The Spiritual Warrior

Hola mi gente,
This is a work in progress. A very rough of the second part of my upcoming presentation.

The Spiritual Warrior and the Runaway Society

How do I bear witness to the unbearable? Why are people so deliberately cruel? How do I not bring more rage into the world?

Towards the end of Emile Zola’s Beast of Man, an engineer and a fireman are quarreling in the locomotive of a passenger train. In his rage, the fireman has stoked the engine’s fire into an inferno. They grab at each other’s throats, each trying to force the other through the open door. Losing their balance, both fall out and perish. The train rumbles on at breakneck speed. The passengers, soldiers en route to the war front, are sleeping or drunkenly unaware of the impending disaster.

Our society resembles this runaway train. We have become a runaway society.

Some of us act within the world as a response to suffering. Still, at times it might seem our work is impossible. I remember being part of a huge protest rally in DC and walking next to an elderly woman and I asked how she could still do all this without being discouraged. Her answer is one I’ll never forget. She reminded me that some of us have ancestors who fought against slavery though they knew they would probably never be free themselves.

That was a powerful reminder for me… 

What does personal liberation look like in a world gone mad? Is personal liberation a worthy goal when there are so many suffering? 

Excerpt: In this section, I use my experiences as an engaged activist to talk about the Buddhist notion of the spiritual warrior -- the Bodhisattva -- who takes a vow to forestall their own liberation until all beings are liberated.

How can the Dharma inform social justice? 

Using stories and anecdotes from a range of practices culled over a 20 year period of activism, I show how Buddhism has (and has not) influenced the work.

Question and Answer/ Interaction

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

Sunday Sermon [House Rules]

Hola Everybody,
Before I was “exiled” from Rikers Island (more on this at a later date) resulting in the loss of my position at a criminal justice reform organization, I was attempting to create a way to integrate the following into my workshops. I culled these “rules” from Dan Millman’s book, Living On Purpose.

The House Rules

According to Dan Millman, The House Rules are the universal laws or guiding principles that will help us live a life of purpose and meaning.

1. Earth is a school and daily life is a classroom

We are here to learn by expanding our awareness about the world and about ourselves. Learning about the world helps us to realize our potential. Learning about ourselves helps us to evolve. The challenges we are confronted with in the arena of relationship, health and finances are all part of the curriculum. Daily life teaches us all we need to know for the next step on our journey. Each and every day, if we open our eyes, we find new lessons to learn.

2. Our teachers appear in many forms

Master teachers are found not only during intensive meditation retreats or in a cave atop a mountain. Our teachers may take the form of friends and adversaries -- of clouds, animals, wind, and water. Moment to moment, our teachers reveal what we need to know. The question is, are we paying attention? To paraphrase a well-worn cliché, when the student is ready, the teacher appears everywhere.

3. We learn best through direct experience

We learn more effectively through experience rather than through conceptualization. The classroom teaches through concepts; real-world lessons teach through experience. Concepts are important, for they may provide a map; experience involves the journey. The map is not the territory! No experience is ever wasted because every experience contains a lesson. The lessons of experience are always positive, even if the experience is not.

4. Failures are the stepping stones to success

The road to success is paved with little failures. If you doubt this, try to learn to juggle (or sustain yourself in the nonprofit sector LOL). Infants are masters of learning; their method is trial and error. In this technique they lead us all; no one fails as much or learns as quickly. Why fear failure? Every mistake imparts gifts and lessons, each lesson leads to wisdom, and every failure to new achievement. Failures and mistakes are the rungs on the ladder to your potential. If you never fail, you haven t picked challenging goals.

5. Lessons reappear until we learn them

Yup… some of us do the same thing over and over expecting different results. Intelligence allows for making new mistakes and learning from them, instead of repeating the old ones. The more we learn, the more adaptable we become and the fewer mistakes we repeat. Learning requires getting out of our comfort zones , also known as change. Change often means losing face; losing face means sloughing off the old skin and giving birth to the new. Change happens even when you fight it. The trick is taking control of the process so that we can guide how we grow.

