essays

inspired by and dedicated with love to: Aqeela, Bill, David, Evon, Jon, Lynne, Orland & Tracy

You arrived here just after a meeting that really was a profound meeting. The “who” is not so important in the kind of way we usually talk about who…their titles and all that. What’s more important is who was there symbolically and who each of the nine people present brought there symbolically, who they brought there in terms of their lineage, who they brought there and represented in terms of their ancestors. What is particularly important is how different we all were and how differently that conversation could have gone, given how different we all were, what different world views we walk through the world with: everything from raised-in-the-yacht-club to raised-in-the-Watts-club, if you would.

This is a meeting that I have had before, in fact many times. And when I say that, what I mean is that we had the kind of meeting in which people, often of color, come into a space in which people who often, not always, but often–in the imagination of our culture–have more power, more influence, more access, more more…and this usually contributes to getting more. And they’re often “doing” something, these people in power and in places of privilege and with lots of access. And too often, as we understand our history, their “doing” something is the other folks’ “undoing” in some way. In a way that has become just too familiar. So familiar, in fact, that we forget that it’s even happening on a daily basis.

So, we had this kind of situation where these folks–we’re not talking about evil oil barons–these are good-hearted people that do good things in the world and have really good intentions. They were doing something that we–people that don’t sit in that particular seat of privilege–could see as an undoing, even with their best intentions. And as often, actually too often, happens, eventually we were invited to participate in this doing.

These folks of less privilege, of less material privilege were invited to participate, meaning be interviewed, show up, have our brains picked, to be a part of this doing that was happening. And as not often enough happens, we refused to participate. We refused not from an angry place, not from a stance of resistance and opposition; we refused from a place seated deeply in love, and in compassion, and in a desire to not make choices that have impact, that do not reflect our true ways of walking in the world. So our response was to say, our words and our images cannot be taken out of context from our perspective. They can be, of course, but we won’t allow it.

Thus, it is important for us to understand and contribute to the context in which our words and images are offered to the world in whatever form this doing takes. And in an exceptionally rare case, these people sitting in seats of material privilege and access heard that response for what it was: an invitation. And they received that invitation by making their own invitation: to sit together, which happens even less often than any of the other things I’ve already spoken of.

I guess this talk is basically about things that happen too often and not often enough.

So of course, we all arrive with our good faces on, ’cause that’s what we do. Right? In these movements of change, we come in and we’ve got our best faces painted on to mask the fear and trepidation of the potential discord, to mask the tightness in the pit of our belly when we know that truth needs to be spoken and we’re not sure that a space is going to be there for it to be received well. We wear our good faces to mask our awareness of being on a side of things that is outrageously imbalanced, and to be able to sit in that place, face-to-face with the people that represent some of how that imbalance shows up, that represent peoples whose mere presence speaks volumes and years and decades and centuries to aggression and violence and theft and things that none of us should even be able to imagine.

And we all come together with the recognition that nobody won and that was what was most important. That there were no winners and losers in that picture. That there was an imbalance that expresses itself as a material imbalance, but that no one left that story–and this continued story–unwounded, unscathed. No one leaves on top. No one is better off because of this imbalance, because of these thefts of land, of people, of cultures–entire cultures–of rituals, of practice and sometimes even of souls. That the people that were stolen from are no more wounded than the people that stole was the foundation of the conversation that allowed it to have an outcome that’s even more rare than all of the other things.

Because in acknowledging that the wounds are widespread–no matter how insidiously our culture tries to get us to believe that some of us are more wounded, that some of us are greater victims–we can see through that lie, through that myth, while acknowledging the relativistic view of imbalance of power; of access; of privilege; the consequence of the construct of whiteness in this culture; the construct of privilege in this culture; the construct of what it means to have success in this culture. Because we were all willing to see through that with our hearts–the eyes are tricky, tricky, tricky–that we would see through this myth with our heart, enabled us to sit in a field of love. And when we sit in this field of love, we create containers that are grounded in the truth that only love can allow to be expressed. Does that make sense? Only love can allow truth to be expressed…and received.

