Growing a sangha

Last Saturday we had a Day of Mindfulness with Rosensanghan – the Rose Sangha, our local community of practice here in Göteborg, Sweden. As our day was coming to a close, we invented a new ritual for sharing the merit – a ”fruits of the practice” ritual. We placed a small Buddha statue in the centre of our circle, and gave everyone a fruit each. We all took a minute to contemplate the fruit in our hands – orange, apple, banana – and to think about one way that the dharma and our practice have been of benefit in our lives. Then we took turns sharing briefly about our reflections, giving thanks, and stating in our own words our wish that this benefit may spread, that other beings may also experience the happiness that comes from watering seeds of wisdom and compassion. Once somebody had spoken, (s)he offered the fruit to the Buddha. In our circle, people gave thanks for growing joy; a sense of safety and belonging; the capacity to listen deeply; forgiveness; increased stability and other wonderful things. Around the Buddha grew a beautiful selection of fruits of the practice, now being offered in gratitude. I felt such appreciation for the sangha – the ease with which we come together, the support we offer each other, the transformation that comes from it.

Four years ago there was no sangha in Thay’s tradition here. I urgently felt the need for one, but setting one up seemed such a big project. In my mind it looked like a catch 22 – I needed to practice with a sangha in order to become more stable, and so I should try to build one. But in order to build a sangha, I would need to be a stable practitioner – how else could I do it? I asked a dharma teacher about this dilemma, and he said: “First thing is this: don’t think that you are not stable enough.” How could he say that, I thought, he doesn’t even know me!

Nevertheless, I decided I had to try. Some friends who had also been to Plum Village came to sit together in my living room, and to my surprise others started showing up too. Soon we had a group of about 8 regulars coming for sitting, reading and dharma discussion. But although I was happy about it, our practice wasn’t very nourishing for me. I spent a lot of time preparing our sessions and worried about the expectations and experiences of the other practitioners, even as we were meditating. I tried so hard to create good conditions for everyone that sangha was becoming a real energy drain. After about a year, I decided I needed a break. No one else was ready to take on the work and we stopped meeting for a while.

During our break, something shifted in me. I am not sure why, but when we started meeting again I did my work with a different attitude. I no longer tried so hard; I just felt sangha preparations were a chance for me to practice. I enjoyed doing it, and I began to understand the words of the dharma teacher in a different way – not as a comment about my stability, but as good advice: don’t worry about whether you can do it or not, instead concentrate on doing it.
Now others are beginning to take on more sangha responsibilities, which is very nice! But when I have to do a lot of work, I am also happy, because it helps me focus on my path. These days, I feel caring for a sangha is like having a garden. We are gardeners – we contribute as best we can, and something grows because of our work. But the growth, the flowering, the fruit of the practice is not produced by us, any more than the apples I just picked outside are produced by me. These things emerge from the soil of our collective practice, through a process that is beyond our control. Thus we can relax, even while working we can lean back, and watch in amazement and gratitude as our sangha flower unfolds. Trust is the key, trust in the practice, in your own good heart and in the good heart in everyone else.

So for those of you who are on your own, fresh out of retreat and longing for a sangha where you live – know that you can do it! Like Pema Chödrön once wrote: if a schmuck like me can

On leaving retreat and the search for justice

"I have a gift for you", said brother Phap Ban on the last day of summer retreat in Plum Village. "Two more days: your day of travelling home, and your first day at home. Use your breathing, use your awareness, arrive in each moment just like here. You will discover many new things, maybe see your home like it is for the first time."

I recognize the truth of this encouraging offer. Coming out of retreat is a very interesting process. The first time I did it, it was a shock. With my sense doors wide open, even the friendly train station in Bordeaux seemed a chaos of sharp sound, bright colours, stress and violence. I held on to my breath for dear life, struggling not to let my body and mind forget the reality of their spacious, relaxed true nature as I had experienced it during the past weeks. Of course, I lost it - after a week or so at home all my habit energies had resurfaced. I found myself positioned like a very unskilful hunter outside the fox's den - every time a new bad habit of body, speech or mind showed itself, I would try to whack it over the head as hard as I could, hoping to kill it off once and for all.

Unfortunately, bad habits don't respond very well to such a violent approach. The only result, predictably, was that the process of reverting to my usual not-so-mindful state became much more painful than it would have had to be. These days, coming out of retreat is a much more pleasant experience. I enjoy my enhanced awareness and concentration, and try to maintain them as long as I can, but I don't struggle. When my mind reverts to more common states, I go back to enjoying my everyday practice at home and with the sangha as best I can. But in the process, I often make interesting discoveries.

