and it is highly impractical not to welcome them when they come.

Welcome them?  That is a novel thought.  Yet, we can welcome them, because these hard times remind us of what’s important, what is basic, beautiful and worth while about being alive.  When all is going well, we have a tendency to become dull to all that we have, to all of our blessings.  When we have less, we appreciate more.  We have more openness to wonder and joy – our hands are open, less grasping and greedy.

Seen this way – loss, pain and hard times have the potential for bringing more happiness, more awareness of the joys in life, bigger hearts and more compassion.  It can bring a slower, more heartfelt and realistic style of loving and being in this world.

Gabriela Mistal:  I give thanks on this day and every day for the ability you gave me to gather the beauty of the land as if it were water that one takes with the lips, and also for the wealth of pain that I can carry in the depths of my soul without dying.

a reminder to seek peace from a young soldier

He looked like a young hipster, almost, with his hat cocked jauntily and his bling.  His head was shaved close, but that isn’t unusual these days when anything goes with hair.  His manner was polite and engaging, his smile innocent and childlike.  We struck up a conversation as I served him his waffles and eggs.  He was in town for training, waiting for deployment.  I admitted that I was surprised, that he didn’t seem the “military type”.  He grinned and explained he was special ops.  Better counseling when he returns, he explained.  I stopped and took a breath.  His face was open, his eyes connecting but sad.  I asked him why he was doing this.  He showed me a new tattoo on his arm, an elaborate cross with a name in the center.  When I asked if it was a loved one, he just smiled sadly and told me no, it was his own name.  He wanted his life to have meaning, wanted it to count.

I was called to pick up food before he could notice the tears in my eyes.  A few minutes later he left, only to return and sit in the waiting chairs against the windows with a guitar case.  He slipped his instrument out gently, like an affectionate lover and began to caress it with tender fingers.  Quietly he played as the customers ate.  My coworkers and I stopped – being played for at waffle house isn’t a common occurrence.  He kept his head low, cradling the guitar and sending out a haunting, soft melody that caused my heart to contract.  When he was done, he stood and looked over at me again.  “I won’t forget you,” I mouthed silently.  His lips twitched, he touched his hat in an old-fashioned gesture and left, jumping into the taxi with the other young men and women he’d come from the base with.

I’m remembering him this morning, feeling sad about the bitter harshness and cruelty of war.  Feeling sad about the children who are hungry, the women who are abused and the general state of the world.  It can be overwhelming.  I stop, take a breath.  Be peace, I remind myself.  You can’t change the world, but you can change yourself.  Look at the suffering, yes.  Don’t close your eyes.  But don’t give up in despair, don’t give up hope.  Be peace.  It’s all you can do.  And it’s enough.

Prop H8

 

melissa and tammy etheridge

Tammy wrote about her reaction to the Prop 8 passing on her blog:

a rose is a rose is a rose.

when the government declared the illegality of interracial marriages unconstitutional in the late 60s, it was not a unanimous decision. in fact, 80% of the country was against it. thank goodness the country led us into better perspectives, and didn’t leave it up to the humanly flawed citizens. but now… we’re going to VOTE on equality? “is this person the same value as that person? say ay or nay…”

would rosa have wanted the people to VOTE whether or not she could get on the bus? would martin have waited for a VOTE to see if everyone thought blacks should be equal? i think not.

no matter how many voters there are wrenching away MY RIGHTS into their bigoted hands…. you can’t take my family away from me. you can’t make us stop loving each other. you simply can’t.

try to vote on that.

PRESIDENT OBAMA!!! if you can finally make it to first-class citizenship, then so can i. one day.

Taylor

One of my sheros is my granddaughter Taylor.  She is 9 years old, going on 100.  No, I swear, she is one of those children of which one would remark, “She has an old soul”.  I remember her as a baby having those wise eyes babies sometimes have, as if they haven’t yet forgotten the lessons of a past life.

 This is why she is one of my sheros:

*She loves animals, all animals.  I seem to be missing this gene.  I kind of LIKE animals, but love them?  Not really.  This makes me feel like I’m lacking in love.

*She told me she wants to be a hippie when she grows up.  How could I not love that?  When I asked her what she meant, she replied, “You know Grandma, where I love people and animals instead of money and care about the earth and all that”.

*A couple of weeks ago she organized, on her own, a charity run for Cancer Research and the local Wildlife Org.  She got a bunch of kids together at a local park, a few teachers and the Principal, organized the race, along with a homemade trophy for the winner, etc.  She raised 60 dollars.