When we cultivate these containers, we transcend–at least for this limited space and time–all of the boundaries, all of the imbalances, all of the dissonance, and we recognize, even if just for a moment, that we are confused about reality and thus speak it and create it in ways that are out of balance and relationship and alignment with our truest selves. And when we glimpse that: that it’s our confusion, not the reality, but our confusion that generates this perception, this misperception… we can see the possibility of bringing it back. And when we can see the possibility of bringing it back and can have our hearts and our will aligned in a way that accepts responsibility for that possibility, then we have probability.

And when we have probability that is grounded in love and truth, we are fortified with the deep awareness that we have everything we need to set this right again. We have everything we need to bring into perfect view what is called in the buddhist Heart Sutra, “our upside down topsy-turvy thinking.”

We have everything we need.

And we look around the circle and there’s no more Watts clubs or yacht clubs. There’s no more whiteness and blackness. There’s no more connected to our lineage and disconnected from our lineage. We are the lineage. We are the lineage. We are the ancestors. We are the future. And we transcend all of our limited perceptions of space and time to connect deeply into that which we invariably stumble across and name Spirit. And we recognize that not a single one of us, not a single one of us has the right to refusal of the Call to be in that place of course-correction in whatever way we possibly can.

We don’t see it in the form of issues and politics and ‘what are we going to do about this or that’ first. We must first see it in the form of a revelation of our own divinity; we must first see it in the form of a realization that we have the right, each of us to, as my brother said in the circle: a clean heart and a clean mind. And it’s from that place that we’re endowed with the fierceness that let’s us stand in the fire of both truth and love, let’s us stand in the fire of truth and love, and not be afraid to be burned.

I mention this because it’s a practice. Just like the practice that each of you are engaging in here tonight. We take up the practice of being willing to stand in the fire. If we go and look for a cool spot, we’ve let ourselves down. And that’s not so bad, but look around you: you’ve let everyone in this room down; and look behind you: you’ve let all of your ancestors down; and look behind them: you’ve let all of their ancestors down; and if that’s not enough, look in front of you because you’ve let your grandchildren down.

It’s in this fire, truth and love…the truth that can only spring forth out of love. We think we get clever and we speak truth. There is no truth, if it does not come out of love. None. The only truth there is must necessarily come out of love. Not squishy appeasement, not fuzzy feel-goodness, not progressive-perkiness. Rooted, heartful, open, exposed, devastating, precise, unpredictable, messy, messy love.

And when you find yourself in your rich imagination of control, of “knowing something,” of having ideas and concepts about how it all works that is not rooted in love, please remember that it is that mind-stuff that generated this misperception that we are all abiding in right now. That if you could make one incredible promise to yourself, it would be that you would stop and reflect on every word that you speak: Does this come from love? Does this action come from love? Does this actually come from love?

And if it doesn’t, take it back and burn it in the fire pit of your being and wait for that which shines forth as love. And in case it’s not clear: every single one of you came here knowing the difference.

This talk was given at the Center for Urban Peace on October 18, 2007 in Berkeley, CA the evening after a daylong meeting with three much-loved spirit brothers and the leadership of Pachamama Alliance. If any good at all comes of it, may that benefit be extended to ALL my relations.

we were in the midst of learning about the art of assisting in yoga. lovely details about how using language and “presspoints” to enable yoga practitioners to find the wisdom of their own bodies to meet a pose, rather than being manipulated into one by the force of a teacher’s intention. also highlighted was the value of “nurturing touch” as a way to convey the support and love of a teacher…even when the posture wasn’t in need of actual assistance.

good stuff, for sure.

a young woman was curious about how to negotiate the fact that the population she would be working with, natives of the Bahamas islands, are culturally predisposed to not being receptive to physical touch.

“Jamaicans are usually pretty open, aren’t they–at least the women are, right?” queried one of the lead teachers.

“no, they are from the Bahamas,” the young woman asserted.

“yes, but Jamaicans…,” the teacher stumbled further.

“no, they’re Bahamians…” “…they’re like British…” , “…Bahamas Islands…”, “…not Jamaicans…,” everyone nearby tried to help her off the slippery slope she tread down.