6. If we don’t learn easy lessons, they get harder

If we miss life’s teachings, they return as wake-up calls, and when life calls, we had better pick up the phone. Adversity is one way the universe gets our attention. Physical pain calls us to balance our body. Emotional suffering reveals to us our illusions and resistance. Mental suffering reveals the healing power of the present. Some pain is inevitable, but as we learn to listen to life’s lessons, suffering become optional.

7. Consequences teach better than concepts

Moral concepts are personal; consequences are universal. What one culture, religion, or nation prohibits, another accepts as moral behavior. What may be wrong in one situation maybe be right in another. Unchanging, unquestioned rules of right and wrong act to keep us from thinking. But life is not so simple. Prisons are full of people who understood the moral concepts, but didn’t grasp the consequences.

8. Only action brings ideas to life

Thoughts are the seeds of possibility. However, in order to reap a harvest, we have to sow seeds in the field of action. Doing is understanding and wisdom grows from practice. Do not act without thinking, or think without acting. By applying bold action at the right time, we apply a simple secret.

9. We can control efforts, not outcomes

This is a hard one to grasp, but it is a truth. Serenity, patience, and wisdom spring from this basic understanding: We cannot directly control people, events, or results. We cannot control whether we sink a putt, win a game, find love, or create world peace. But by making the effort we vastly improve the odds of achieving what we desire. No matter what we think or feel, doubt or fear, despite our past or parents, our efforts still shape our lives. Doing your best is a job well done. So make the effort and then accept the outcomes. Let go of what you can’t control.

10. Timing is everything

Right action at the wrong time serves no useful purpose. In some instances, stillness can be the most powerful action of all. Just as action can reflect courage, waiting can reflect wisdom. But if we wait until we have permission, until we feel more motivated, until it gets easier, until fear vanishes, or hell freezes over, we may miss the chance to act at all. If we wait for the perfect moment to come alive, we may discover that we never lived at all.

11. What goes around comes around

What we sow in kindness returns as a harvest of surprises. What gifts we send out return in different wrappings. Shadows of negativity, scattered into the world, return to the sender, often in ways we cannot see. Good works and virtues are like seeds that multiply. We plant a sprout and reap a forest of gratitude. The simplest generous act blesses the giver. On the other hand, if we give in order to receive, our efforts are wasted on the shores of attachment. But even then, karma is an unfathomable construct. We will never fully know the ripple effects of our actions (i.e., the roads of hell are paved with good intentions). Still, you put out healing energy regardless of the outcome.

12. Little things can make a big difference

Some big accomplishments signify little in the long run. On the other hand, small acts can be great. Life is not made only of magnificent gestures, heroic feats, and historic deeds. Life is made of little things. The smallest actions can make the biggest difference. There’s no need to wait for a big break or breakthrough. Just do the little things. To make huge strides, take small steps. In sports, relationships, art, or business, success may be waiting for one more day, or making one last try. A single word can make or break us. A last straw can break a camel’s back, a smile or loving touch can heal our world. As Margaret Mead observed, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

13. Play to your strengths

Everyone who has ever lived has had weaknesses. Even great historical figures had flaws that killed them in the end. But while they lived they inspired hope, created great works, moved nations, and even changed the course of history. So work on your weaknesses, shore up your foundations, and strengthen your weak links. But if you would truly make a difference in the world, concentrate not on your shortcomings, but on your strengths. Discover your talent, your passion, your bliss, and follow that path wherever it leads. A jet plane cannot mow lawns, but it can fly to distant destinations. Don’t worry so much about what you can’t do, just do what you can as only you can do it.