On the TGV towards Paris, the woman who came to check our tickets was young, tall, very beautiful and very stern. She smiled as she looked at our Interrail passes, but in her eyes there was something else - measuring, questioning, suspicion. "Excusez-moi", she said, and walked off with our passes to talk to her colleagues at the other end of the carriage. "We should fill those out", I said in shaky french as she came back, and reached for the passes to add today's date to them. But she held them back: "It is a bit late for that, isn't it? Boarding the train without having filled out your pass - that is what we call fraud." She seemed amused, in a cold way, enjoying framing these stupid people who were trying to rip off the SNCF but didn't have the brains to get away with it. I tried explaining and arguing; after all, we just hadn't known the importance of filling out our passes before boarding. But she wouldn't budge: "It is your responsibility to be aware of the rules", she said, and fined us 20 €.

As she left, my partner was visibly irritated, while I felt a familiar hot lump in my throat. At first, I wasn't sure what it was about. It wasn't the money - anyway, 20 € is nothing in the general bankruptcy of travelling to France by train. I leant back in my chair, coming back to my breathing and allowing the lump to be there, holding it with compassion. I found tears in my eyes. "I am sad", I told my partner with suprise, as the tears began to flow down my cheeks. "Oh", he said. "Why?" I didn't know. The interaction itself had been mildly unpleasant but really nothing that would have made me cry under ordinary circumstances.

Looking at the sadness welling up in me, I could feel the impulse to push it away, recognizing my habit of not allowing certain emotions deemed unfit for the public sphere and the conscious mind to manifest. This time, however, being so fresh out of retreat, I had the mindfulness and awareness to greet my sadness with friendliness and compassion. "Welcome", I whispered under my breath to the lump in my throat. "You are welcome here, my sadness." With this invitation, the feeling expanded, filling my whole chest, the whole of my abdomen, the whole of my heart and mind. I had the sensation of looking into a deep, clear well, a stream of cool, clear water springing up from the earth, flowing, flowing, flowing. It was painful, but not in the ordinary sense of the word, because there was so much release and relaxation in the experience. I felt I could continue to cry like this forever, like the well of tears would never run dry. My partner held my hands, breathing with me, letting me be.

"Looking deeply", said Thây in a retreat a few years ago, "is not about analyzing." I am still in the process of grasping what this means - my way of being in the world has been that of an intellectual and activist, where all activities are rooted in analyzing. In meditation, I am beginning to learn another way: just opening my heart and mind to that which calls for my attention, listening for the stories, images and emotions within it, without jumping to conclusions too quickly as regards what they mean. Breathing and looking into my sadness this way, the images that came up were, somewhat surprisingly, largely work-related. I saw myself bent over heaps of student papers, lecturing, bent over my computer, the endless days and nights struggling to finish yet another report or paper, all of these times when I try so hard, so very hard, and yet only very rarely feel deep in my heart that I do enough. I felt the deep injustice in how I judge my own efforts and how I treat myself. I realized that feeling unfairly treated by the woman checking our tickets had put me in touch with this deeper undercurrent of unfairness in my own life - my tendency to judge myself much too harshly, which is also mirrored in a tendency to judge others. Looking at this, I could feel infinite sadness, for myself and all others caught in the same net of judgement and harshness, and also the immense relief that would come with a greater degree of acceptance and appreciation.

As crying slowly subsided, I remembered how someone once asked Thây a question about how to be efficient in working for social justice. I have forgotten most of the answer, but I remember the beginning: "Before we can learn how to work for justice in the world, we have to learn how to be just to ourselves." I saw how being just to myself would mean recognizing more of reality: honoring my efforts, and seeing how both my success and my failures (like everything else on the planet) are the result of immense webs of causes and conditions, the majority of which are beyond my control at each point in time. Being just would mean not taking success and failure so personally anymore; relaxing, rejoicing. This would also mean much more space and energy in the work for justice in a wider, social sense.

As the conductor walked past again, I made a conscious effort to reach out to her in my heart. "Thank you", I told her in my mind. "Thank you for doing your job. Thank you for showing me sides of myself that I need to become more aware of. Thank you for giving me this moment of caring and intimacy with the man that I love. Thank you for the seeds of kindness in you heart." I had some resistance to this reaching out - some irritation at her tone, a little bit of righteous indignation. Still, I was able to see that this opportunity to look deeply was worth a lot more than 20 € and a little bit of humiliation, and aspire to gratitude.

