Buddhist Practice and Protest (Part 2 of 2)
If you’re a spiritual practitioner, I hope you’re “blessed” from time to time with an encouraging sign that you’re on the right path. Whether it be with an insight, observation, opening, understanding, felt sense, embodied knowing, or what have you I wish for you assurance that you’re moving toward whatever wholeness and authenticity mean for you.
We Zen practitioners are not inclined to speak much about such experiences. We’re warned against putting too much stock in them, becoming attached to them, striving to repeat them, or thinking they result from our specialness. That notwithstanding, for the sake of this two-part series, I’d like to relate how certain practice-related experiences have prompted me to toward activism.
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| Arrest of the Buddha |
In the first post of this two-part series, I stated: “The emptiness [sunyata] of all phenomena does
not mean they are illusory. The emptiness of all phenomena merely means that
all “things” are without any separate and abiding existence.” This lack of
separate and abiding existence is most apparent in the impermanence of all things. Of course, we witness this impermanence every day. It’s the source of
so much of the suffering we mortals experience. We lose loved ones, our health,
and then our life.
Much of the time, though, we behave as if we’re going to live forever. We waste time, we’re rude or even cruel to others, and we expend inordinate amounts of energy and resources protecting our own little fleeting existence as if nothing and nobody outside of our little circle even matters. It seems like we arise in this world with a certain psychology that protects us from the existential horror of our mortality.
Which brings me back to the topic of spiritual experiences. Some years ago, during a period when I was intensifying my practice of Zen meditation, I was “blessed” with a very visceral recognition of the fleetingness of my own and all life. This experience was marked by painful remorse for time wasted, horror for what little remained, and profound sorrow that everything I knew and loved would one day come to an end. Like a bandage being torn from an open wound, my practice ripped away my conditioned ability to intellectualize and compartmentalize my existence.
Once the remorse and horror and sorrow of that experience subsided, I was filled with a deep sense of compassion for all living things. After all, we’re all facing the same fate. We all just want to be content and fulfilled. We’re all trying to make sense of the same incomprehensible existence. At least we humans are. Why was I afforded the means and wherewithal to have my creature comforts met easily enough that I might ponder these things while others must work so hard just to barely stay alive, or maybe not survive at all? These realizations brought the bodhisattva vow alive for me.
After that experience, I could no longer let my practice be driven by selfish goals and ideas. Practice could no longer be about me merely wanting a calmer and more settled life. It could no longer be about me and my own little “spiritual adventure.” I quit my corporate job, got a master’s degree in mental health counseling, began working in human services and, yes, I became a bit of an anti-war activist.
From what I can tell, making such life changes after beginning Zen practice is not altogether uncommon. I’ve known others who’ve retired early, changed careers, downsized, unplugged, etc. And while I can’t swear that I know anybody else who’s been prompted to become more socially engaged, it would certainly seem to follow given the value placed on the bodhisattva vow.
Some years after my anti-war activism took me to protests in St. Louis, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., a homicide that occurred not far from where I worked ended up sparking a nationwide and worldwide movement. Michael Brown, an unarmed Black youth, was gunned down by a White police officer in nearby Ferguson, a neighborhood rife with racial tension. Protests erupted, and I watched the shopping mall parking lot where I often ate lunch become a staging area for militarized police and National Guard activity. The neighborhood was turned into a war zone. So, would I merely dedicate a meditation period or two to Michael Brown and the people of Ferguson and feel as though I’d done what I could, or would I take my white-faced Buddhist presence up to Ferguson and stand with the people who were grieving and crying out for justice? I did the latter.
In recent years our country has experienced terrorist attacks, war, climate-related disasters, mass shootings, pandemic, racial unrest, bitter political division, a storming of the Capital Building, the hollowing out or outright destruction of our democratic institutions, the extrajudicial disappearance of our neighbors, the policy murder of those who will lose their healthcare, and on and on and on. It is truly daunting. The enormity of the work to be done toward securing justice can be paralyzing. With such a profound absence of peace it’s tempting to withdraw from the affairs of the world and settle into whatever meditative state of peace we might be able to cultivate. We might even rationalize our withdrawal by claiming we’re “being the peace that we seek” or that we’re “changing the world by changing ourselves.” In my view, however, these ostensibly high-minded (but ineffectual) strategies are merely a form of spiritual bypassing.
So, how about you? Are you inclined to think of the current onslaught of injustice in the world as mere distraction from your practice of self-liberation, or does witnessing the suffering of your fellow human beings in Ferguson and Gaza, and right next door inspire you to be of service somehow? And, if so, how? How does one lone individual help change social conditions that have been generations in the making?
The more routine life becomes, the
easier it is to decide where our attention and energy is required. But as life
becomes more and more predictable, it comes to pass that there is little
discernment whatsoever. We simply live out our routine, our karma, reacting to
things as habit dictates, unmindful of the various decision points that exist
from moment to moment. At other times life events happen that are so out of the
ordinary, whether for better or worse, that they shock us out of our routinized
patterns and let us know in no uncertain terms that we have a decision to make:
how will we conduct ourselves in the midst of these new circumstances that life
presents?
If your spiritual practice is about “waking up”—living consciously, mindfully, intentionally, and authentically—then you might find yourself more frequently wondering what God wants you to do, what the universe wants you to do, what action reflects your truest self or feels most authentic and congruent with your spiritual values. When life is lived with such awareness, very little is routine anymore. Our work, our relationships, the way we spend our free time, the food we eat, the things we buy, and the way that we approach our basic tasks of daily life all become worthy of greater scrutiny.
Being a Zen Buddhist, my “waking up” involves regular meditation which, of course, involves withdrawing from the world from time to time to “practice.” However, to be true to my vow to “save all beings” I must go out into the world and take action. Thus, there is a dynamic at work. My practice brings clarity and vitality to the action that I take “out” in the world, and my action in the world informs my practice with awareness. When our practice is oriented in such a way even the seemingly solitary practice of meditation is engaged in with and on behalf of all beings. In the ultimate sense, then, the practice of meditation and the practice of acting in the world transition one to the other so seamlessly that the two cannot be said to be separate at all.
Can we protest and practice all at the same time? Can we engage the world with acceptance and equanimity even as we aspire to awaken along with it? Can we raise our voice along with everyone we walk with so that the world may hear itself, and listen to itself, and wake up and change itself—orienting itself toward justice and the alleviation of suffering? These were the questions that were going through my mind as I made my way to Ferguson to walk with everyone gathered there. My answer to these questions was perhaps a bit tentative back then, but now it’s a wholehearted YES!
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Find a running list of all posts in this series by clicking here.
Images
Arrest
of the Buddha was composed by the author of the following images:
LA
County sheriffs arresting a protester by Ethan Swope accessed via:
Shakyamuni
Buddha statue in the St. Louis Art Museum collection accessed via:
https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/14738/
Black Lives Matter sign courtesy of the author.
Many
of the ideas contained in this post were explored in a piece I wrote shortly after the killing of Michael Brown entitled Protest
and Practice. This post is almost a complete rewrite of that earlier one. However, some passages
here may still be recognizable from that earlier post.
Copyright
2014 and 2025 by Mark Robert Frank
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