“oh! i’m having difficulty with the Jamaicans that live next door to me,” blurts the teacher. “oops! it slipped in here! hee! hee!” she giggles with her usual contagious effusiveness.

needless to say, we moved quickly along to the next thing which was a silent demonstration of setu bandhasana by Slippery Slope teacher. the demo, which was a fine one, was met by what was still overly enthusiastic “oohs” and “aahs” and noticings of how intimate she seemed, how grounded, how connected.

as long as her setu bandhasana is impressive, who cares if Bahamians and Jamaicans are two distinctly different peoples and cultures of the african diaspora with different sensibilities from different islands that actually even have different names?

if you know your asana, i guess you can’t also be an asana, too.

Having been asked what engaged spirituality means to me, I began first with the simple practice of observing what the question stirred in me:

o First:
resistance to writing about that which I so deeply know is a living process and, as such, how could I possibly capture it in a fixed set of rambling thoughts strung together on a page?

o immediately followed by:
a sense of absurdity about entertaining my thoughts and subsequent scribblings about a thing as even remotely grasping the thing itself,

o and then:
a chafing feeling of self-importance that I am being asked to write about something I feel “just is” and have as little choice about, if I heed my internal compass, as which feet to put my shoes on in order that they feel alright,

o quickly engulfed by:
a tangled knot of inexpressible emotions altogether fleeting and unintelligible, individual and transgenerational, ancient and beyond time: grasping-aversion-arrogance-fear-lack-pride–self-hatred and more fear. These emotions are deeply embedded, psychicly and physically, in many, many layers of personal and collective years of experience: joyful, tragic and disturbingly indifferent, each subtly and imperceptibly shifting the current of my stream of consciousness,

o and finally:
a relieving flash of purifying laughter showing up only as a crinkling eye and knowing, muted smile.

Two, maybe three seconds have passed that beheld lifetimes. I’ve once again been spared the protracted agony of acting out each of these emotions on myself, unwitting loved ones, assorted strangers and supposed enemies, by a deep and abiding practice of love and fierce, unwavering compassion for the apparent complexity of being human with all of its attending afflictions.

Even as I opt to navigate steadily beyond each of these doorways, leaving them unopened and unindulged, I hold in my consciousness a simultaneous awareness of the wellspring of potential for unmitigated suffering each one had in store had I defaulted to the behaviors prescribed for the role I should have played in life: that of a stumbling, aimless and sometimes blissful sheep.

As each moment arises in an ever-interdependent chain of this causing that and then that and then that, there is present a Witness that observes the unfolding drama in its entirety with formidable and humbling dispassion.

I’ve taken notice of Life’s play from the seat of the Watcher and self-liberated the wretched limitations of the part I’d been handed. I’ve been awakened to the Truth of the inherent cycle of suffering written into the scene and as simultaneous Player and Witness, I rest in the in it but not of it land of the relatively free. Still, I’m not quite satisfied.

Aloof, pervasive, ineffable and palpable, this Witness is non-interfering as is the Moon, casting light without discrimination on all that Is, just as it Is. The Witness neither beckons things to grow nor shrink, aspire nor retreat, harbor faith nor despair. As such, cultivating an awareness of the presence of the Witness is not enough, for the gift of the Witness is only Wisdom.

I question this myself: Isn’t wisdom what we want? Isn’t that our highest pursuit? We’re not speaking of plain-old knowledge. We’ve already deconstructed the Altar of Information and reduced the budget for the Department of Intelligence Acquirement. I Know lost to I Am and the votes counted this time. Some even say that East edged out West, though this is a game of non-competition. Don’t we need an array of model examples of 100% pure, certified organic Wisdom? Even locally-grown? Wisdom is the apex of our aspiration and panacea for the pain caused by our constant entertainment of millennia-old habit-patterns, able to cut through delusion in a single slice…or is it?

Perfecting Wisdom
“No eye, ear, nose tongue, body, mind; no color, sound, smell, taste, touch, thing…overcoming all delusion, realizing Nirvana.”
– Heart of the Perfection of Great Wisdom Sutra

Alone, wisdom is cool, distant and choiceless. It simply reflects the Truth of as-it-isness with an unflinching clarity and objectivity that is sullied only when cast (as it must be) through the veil of the small, egoic Lower I. In a cruel and predictable backstretch towards our culture’s blind allegiance to Rugged Individuality, Wisdom seems to lord over the realm of Spirit. There is a danger here. Observing and unobserved, Wisdom as Higher Self falls prey to passive indifference and, like mega-corporations, is responsible to and invested in only itself and its own growth and manifestation. At its best: surgical, skillful and precise; and at its worst, steely, sharp and cutting.