So I see that brother Phap Ban was right: often very - if not the most - interesting things happen after retreat, if we allow ourselves to remain soft, open and attentive as we return to the world.

New beginnings

For a long time, I haven't felt inspired to write at all. Yet writing is how I spend my days, trying to finish a report on climate change and conflict for the green think tank Cogito. The topic is important beyond belief, and such a worthy thing to devote oneself to, yet I often feel empty and like I have little to offer. One reason is good old overwhelm - the sorrow I feel looking at our (lack of) future prospects on this planet. Of course all is not lost - yet. But business as usual, which is the track we are currently on, will take us places we have never been as a species or as a global ecosystem, where wellbeing and even survival will be threatened in ways we can hardly imagine.

And with this call to action ringing in my ears, I choose to go back and finish my psychology degree - an undertaking I believed I had left behind for good when I last walked out of the doors of that department, in December 2000. I was surprised when I first made the decision a few months ago. On the surface politics seems a more important undertaking than ever - and in many ways it is. I remain profoundly grateful to all those who devote their energy to turning the tide in the way our political institutions function, and I do believe I will move back into that field again at some point. But right now, it is time to look inwards, to steady my gaze and my understanding of mind. And I am so grateful for this opportunity.

Not that it will be easy, working and studying at the same time, and also caring for the Gothenburg sangha, but I am really looking forward to these few years. When I left psychology eight years ago, my interest in mindfulness meditation was everything but scorned in the department. These days, the clinical relevance of the practice is being recognized in a much wider circle, as are our possibilities for well-being and growth through meditation. I believe I will find a constructive and exiting way to relate to this academic environment now, and again feel profoundly grateful, for all those who have worked to create the growing understanding of the importance of contemplative mind.

I also believe this is the best choice I can make if I want to contribute to social change at this point in time. The climate crisis is political. But it is also moral, existential, psychological. We will not solve it, nor any of the other desperately important global issues, without a new vision of human transformation and wellbeing, grounded in a deep understanding of the way our minds work, how we seek for happiness and security in all the wrong places, while all the time the treasure of our true nature is buried right beneath our own hearths. Transformation and liberation is possible through practice, individually and collectively, even politically.

And thinking about these years ahead, this opportunity to look deeply into mind and learn ways to work for our shared healing, I again feel... yes, profoundly grateful. And I also find an interest in writing again, in that non-contrived, exploring way. This little attempt at starting up the blog again has been a calm and happy moment. Another new beginning - there seems to be such an abundance of them right now.

Thank you.

What do you mean, doing something??

A late night conversation with my lovely non-violent (fairly Gandhian) peace activist flatmate has me jotting down the following notes:

The key difference between political activism that makes a difference and that which does not has nothing to do with the difference between protest and resistance, as many Gandhians would have us believe. It is not that those who “protest”, attend demos and write petitions, are just confirming their ultimate allegiance to the present, admittedly limited, system of parliamentary democracy, while those who are prepared to “take it to the next level” and actually resist (i.e. in this terminology break the law in an open and non-violent way) are the ones who are offering the chance for real change.

No, the key difference is between those who act from a place of profound understanding of self and other, and those who do not. Unfortunately, most activists today would fall into the second category, whether we are resisters, protestors or creators. That is, we act from a place of unacknowledged despair over the state of the world, and the main purpose of our action is to free ourselves of that panicky feeling of the world moving closer to the abyss each day. We need to feel that we are "really doing something". As long as we get to feel that, we don’t really ask to what extent our activities are touching the hearts of people, making them want to join us, or whether we are alienating more people than we gain for the cause. We turn inward, affirming our own identities as the good guys, in opposition to the Bad Guys over there – the problem, whatever it is, rests with them and surely not with us.

The activist (I really don’t like that word, but I haven’t come up with a better one yet) who knows the depths of her own despair and isn’t afraid of it anymore is calmer, and much more prepared to wait, be still, listen, and seek to understand the situation that she wants to change deeply. She recognises that in order to affect profound change, her focus cannot be reducing her own anxiety level, but it has to be to really communicate – communicate with people who often dislike and distrust her. She recognises that her actions need to communicate to the hearts of those concerned, the people who populate the institutions, corporations or whatever that she has a problem with, and that an action that might seem skilful from her own point of view could be extremely provoking and in fact lock people tighter in the prescribed roles, undermining communication instead of strengthening it. She doesn’t need to affirm herself as a Good Guy anymore, or to affirm this or that method as the only “real” form of resistance or creativity (whether being an insider in the system or an outsider seeking for radically different alternatives). She has a bird’s view, recognising that different situations call for different means, and that the key concern is to get the situation as a whole to open up and evolve, rather than proclaiming her own point of view to the world. That is why she makes a difference.