14. To transform your life, change your expectations

Life is a mystery. Moments unfold and things happen. Our mind then creates meanings about what happens. We often don’t see things not as they are, but as we wish they were. Viewing the world through windows of interpretation and expectation, our mind habitually creates a drama, a comedy, a tragedy, a romance, or a soap opera out of what simply arises. Therefore, our mind creates our dreams and dramas and stress arises as the mind resists what is. To attain freedom, make peace with reality. To reinvent your world, shift your expectations. Reality is not what we think.

15. Judge with compassion

We constantly judge ourselves and our world. Those quick to judge are slow to compassion. Those slow to compassion have forgotten that hurtful people don’t go to hell, they are already living a hell. That is why they behave as they do. Resenting people only allows others to live in our head rent-free. And despite our judgments, reality happens anyway. So if we judge, let us judge with compassion, until we finally discover that our primary business is not forgiving others but asking forgiveness.

16. Simplicity has power

A little bit of something beats a lot of nothing. Break the largest task into small steps and it can be done. There is a Chinese parable of an old man who moved a mountain with patience and a spoon. Just so, we can build a palace brick by brick and step by step, we can cover any distance. Without simple patience, courageous efforts quickly fade. With small, steady, simple actions over time, we achieve dreams.

18. Every choice leads to wisdom

Life is a series of choices. Whether we choose for the short run or for the long haul, every choice has benefits and costs. Our past choices made us who we are today. Our present choices will shape our future. Sometimes, when asked to choose between one thing and another, the wisest choice may be both -- but not necessarily at the same time. From a conservative viewpoint, we make “bad choices.” But from a transformative perspective, there are no wrong decisions, only different lessons.

20. We each have inner guidance

Others may be experts in their specialty, but you are the expert on your body and your life. Teachers can at best offer keys to your own treasure house. You know far more than you’ve been taught, have heard, or have read, because you are connected to it all. To contact your inner wisdom, be still, look within, ask, listen, and trust. Instinct and intuition lend their guidance long before your head comprehends. To attain knowledge, add to what you know. To access your intuitive wisdom, let go of what you think you know and you will finally understand.

21. Balancing the body is the first spiritual practice

Spiritual life begins and ends with the body. It is our only possession guaranteed to last a lifetime. We may meditate, visualize, and dream, but we cannot travel out of the body until we first get into it. In a balanced body, flesh and spirit join to create energy and abundance in our lives. We achieve balance through the Holy Trinity of Health: daily exercise, nutritious food, sufficient rest. Balance the body and trust its wisdom. From this foundation all else follows.

22. Life moves in cycles; all things change

Cycles are the natural order of life, like the four seasons that follow one another in endless rounds. Hardship and pleasure alike will pass in time, for whatever rises will fall, and whatever falls will rise again in one or another form. This is the nature of the world. We cannot control the cycles of life, but we can ride them like flowing waves. By accepting our own inner changing seasons, we move in harmony with the cycles of our world.

23. Life is a series of moments

When we think about it -- which is most of the problem -- life appears complex and busy. This is an illusion. Life is utterly simple and serene, because we can only live one moment at a time. There are no neurotic or intelligent people, only neurotic or intelligent moments. And we are responsible only for this moment. The rest is memory and imagination. We are each enlightened, ignorant, kind, or cruel in moments. By paying attention to the present moment, and the next, and the next, we determine the quality of our lives.

24. Be gentle with yourself; trust the process of your life

We are all peaceful warriors in training. Perfection is not a prerequisite for skillful living. While we live, we continue to make mistakes and learn from them. We were born not to be ideal, but to be real. Our purpose is not to become someone else, but to become ourselves. We have all made a mess of things, but nothing is less important than the score at halftime. By accepting our humanity, we awaken our spirituality. Acknowledging our failures may be the greatest triumph of all.

25. Kindness completes our lives. We are in this together

For most of us, sharing a meal or a movie magnifies the pleasure. So does sharing our lives. Humans are designed to interact, to connect, to serve and be served, to work and play together. We all need privacy at times, but the habitual lone wolf, the separate self staring in the mirror, needs to break out of solitary confinement. No one is smarter than all of us, and no one truly accomplishes anything on their own. All we have done rests on the shoulders of those who came before. Offer and accept a helping hand. We are in this together.