And what of that Lower I, Ego, Small Self that we’ve been advised time and time again to avoid, let go of, surrender, even kill, should we find it in the form of a Buddha? Is there any redeemable value in it at all in the great rush towards Self-lessness, No Self, Non-Self? Further and perhaps even more improbable: does the Self, with its coarseness, clinging, craving and general crankiness, have in it some seed of usefulness that can serve, indeed enhance, the High seat of wisdom?

While wisdom seems to hover high in the vast, all-encompassing realm of Spirit, what enlivens the lower, rooted, Earth-bound Self is none other than Soul. Anything but choice-less, Soul is chocolate ice cream-loving, ideas and ideals, art as revolution, double-shot latté-having, power to the peaceful, making Love not war.

It is our Soulful Selves that see our own children in theirs, mothers in women, sisters in girls and lovers in 10 and 10,000 lost men of war. Our hearts are wrenched by the soul’s communal beating that feels every death in an imperceptible skipping of the breath. 3,000 inconceivable deaths later and we are gasping uncontrollably for air.

Thus it is soul’s flaming passion that takes it to heart, takes it to the street, and eventually even takes up arms. Because soul is also needing and nurturing, family and familiar, fearful and fiery, safety and security, securing and protecting, propositioning and propagandizing, high-hand and Homeland. It is, in direct paradoxical proportion, what makes us human beings and what makes us need to practice becoming human.

Don’t be disheartened because it is exactly herein that lives the hearty seed of compassion…from the very dark, muddy, contemptible earthfulness of our frail conditioning, we are, with impassioned intention and practice, capable of ushering forth the unstained white lotus of peace and pure, Loving Action. It is no mistake that in ancient Buddhist texts, The Conqueror that practices perfect Wisdom is the Lord of Compassion. Compassion itself is cultivated from forming the habit-practice of being with Soul.

The Grace of Conflict
It is the practices of both being with and bearing witness to that most avail themselves to birthing and sustaining action and activism tempered by compassion. Being with, allowing oneself to be alone in the company of others, creates the transparency that strengthens integrity and presence. Bearing witness is the courageous intention to have one’s heart broken and eyes open to another’s suffering with nothing to do but be there.

The forms of these practices are at once varied and specific: community-rooted meditation and prayer; councils of the collective; exchanging self for others with others; looking steadfastly into the lovingly-held mirror of a spiritual friend’s heart/mind; vision-seeking held in a container of family & friend’s support; singing heartily, dancing wildly, breathing deeply and conflicting willingly.

This last one is often overlooked and is the source of a great deal of our confusion: we seek peace through the avoidance of conflict when it is the willingness to be in conflict gracefully that most fertilizes the field of unconditional, unlimited, unassailable Love for all involved.

“We are desperate to have the answers to every question, to always know what to do and how to respond. It is obvious that there is so much that we don’t, but what we do know is that the way it has been done is not working…You have permission to not know.”
– from “Courage to Be Human” Angel Kyodo Williams

We need to believe, first and foremost, that a new world, a new Way of being is possible and that we don’t have to have a snapshot handy before we’ve lived it. That we can dream of colors and shades not yet seen. And that not only is there a place of dignity, respect and wholeness for each of us, but that any world we could create would be nothing but a thirst-driven mirage without all of us.

We need to believe in Purpose as the director of our Power, but we also need to honor and support purposelessness: time and space for activity with neither goal nor intention other than exquisite attention to the activity itself. We have to exalt in planting seeds and bristle with excitement as the first small shoots peer above ground, but we also need to protect the sacred time of gestation, cocooning, metamorphosis that appears as not doing.