The (he)art of understanding

Sitting in a beige little room at Wadham College, Oxford, reading a new book on methodology in the social sciences I wonder what I am doing in academia. Methodology. God, what a dry, soulless word, and God, how many things seem to have been written on it that are all about knowledge and have nothing to do with insight or understanding.

Still, it doesn't have to be like that. For some reason, I am convinced there can be heart to research and social science. In fact, I think there has to be heart, or else we will not find a proper way to know what it is we have in front of us. Sometimes I am hit by a vision of the researcher within the social sciences as someone who learns how to maintain a truly open mind and open heart, and who brings this openness, her readiness to listen deeply, her steady presence, into the different context where she goes. She is not "objective" in a superficial, distanced sense, but allows herself to be touched by the people, situations or structures being studied. She is fearless in admitting her lack of knowledge, in exposing herself to what is in people's hearts and minds as they struggle in the dismal swamp of politics. She makes research an art of understanding.

A few months ago, a friend sent me a quote from Thinley Norbu Rinpoche:

There is no communication in relative truth without understanding everyone’s system and idea, so may I adapt to everyone’s system for everyone’s benefit.
There is no liberation in absolute truth without release from everyone’s system and idea, so may I adapt to no one’s system, beyond benefit’s wish.

I have been digesting those lines since I first read them. They leave me exhilarated. There is something absolutely crucial in there, not only for meditators and salvation-seekers, but for peacemakers and emancipators and social scientists and revolutionary leaders. I feel tempted to try to pin it down, of course, but somehow there is nothing to add. There is just letting that paradox work on me, working its way to the heart.

Dispersion - all at once

There is lots of stuff I "should" do right now. Like finish another draft of my bachelor's thesis and send it to my poor supervisor who by now is probably completely fed up with my inability to produce this particular piece of writing. Or send about a hundred different emails. Or work on Cogito's (our think-tank) report on ecofeminism. I just can't make myself do any of that. It feels confusingly good. The protector principle raising it's flame-adorned head saying "NO" - sit still, sit still, and maybe just write down what is in your heart, but no more than that.

Thank you. I am still.

By now, darkness is approaching. Swedish darkness, the heavy, 6-month kind. These september weeks are filled with a lingering, poetic light and warmth. I try to suck it all in, before the darkness, which is almost here. We are preparing for hibernation, while pretending that the darkness is not just around the corner.

So much is happening. For example, I have just been to the second national conference for peace research in Sweden, and presented a paper on Thây Nhat Hanh's practices for reconciliation and social change. Actually, the paper was about how difficult it is to bring engaged Buddhist principles into the social sciences, in spite of the fact that engaged Buddhism is about so many of the things that are at the heart of peace research, since it is impossible to understand engaged Buddhism from a purely intellectual point of view. Presenting it was an interesting experience. Firstly, I felt like I was kind of coming out of the closet. No, I am not the rationalistic semi-marxist you all took me for, I am one of the Weird Ones, talking about the need for spirituality and all sorts of mumbo-jumbo, like consciousness, mindfulness and transformation through meditation practice. Yes, I am. O, my happiness.

And I got some really interesting reactions, that I will share with you some other day soon.

I have a new job. I teach at a university in another city (or town, rather), peace and development studies. Gender and development, human rights and the environment, things like this. I go there a few days a week. Everything is new. Having a work-place where I am supposed to be is a delicious feeling, and very grounding. I am normally a freelance type of person, borrowing a desk here and a printer there, from people with better-ordered lives. I am in love with our students. Just the fact that they are using their precious human lives to try to figure out what these important things mean is enough to make my heart sing. My father who has spent a lot of time teaching says that feeling will go away, and perhaps it will, but for now I just enjoy it. This probably sounds slightly weird, but just seeing them in the corridors, especially the very young ones who for some reason believe they have nothing to offer the world although they are completely bright and shiny and wonderful, gives me such enormous energy. Which is a good thing - I am certainly going to need it to measure up to what they deserve.

I read bell hooks on pedagogy and feel blessed that there are so many wise elders out there.

