what to do (about burma)

In the aftermath of the cyclone, some 134,000 Burmese are now dead or missing - over 40 percent of which are believed to be children. The United Nations reports that less than 50% percent of the storm’s 2.4 million affected victims have received any humanitarian relief. While the United Nations Secretary General has received promises that relief workers would be allowed access to the Irawaddy Delta, some 1.5 million people have not seen any aid.

 

The rice paddies are contaminated with salt water and corpses, including the rotting carcasses of thousands of cattle and water buffalo, without which the planting cannot proceed. As always, the monks are at the forefront of serving their people. Some are running an underground supply chain operated out of one of the bigger towns and defying the ban on private relief operations by bringing in food and supplies at great personal risk.

 

It is important to keep the light of awareness on Burma now. The international response to the cyclone could have accumulating effects on the government. The junta is being forced to open its doors a little and this light shining in the darkness can be a great catalyst. Some things you can do:

 

Write or email the Myanmar Embassy expressing your compassionate concern for the Burmese people in this natural disaster, and sincere wishes that the Burmese government will devote its considerable military and civilian resources to rescue those trapped in the path of the cyclone. Ask the government to allow the free flow of international relief aid.
 

The Honorable Ambassador U Linn Myaing, Embassy of the Union of Myanmar
2300 S Street NW, Washington DC 20008; info@mewashingtondc.com; thuriya@aol.com

 

The Honourable Ambassador U Nyunt Tin, Embassy of the Union of Myanmar

Sandringham Building, 85 Range Rd., Ottawa, ON  KIN 8J6; www.myanmar-embassy-ottawa.faithweb.com

 

Write to the Secretary General of the United Nations asking him to endorse an arms embargo against Burma and to pressure the UN Security Council to consider introducing a long-overdue universal arms embargo. The Honourable Ban Ki-Moon, United Nations, New York, NY 10017; sgcentral@un.org

 

Write to the UN-appointed Messengers of Peace: Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, Daniel Barenboim, George Clooney, Paulo Coelho, Midori Goto, Michael Douglas, Jane Goodall, Yo-Yo Ma. Email addresses at http://www.un.org/sg/mop/

 

sources: Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF) and Internet

aid to burma?

Devastation has struck the people of Myanmar, with thousands killed, even more homeless. By definition, their military dictators are not nice people: recall recent images of demonstrating monks being beaten and shot. Suu Kyi–leader of the democratically elected government, Nobel Peace Laureate, and Honorary Citizen of Canada–has been in prison or under house arrest for much of the last 18 years (see yesterday’s post).

Potentially an ethical dilemma: should I send money (since I can’t go there with a shovel or a stethoscope) to assist the aid effort … knowing that some of the funds will end up in the wrong pockets and that the junta is made up of thugs? For me the answer is clear; the question is how to help. Due diligence means finding a trustworthy organization with transparent accounting and legal presence in Canada. And to inform myself via reliable sources. 

As someone wrote in response to this morning’s CBC News article:

“I don’t care if it’s Rangoon, Pyongyang, or Tehran. Human suffering knows no boundaries, or politics. The true test of a compassionate people is not how we treat our friends, but how we treat our enemies.”

photo: SPIEGEL/AP

you be the judge

Excerpted from an article in THE INDEPENDENT (U.K):

 

An American expert in torture techniques has denounced his government for allowing “waterboarding” to be practiced against terror suspects. Malcolm Nance, who trained hundreds of US service personnal to resist interrogation by putting them through “waterboarding” exercises, demanded an immediate end to the practice. President G.W. Bush recently vetoed a Bill that would have outlawed such methods of “enhanced interrogation,” refusing to describe it as torture.

 

Mr Nance said: “You have a purpose-built table … so that people can be strapped and unstrapped quickly. The head is elevated so the water goes down the esophagus. It is poured carefully over the nose – you keep a constant pour. You are drowning in water but you don’t have the ability to hold your breath. You feel the water going in, you understand that water is filling your lungs.”