*Last week she went to the salon and had 12 inches cut off her hair for Locks of Love.

That is just a small example of why she is one of my sheros.  Plus, she is funny as hell, smart as a whip, and real.  I’ve never known anyone just like her.  Not even two digits yet and already making the world a better place.

don’t be hatin’

I find it almost impossible to hate anymore.

Even those around me, near to me — those who act very wrongly.  I begin to try to figure out what brought them to where they are.  Then I imagine what their reality must be.  How must they view the world? 

We often warp the things happening around us and to us by our own faulty understanding of things – by a false reality.  It’s like being terribly myopic, yet not realizing it.  We always judge our own perceived reality as being valid.  Yet, things happen to us that cloud our vision. We may tell ourselves a completely different story about what is happening now or even what happened in the past.  We continually color in new shades to this ever-evolving perceived reality as we grow ever more clear sighted … or more blinded by wrong perception.  In light of this, I imagine that behaviors that are seen as outrageous or wrong are perfectly legitimate in the mind of the one acting. 

Added to this is the deepening awareness of my own tendency to color incorrectly.  I only need remember returning to the scene of a crime and finding new evidence based on new vision.  Also, I’ve become much more aware of my own dark side, my own capacity for error and perversity.  I can find something to relate to in most of the weaknesses or shortcomings I observe in others.  This releases compassion, which wipes my vision clear of the cloudiness of judgement.

Because of this, annoying people are often cool with me.  Someone who drives the rest of the folks around me crazy often doesn’t bother me much at all.  I find I am usually almost ridiculously tolerant of people’s contradictions, sometimes even their hypocricies.  I’m happy about that.  I feel free — free to enjoy life as a great movie with loads of interesting plot twists rather than a heated battle between everything I like and everything I don’t like.

 Speaking of becoming more free … the blogs I love best are those written by folks who have developed an uncanny ability to refine meaning from the fascinating but often confusing chaos that is life, helping me to re-imagine my own reality.  You’ve let me hitch a ride a bit further down the road … and I thank you.

A Little Child Shall Lead Them

“Guess what I want most in the whole wide world, Grandma!” I looked at Taylor across the table, munching the fries from her Happy Meal. I knew right away – I remembered her talking about it on the phone a few days ago. “That toy puppy, what did you call it, um, that rescued puppy you told me about?” “Yes, yes! Only, do you know why they call it that?”

I’m not sure what this toy actually is. It sounds like one of those stuffed animals that wags its tail and barks and does all sorts of doggie-stuff so the poor kids won’t have to use their imaginations. But thinking it must refer to a puppy rescued from a pound, I answered her without thinking.

“Maybe it’s like when you go to the pound and rescue a dog or cat.” Taylor frowned in confusion. “What do mean, rescue them?” Oh, no. Shit. I’m in a corner now. Well, let’s see. She’s 6 years old now. Her Mom works real hard to be honest with her. I tried to wiggle out, but she kept catching me. Finally, I broke it to her, “Well, it’s when someone goes to the pound and picks out an animal to take home and saves them from being put to sleep.” Maybe she’ll be satisfied with that, I thought.

No, not so easy as that. “But Grandma, how long do they have to sleep for? Is it a really long time and that’s why they need to be rescued?” Sigh. I really wasn’t going to get out of this.

“Forever, Taylor. They sleep forever,” I said gently. Her eyes grew large. “But, Grandma”, she protested, “that’s just like dying! Do they DIE?” Oh, crap. Crap, crap, crap. She was staring at me intently. I slowly shook my head yes. “But Grandma, that is really sad. I think it’s so sad I’m gonna cry!” Which she proceeded to do. Tears streamed down her shocked face, her cheeks flushing with anger at the unfairness of it.

I drew her to me. I smoothed her hair and let her cry. I would try to explain later about overcrowding, about how they would suffer if they had to live their lives in a small cage, how there seemed to be no other answer. But for now, I let her cry. She would have a rebuttal for all my excuses, of course. Bigger pounds with huge fields for the puppies to run in. Large staffs of volunteer helpers to bathe and feed.

