Crossing Nebraska

  Woody Guthrie was famous for displaying the statement “this machine kills fascists” on his guitars. But lest anyone interpret that sentiment as him wanting to literally kill fascists, please rest assured. I’m quite certain he was referring to the stories, joy, and camaraderie shared via his music being enough to squelch anyone’s perceived need to support authoritarianism. With a nod to old Woody, I was thinking of titling this post “These Tools Kill Fascism.” However, I do try to stay away from any connotations of violence in my speech. Consider then what follows to be a description of our civic superpowers. Mural of Woody Guthrie at the Woody Guthrie Center Attention: Our attention is our most precious thing. What we give it to becomes us. This has always been true, but in these days of “shock and awe” we need to be especially mindful of the news, entertainment, and media we attend to. Each new day brings with it some appalling new action, outrageous statement, or destruct...

  I’ve discussed a wide range of power abuses in this series so far, from those threatening our democracy to the inherent violence of leaf blowers! Whether world-changing or seemingly inconsequential, we all have at least some power. And I suspect we all end up abusing it from time to time. Thus, I’d like to focus on some very ordinary abuses of power for a bit. I’ll kick things off by focusing on one of my own. Before I begin, though, let me state that this story does not involve anyone I’m currently connected with in any way—in person or on any social media platform. Here goes: I was never a free-wheeling bachelor by any stretch of the imagination. However, I did engage in premarital sex in a manner that I considered safe, ethical, and loving. For me that meant not dating more than one person at a time and not having sex with anyone I wasn’t in love with and at least thinking about marrying. It was an ethic that I had no difficulty abiding by—for about the first half of my li...

The news is maddening and demoralizing. Modern life is hectic and stressful. Remaining engaged requires effort, and it's quite often frustrating, disappointing, and maybe even dangerous. Oh, to simply withdraw into the forest and leave it all behind! The archetype of the renunciant is a powerful one, isn’t it? The idea of leaving our worldly cares behind—our possessions and our problems—to simply walk off into the forest or up into a mountain cave has such romantic appeal, doesn’t it? We could meditate…, do yoga…, connect with nature… We’d likely eat healthier food, lose weight, and get in great shape. But maybe it’s what we wouldn’t do that’s most appealing. And, oh, that list is long! Oh, to just keep walking!   We tend to equate such endeavors with extraordinary spiritual resolve and attainment of some sort, be it wisdom, enlightenment, or liberation. But what really motivates us to want to retreat in such a way? Is the urge born of some so-called “true self” desire to atta...

  In Looking at Power Through an Integral Lens , I reflected on a couple of experiences I’d had in religious communities using the stage theory of consciousness development furthered by Ken Wilber in, for example, Wilber (2007). In both cases, if my assessment is correct, potential conflict arose due to one party or parties being at one stage, mythic , for instance, and another party or parties being at another, say, rational . At the close of that post, I raised the question as to whether we might benefit from looking at our current political climate through such a lens. Obviously, I think the answer is yes! Let’s back up for a moment. The Integral theory of the development of consciousness posits that our consciousness matures through various stages: archaic, magic, magic-mythic, mythic, rational, postmodern, etc. I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of adults in the U.S. are either at the mythic stage (veering toward group conformity, traditionalism, and black and ...

  In my previous post, I related the story of something of a power clash I was both privy to and part of. I was attending a religious service where a woman was singled out for not being spiritually powerful enough to take part, even though no men in attendance were questioned in this way. I ended up involving myself in this cultural (?) clash by later questioning the Tibetan Buddhist Lama who’d performed the service. You may read the whole story here . Thinking of this occurrence in terms of a cultural clash is perhaps the most benign way to interpret what happened. A male practitioner of a very patriarchal religious system likely acted precisely as he’d been taught by his teachers from his home country. For my part, I behaved in precisely the way I was taught during my egalitarian Western upbringing. Hence, the clash. Rorschach test inkblot #8 Perhaps we might also consider this conflict through the lens of the developmental model theorized by Ken Wilber in, for instance, Inte...

  My previous couple of posts focused on the unequivocally abusive behavior of one particular teacher and the subtle and not-so-subtle actions of some of his students to shield him from accountability or otherwise burnish his reputation as if his abusive behavior had never occurred. Sexual gratification and a thirst for power seem to have been what motivated that teacher. But what was/is in it for those students that ignored or minimized his abuse and who continue to speak of him with the highest regard? It's easy to conclude that the reason must be their enjoyment of the power that comes with being in the circle of one who wields power. However, some will no doubt maintain that the “apparently abusive” behavior of an enlightened individual cannot be judged by those of us who are not enlightened! Hmmm. What does your bullshit detector tell you? And yet, there are indeed some apparently abusive or discriminatory power dynamics that are not so black and white. Tibetan monks prepar...

Perhaps I opened a can of worms with my previous post . But how can a Zen Buddhist writing on issues of Power, Practice, andPeace not at least touch on the sordid mess that Joshu Sasaki created and which so many of his students enabled for so many years. Would the Zen monk of my previous post, the one who told of Sasaki’s “otherworldly” power, have spoken of him so glowingly if he thought we’d already caught wind of his serial sexual abuse? We had not. But he almost certainly had. Allegations of Sasaki’s sexual abuse of his female students didn’t reach the wider Zen community until November 16, 2012. It was then that Eshu Martin, another of Sasaki’s ordained students, had a letter published on Sweeping Zen, a now defunct website. Publication of that letter, entitled Everybody Knows , was well after the Zen talk spoken of in my previous post. However, if Martin is accurate in his characterization of the sexual abuse scandal enabled by Sasaki’s monastic community, then that monk who...