I want to articulate something about what I believe an engaged spirituality actually IS rather than what we may be witnessing as our fumbling attempts at it:

o Engaged spirituality is our very human effort to begin to minimize the desperately gnawing feeling of alienation we’ve nurtured into a disproportionate chasm with our tired strategies of herding people like cattle to divide and count(er) under the guide of organizing.

o It’s our confusing and sometimes confused attempt to rectify the discordance and mistruth that we hear in every “us vs. them” politic and persuasion.

o It’s the expansion of our hearts for that most noble effort of becoming spacious enough to allow for what is while keeping an eye towards what could be.

o It’s finding the balance between things perfect just as they are, the awareness of incalculable suffering and injustice, and the bittersweet middle path that we must walk in the meantime…the between time of the reality of Now and promise of Then.

o It’s the continuous, unwavering march forward in an endless and seemingly futile battle in which, paradoxically, that futility manifests only when we deign to cease walking.

o It is the hard-won marriage of Spirit and Soul, forged in silence, that gives birth to Loving Action. A creation borne from the deep practice and learning of how to hold space with a broken heart and still show up again and again.

Authenticity & The Third Self
“Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between two contradictions…For the god wants to know (her)self in you.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke

Practice that aligns our inner and outer worlds is the bridge and balance between Wisdom and Compassion, Spirit and Soul, Silence and Action, Being and Doing, Impersonal and Transpersonal. But we need more than just one-shot deal weekend Better Person boot camps. We need to locate the energetic leaks coming from the incomplete and unattended areas of personal spiritual growth so that we can harness that lost fuel into the drive towards real and sustainable social transformation.

We’ll want to do it with less of the drag of a stuck Ego Self and not much of the disinterest of a too-lofty Wisdom Self. For that we need the reflective, flexible container provided by sustained, contiguous practice within the safe and nurturing walls of a richly diversified community. It is from here that we are able to embody that elusive but infinitely generative Third Self: wise in its stillness; compassionate in its action; authentic in each moment to the next.

It is this Third, Authentic Self that holds the key to our salvation. It is, by its nature, holistic, integrative, collective-minded and self-responsible. It is not manufactured outside, but called forth from within. When truly invited, the Third Self lives in service to the liberation of all, drawing from the endless energetic source of Spirit, committed to the Earth Mother and all her wounding and wounded children.

I have been both witness and guide to ceremonies, rites and practices of individuals and even organizations striving to make the re-connection to their Authentic Being Selves. They pray to find a Way so that they can act more clearly each time they bravely face down injustice, and treat themselves more kindly when they cannot.

What I pray for is their support, and even my own, as we earnestly spread the pieces of this world in front of us so that we can rearrange them to fit more of us, indeed all of us, in a fulfilling way. As activists, we need and welcome support and collaboration with researchers that can help us expand our language for what we deeply know, and we can in turn provide more faces and stories for what’s been deeply thought of. We need time to re-search our own actions, and craft new, revolutionary forms while living our lives in ecologically sound ways: less isolation, more collaboration, in ongoing conversation about our hard-won discoveries with our peers and the world.

Time isn’t running out, but it is always running and if we’re to have any sustainable social transformation, sometimes we need to simply sit on the side: to catch our breath, watch our thoughts, and invite the Third Self to come home to serve.

I woke at the crack of dawn this morning from a sleep I’d never quite achieved–horrified, enveloped in grief and confusion.

The sun had not disappeared from the sky forever, there was no nuclear mushroom cloud outside my window yet I was weighed down and weary as if I’d put more than a few down last night. As I tried to re-orient myself, the phrase I’d tried to put away for the last two weeks came back to me again…”Today Is A Good Day To Die.”

The image of Timothy McVeigh being paraded to his death involuntarily flashed across my mind’s data screen.

I note it as any good Buddhist would and try to continue with my morning routine. By the time I reach the bathroom, though, I have to wash my face three or four times just to see myself through tears that won’t be turned away. Deep breath, cold water. I hit the cushion for morning meditation, business as usual. This is of no use, I quickly realize…routine is just the problem. So I don’t resist the sobs that crowd out the silence I went looking for.

Do we all feel better? Does ANYbody feel better now? I hope so. Really, I do. Because the only thing I feel certain of today is that I do not.

But McVeigh is Guilty, you say? I don’t care. Or more to the point, that isn’t the matter. The matter is that as a species we simply do not possess the wisdom–political, social, spiritual or otherwise–to put any other being to death. In a time when we are so desperately seeking to forge connections to our spirits and souls in the face of the mounting cacophony of our ever-distancing, over-busy lives, we have participated in sending, no…enabling a man to his death in the name of Justice, to uphold The Law, as a matter of Routine.