As I sat stroking Taylor’s hair, I remembered something I’d read recently about dolphins. About how they do real work, use language, play using a high degree of whimsicality and even seem to reflect on death, exhibiting high concern when one of their members dies. There was a description of a fishing boat carrying a garbage heap of dead dolphins that had been trapped in drift gill netting for tuna. The dolphins were being tossed overboard, while the dolphins who had escaped the nets bobbed beside the boat, watching and making an eerie, wailing sound almost like crying. The article finished by showing evidence that dolphins are beaching themselves out of despair when caught in polluted water.

Dolphins despairing, weeping over what humans are doing to their waters. Suddenly, that image merged with Taylor’s weeping and my own eyes filled with tears. “Oh, sweetie,” I murmured into her hair, “if only grownups had the tender heart of a child for animals, for each other, for the earth.” I wept with her, wishing for a world where humanity cherished creation.

“And a little child shall lead them,” I thought to myself.

On The Death Penalty

I’ve been thinking about Peace again. How vital it is for each of us individually, in our relationships, in our communities, in our nations and in our world. How elusive it is. How I long to see mankind ascend into a more peaceful place. How unlikely that seems. How important it is that we strive for it, nonetheless.

As my mind drifted through thoughts of peace, I came upon an obstacle. The death penalty. Some would say it serves peace, removing scum and making all of us a bit safer. I disagree. I’m against the death penalty in principle. To kill to show we are against killing…what kind of logic is that? I think of what Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind.” One of your children hits another. How do you teach them not to hit? Punch them out? Hand out violence to train them not to be violent?

We are humans. We make mistakes. I’m talking about the process, not the crime. DNA testing has shown us this in horrifying ways. How many have we sentenced to death that were innocent? How many innocent have died? In the past five years, 346 people have been executed in the US. Almost thirty five hundred remain on death row. Twelve have been killed already this year.

And the death penalty is biased against the poor who cannot afford decent representation. Few white-collar killers sit on death row. Besides, where is the evidence that execution deters murder? It may satisfy revenge, but that is also questionable.
Listen to Bud Welch , whose daughter was killed in the Oklahoma bombing, “More violence is not what Julie would have wanted. More violence will not bring Julie back. More violence only makes our society more violent.”

I would like to see the end of this violent and inhumane “punishment”. I think it hurts all of us, eventually. As Mr. Welch said so eloquently, it makes us, as a nation, more violent.

Peace on Earth

Lately I’ve taken to joking that we would be better off if women ruled the world. My point being that there would be very few wars since no mother wants to send her son off to war. In a sense, I am only HALF joking. Maybe I should start a new group: MAW. Mothers Against War. Could we make a difference? MADD has. Hmmm.

Why do the politicians and leaders promise peace from war? This has never happened. Violence breeds more violence, either immediately or eventually. We are all guilty, we have all killed and been killed. Isn’t it time to find another way? Especially now, against this new enemy. Killing this enemy only strengthens it. New martyrs, new heroes to follow. More extremists willing and eager to die for the cause. More hatred for the bully, for the arrogant, rich Goliath shoving his way through the world, taking the best for himself always. We are not well thought of by most of the world. They see us as rich, self-absorbed, lazy, selfish, amoral and cruel. We are despised by many and the numbers grow quickly as the chasm dividing rich and poor grows ever wider.

Why was violence the first response to our tragedy? Was there no other alternative? I heard a story today of a mother’s heart break. Her daughter came home from kindergarten with a question bursting from her lips, “Are they still having that war in Afghanistan?” When the mom replied that she was sorry to tell her that they were, the child’s face crumbled and she cried out, “If people are just going to keep doing that, I wish I’d never been born!” This from a five year old. It took her mother several moments of pointing out the good in her life to show her why she did, in fact, want to be alive. But I imagine Mom’s heart was heavy long after her daughter’s hope was restored.

In the same article, I read a news story that touched my heart. It happened in a small desert village in Iran. A small toddling boy wandered off in a moment of inattention by the nanny. The parents, along with the rest of the village, spent the hours before nightfall searching in increasing panic and fear. The next morning they resumed the search, going farther and farther out until another night fell. Now only the parents could hold on to a shred of hope as they went out the third day, very far out, looking in caves and behind stones. Suddenly, deep within a cave, a miracle – the cry of a baby, the smell of a bear. The child was found alive with the she-bear in her den, alive, unscarred and well fed. The bear had been nursing the baby.

This is a story to hold to the heart, to treasure. A wonder to hold up like an umbrella against the storm of bad news, war, pain, suffering and despair raining down on us daily. Stories like this give hope. Sometimes the impossible happens.