* * *

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Interdependent Origination

Hola mi Gente,
I had an awful, almost crippling headache today. I almost never get headaches. I don’t know how I held it together.

Everything is Everything

The fear of letting go prevents you from letting go of the fear of letting go.

This is the doctrine at the heart Buddhism. You see, my dear reader, it goes this way: you are a unstable collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging. There is no center -- no center at all. Everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the ecology, your thoughts depend on whatever conditioned debris floats in from the media, your emotions are mostly from the reptilian end of your DNA.

Your intellect, dear reader, is a chemical computer that can’t add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator. Even your best side is a superficial piece of social conditioning that will fall apart as soon as your significant other leaves with the money in the bank account, the economy fails and you get the sack, or you get conscripted into some village idiot’s war, or they give you the news about your brain tumor. To name this combination of self-pity, vanity, and despair self is not only the height of conceit, it is also proof that we’re a deluded species.

We are in a trance from birth to death. Burst the balloon and what are you left with? Emptiness.

It’s not only us -- this radical principle applies to the whole sentient world. Dependent origination is not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, I admit. But it does have a compelling point: stop for a moment, still yourself, listen -- in other words, meditate just a little -- and you will find yourself on a planet you no longer recognize. Those needs and fears you thought were the very foundation of your existence turn out to be no more than bugs in your software.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

The 12 Steps for Everyone [Step Three]

Hola mi Gente,

Right off the bat: I am not interested in debating people who consider 12-step fellowships cults, or who think they are ineffective, or whatever. The 12 step fellowships aren’t for everybody. If you were to attend, you would hear this repeated in the prefatory readings at every meeting. However, if you were to ask me how I got clean, I would have to tell you that the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous saved my life. My experience also tells me that internalizing and applying the principles found in the 12 Steps could be beneficial for everyone, regardless of whether they identify as an addict.

* * *

Turning it Over

Step Three: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

The first time I came to the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous, by the time I reached this step, I had decided to quit. This is bullshit! I told myself. Fuck that God shit.

At that time I wasn’t ready for recovery and I spent the next five years, the worst of my life, chasing my addiction so that I could get outside of myself. In a very real way, my addiction was my Higher Power, and at some level I knew this, but I would not kneel before a God I didn’t believe, or religious principles that I saw as intolerant and juvenile.

I didn’t sit still long enough to read the part of the step that says: ... as we understood Him. The second time around, I was more willing to learn to listen and listen to learn because I had a burning desire to stop the suffering. Yet, while I was more open, but I also knew that I couldn’t pretend to submit to religious dogma because my efforts had to be genuine or I would risk going back.

My First Step work forced me confront the contradiction of my addictive process: that I felt powerful when in fact, I was powerless over my addiction and needed help. The First Step gave me hope... However, having internalized and accepted my powerlessness (not to be confused with hopelessness), I was left open and vulnerable, and while I understood my powerlessness, I needed something to latch onto, some form of support.

My Second Step work helped me come to terms with trust, at least a little, and it challenged my feelings of grandiosity, bringing me to the realization that I am a human being, and as such, I am not all-powerful -- the “Great I Am.” It taught me the value of surrendering my small self in favor of my Higher Self. The Second Step helped me take a fresh look at faith and it helped me begin my spiritual search anew with a new perspective. In fact, I see my entire history of active addiction as a spiritual search gone wrong. Recovery was a matter of turning that mad search into something sane and good.

In the beginning, I was able to accept the collective consciousness of the fellowship of NA as my Higher Power, but as I continued to work the steps in my life, I revisited the teachings of Buddhism (The Dharma) and I accepted them as my Higher Power. In Buddhism, I found a Higher Power that could restore me to sanity.