Today I attended a lecture with Sante Sensei of the Swedish Zen Buddhist Society. It was very enjoyable. He seemed a humble teacher with a deep practice - I felt that intuitive trust in his abilities which usually signal a good teacher. I am looking forward to sitting with his group here in Gothenburg this autumn, when we aren't having our own sittings here, in Thây Nhat Hanh's tradition, in our living rooom. We are starting again next Tuesday, and you are invited.

This post is just as dispersed as my mind has been this week. Writing is indeed very instructive.

Oh, and here I am

...except I have less hair these days than in these photos.

Nonattachment from views

Here is what happens when someone seriously disagrees with me and my views, and expresses their opinion on my work in a denigrating way:

There is a very strong sense of discomfort. I feel cold. I have trouble breathing for the first few seconds - an intense energy moves through my chest and abdomen. Then there is fear and self-doubt - what if I am wrong? What do I know about this, really? There is a sense of losing ground and scrambling for it. There is aggression - my mind starts spinning, formulating the right answers to show that idiot attacking me that I am right. Or rather, to assure myself that I am right, bring me back to a comfortable resting place.

As may be obvious from the detail in this decription, I just went through all that a couple of minutes ago. The think-tank that I am part of is publishing a report on "the counter-forces of the environment", meaning people and organisations who actively work against protective environmental legislation/regulation. We are arranging a seminar on this report in a couple of days, and someone at a magazine that doesn't like us just published a very negative comment on us (based entirely on the one sentence introducing the seminar on our webpage. The report isn't even out yet). I was surprised (again!) at the force of my negative reaction. It may be that I am still rather fresh out of retreat and thus very sensitive, but also it seems my discomfort in these situations is growing from one year to the next. I aspire to relax and stay open, but honestly, I don't think I am doing very well yet.

I am practicing to join the Order of Interbeing, but some days I really do feel I am not up for it and never will be. Right now I am focusing on the The First and Second Mindfulness Training of the Order, which deal with openness and non-attachment to views. Order-members commit themselves not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist ones, and to learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to others' insights and experiences. That sounds nice. Friendly, relaxed. And it is, of course - but it is also (at least to this politician that is me) hard-core practice.

When I first read the trainings I didn't really feel touched by those two, it was more like yeah, sure, I am an openminded person, what is the problem? Now I see that my tendency to shut down when I am under "opinion attack" is extremely strong. In retreat recently, Thây Nhat Hanh said to us that attachment to views means that when someone expresses a view, we hold up our own view and compare what they are saying with what we already believe to be true. If they match, we say yes, OK, I hear you. If they don't, we reject what is being said. As he told us this, even illustrating with little gestures the act of bringing out one's own opinion to use for comparision, I saw that Yes, INDEED - that is what I do. Every day and twice on Sunday. Ouch.

I have been trying for quite a while now to challenge myself when it comes to opinions. I deliberately join projects where I know I will have to work with people that I disagree with. I make an effort to stay open, to just follow my breathing when people are talking, and hear what is being said without jumping to conclusions, trying just to understand. Sometimes I feel I am a little bit successful. And then all of a sudden, I look around and discover that I am at a cocktail party with a bunch of the Really Important People (whom I still do believe have a very shallow understanding of what the world's problems are about), eating canapés with a sheepish grin on my face and no idea whatsoever as to what I am doing.

And yes, my views of these people, or rather my views of their views, are just that: views. But I can't help it - in practice, my attempts at nonattachment to views feel like "critical thinking disabled". As if someone could come up to me and say "The world is flat!", and I would just go "Oh, well, if that is how you perceive things..." Or perhaps, this person would go "There is no such thing as global warming," or (less scientific, more political, more difficult) "Free trade is the solution to world poverty". And I don't want to let go of my conviction that those things are simply not in accordance with reality - not true.

Of course I know that no one has asked me to relinquish my experience, my knowledge or my critical thinking. Of course I know that the practice is not to be caught in these things - so that my heart and mind can remain open when someone disagrees with me, so that I can learn, so that I can see when I am wrong, so that there can be space for new things to arise, so that I can connect with people and with situations, so that I can understand, so that I can be of help. It is just that I don't know how to do that yet. Either I have my view and I HOLD IT, or I release it and feel like a sheep.

I learnt that in politics. Unlearning takes a while.

In a few days' time, I will be the moderator of this seminar I mentioned above. I will dress up as an Important Person and try to create a space where the Important People on our panel feel that sharing our ideas and experiences around how to counter the threat to the environment is not a competition, where the point is defeating the others, but that we are there to help each other think bigger, become aware of more than one perspective. Cross your fingers for us.