So routine that shortly after 9am, when I finally give in to my perpetual access to information online and steel myself to read the story behind the first McVeigh headline, I find this paradoxically anti-climatic and absurdly simple note: “A government source confirmed the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh Monday morning.”

The brevity was insult to my hopelessly injured Spirit. More important, it spoke loudly to a possible moment of second-guessing remorsefulness about our Death Media Cirus. A moment that will not last long.

To be honest, I’m not sure if I care about McVeigh at all. Once he was caught, I didn’t follow the case closely because it was a rerun that I already knew the end of. But the collective ease with which we have come to accept killing people in the broad daylight of our minds with our eyes wide shut is staggering. My buddhistic references render visions of Kwan Yin, manifestation of Compassion who hears the cries of the world. I’m sure she’s gone deaf by now, and somehow I doubt that that is what the Royal Ease pose she strikes is supposed to be about.

No, I’m not a bleeding heart liberal or super-pacificist-so-just-dismiss-me Buddhist. I quite firmly believe that sometimes people need their ass kicked in the moment. But during this week that Guilty McVeigh would die and Innocent Faison and Shepherd have been set free, we have deluded ourselves into thinking all is right and good…for now anyway.

Black Activists, White Thinkers and vice-versa, if you imagine that Mumia is any less Guilty than McVeigh in the Eyes of the Government Beholder with the killing stick in hand, merely because of time delay than you have really made Delusion your bed-partner. Wake up, I tell you. You are sleeping through an evil revolution. If one of us can die, not only can we all, but we all DO.

Don’t start to rationalize how one is justified and another is not. Unlike any other species, we are capable of literally thinking things (and people) to Death.

This same week I have received more email with the schedule for tax rebates than anti-death dealing protests or anything else. Rebates are news. Death is routine. All I want someone to tell me is: Exactly how do we tell our gun-toting kids that you should never, never, except sometimes kill anyone?

I know its terribly escapist, but I’m going to go to bed tonite much earlier than I usually do because I want to wake up on a different day. Any other day. Because it is not a good day to die when it is at the hands of our brothers and sisters of the Race (Human, that is) and when Anger and Pain are the weapons. It’s never a good day when the cost is the hardening of our hearts, where the lesson will live in us and our children’s psyches and spirits forever.

Today is not a good day to die. Indeed, it just plain isn’t a good day.
In a desperate attempt at repentance,

angel Kyodo williams

© MMI, angel Kyodo williams. all rights reserved.
This text may be reprinted in its entirety.
Please forward information and copy of publication.

This essay first appeared June 2001 in connection with the execution of Timothy McVeigh.
If any good at all comes of it, may that benefit be extended to ALL my relations.

‘Today is a good day to die.’

That’s a good ol’ Zen saying, a warrior-spirit of a call that embraces each day of life completely with the knowledge that this could always be our last.

Had it not been for an FBI snafu, Timothy McVeigh would’ve really had to work with that. The twist I want to through in there is that those of us that rightfully believe government-sanctioned murder in the marketing disguise of capital J-Justice, are often wrongfully concerning ourselves with who suffers.

Yes, when Tim gets the needle…and I say when because I’m not so naive that I believe the most notorious American terrorist and mass-murderer has the slimmest chance of being allowed to mock our formidable capital S-System, he will ‘suffer’ death. I’ve heard argument about how we should keep him alive because he really gets to escape by dying. He becomes a martyr for his cause and if we * really* want him to suffer, he should live. And we’ve all heard that it doesn’t bring the dead people back. It’s just more killing. Just sick revenge. Irresponsible. Twisted logic. Playing God. Evil, evil, evil.

All of that…but I say more.

Capital punishment, the premeditated taking of another life is an enormous and erroneous experiment with the most precious commodity we have available to us: our Humanity.

Don’t nod your head in agreement and knowingly tsk in pity for the Attorney General and his legions of death-dealers, the Judge that gave the order, the Injector that carries it out or even that most preposterous of American Marketing Myths gone ballistic ‘the Leader of the Free World’ aka the President. No, it is not just the Humanity of those people that is eroded by their terrible sham.

We all suffer irreparably. We will all go down.

to be continued…

angel Kyodo williams

© MMI, angel Kyodo williams. all rights reserved.
This text may be reprinted in its entirety.
Please forward information and copy of publication.