In NA, there are no “shalts,” nothing is forced down our throats and everyone works the steps to the best of their abilities and at their own pace. In fact, working  the steps is not a requirement, simply a suggestion. The first three steps serve as a foundation, a bridge, back to life. It’s not about belief, but about practice. Believing is not enough; it is through living and applying the steps that we recover our Original Self. I think what’s most important for anyone, is maintaining a frame of mind described by Zen masters as “beginner’s mind.” In the mind of an expert, it is said, there are few possibilities. But in the mind of a beginner, everything is possible. 

Let me add that I as I have progressed spiritually, I have come to realize that bridge back to life was made from the bones of those who came before me, many of whom never got clean, never tasted spiritual freedom.

Truly, change and recovery are about coming back to a state where we’re open to suggestions and looking at life with fresh eyes. It’s about dropping the mess and listening to the message. If you’re like me and many others, there are issues that have tested you sorely. Whether it is drugs, sex, relationships, your emotions, food, or other people, we all have found ourselves at our wit’s end at one time or another. The Third Step is about letting be, as the Taoists put it. 

One thing I was painfully aware of was that whenever I imposed my will, things became messed up quick. If I was in a relationship, my will meant lots of insanity. Imposing my will on my addiction meant that it made it worse because my will was warped. So recovery (and specifically the Third Step) is a lot about letting go of the impulsive need to control. It’s about allowing a Higher Principle, set of moral and ethical guidelines, Higher Power, or God -- or whatever you choose to call it -- guide your actions.

For me, that Higher Power as I understand it is The Dharma. In other words, instead of exerting my will on my addictive behaviors, I was letting go in favor of a set of spiritual principles that emphasized ethical behavior, contemplation, and cognitive restructuring. Rather than chasing a bag, or the delusional grasp for happiness through destructive behavior, I was instead flowing into a spiritual practice that guided me toward a saner way of life. For my purposes, I do not believe in an Abrahamic God, but I am an addict in recovery.

My experience with the 12 Steps is that they have taught me that when I’m less reactive and defensive, life becomes less stressful and simpler. The truth of the matter is that I’m constantly taking my will back. I become a backseat driver to my life and demand to make a left turn, when my Higher Power (as understood by me) is telling me to make a right. There are times I’m downright nasty about it and I take the wheel and “all of sudden” there I am, ass out on Broadway. In my early recovery I would take my will back on an hourly basis. I had the good fortune to have someone explain to me that recovery (and life) is really about practice not perfection. The point is if we’re to evolve, then letting go becomes a way of life. These principles are guidelines to progress. The issue isn’t spiritual perfection, but spiritual practice. No one, my guide told me, gets this perfectly. 

Whatever your understanding of your Higher Power, it is suggested that it be a loving and understanding. For me this means living a life of non-harming, of skillful speech and action. If I can turn my life over to that Higher Power, then I’m released from the bondage of my smaller, ego-driven self. For some this can mean throwing away the concept of an angry and jealous God for one that is loving, accepting, and compassionate. It could mean an understanding of God that resides within, instead of the concept of a patriarchal God-in-the-sky. Perhaps the Universal Principle is a stream flowing through all of us. Maybe my Higher Power, rather than being an old white guy with a beard can look like Halle Berry, instead. Who’s to say? What’s important, in this spirituality, is that your Higher Power be loving and trustworthy.

Most importantly, this step is all about coming to terms with trust. It is really about learning acceptance, of letting go of the compulsive need for control. In my active addiction, I was more concerned with control than about relationships. Lack of trust, my friends, is really about control. If you don’t trust someone, then you’re trying to control that person. In other words, lack of trust is the impulse to control because if you can’t trust another, you want to do everything yourself. And how has that worked so far?

Let go...

This is for you, whoever you are. Take what is useful. Ultimately, however, this is mostly for the still sick and suffering addict out there all alone thinking there’s no way out, or defending a madness slowly killing him or her.

My name is Eddie and I am an addict in recovery...