 

Amnesty International is leading the campaign to persuade the US to abandon the practice – a form of torture used as long ago as the Spanish Inquisition – and is stepping up its efforts with the release of a disturbing advertisement. It will be shown in 50 cinemas in the UK next month. For further information and/or to view, go to the article in THE INDEPENDENT or click for the Amnesty International site. Caution: very graphic!

.

who is hungry in canada?

While anyone is at risk of food insecurity at some point in their lives, certain groups are particularly vulnerable (based on 2007 data from the Canadian Association of Food Banks cafb/acba):

Welfare recipients continue to make up 50.7% of food bank clients in Canada.

Working poor constitute the second largest group of food bank clients, at 13.5%. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the majority of food bank clients with jobs are employed at low wages.

Rural dwellers: Despite the fact that many of Canada’s rural communities are located in prime agricultural areas, hunger is a reality for tens of thousands of the nation’s rural residents.

Persons with disabilities have made up the third largest group of food bank clients in the last five year.

Seniors accounted for 6.8% of food bank users in a typical month.

Children: Child poverty is now at the same level seen in 1989, the year when the federal government made an all-party resolution to end child poverty. 38.7% of food bank clients were under 19.

Single parents: Many of the single parent households assisted by food banks (28.4% of the total) are women: according to Statistics Canada, 1 in 4 single-parent families are headed by women.

each moment an awakening

Greetings to all from the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF):

“The blossoms of spring remind me of a teaching by Zen master Dogen in which he said that zazen, a form of meditation, is not a method by which one reaches awakening but is itself awakening and a source of creative engagement in life. From this perspective, a moment is not an isolated fragment of life but rather a whole experience of birth at each moment in which we can be active and fully engaged in creative ways.”

To subscribe to the BPF electronic newletter, click here.

civilian peacekeepers — what a concept!

Excerpts from an article in the Christian Science Monitor, March 27, 2008. To access the full article, click here:

Legends relate that Buddha stopped a war between two kings who were quarreling over rights to a river by asking them, “Which is more precious, blood or water?” Could ordinary people use the same kind of wisdom – and courage – to check the impulse to fight wars today – over oil, water, or identity? Mahatma Gandhi thought so. He created teams of civilians called the Shanti Sena or “Army of Peace” and deployed them in various communities around India where they could avert communal riots and provide other peacekeeping services.

Over the past 25 years nonviolent peacekeepers have been going into zones of sometimes intense conflict with the aim of bringing a measure of peace, protection, and sanity to life there. Rather than use threat or force, unarmed peacekeepers deploy strategies of protective accompaniment, moral and/or witnessing “presence,” monitoring election campaigns, creating neutral safe spaces, and in extreme cases putting themselves physically between hostile parties, as Buddha did with the angry kings in ancient India. 

[...] Why haven’t you heard about this exciting work? Because it is terribly underfunded, for one thing. There is also a prevailing prejudice that only governments or armed forces – including those of the United Nations – have the responsibility or means to contain conflict. [...] But the biggest obstacle by far is the widespread – and rarely examined – belief that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. It is the belief that there is only one kind of power; threat power, which in the end can be relied upon to get others to change their minds or, failing that, at least their actions.That may change. The failures of war-fighting for peace, most notably now in Iraq, are getting ever more costly – of life, material, and our civil liberties.

[…] People are ready for peaceful change and they’re willing to dedicate their lives to create it. Civilian unarmed peacekeeping could be the way to recognize and help develop the vital protection role global civil society may credibly, effectively, and legitimately play in human security. For the benefit of children and women in armed conflict, for refugees, journalists, human rights defenders, peacefully protesting monks, aid workers, or election campaigners – for all of us. Because ultimately, none of us is secure until all of us are.

The authors: Rolf Carriere spent his career in UNICEF in Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Burma as liaison to the World Bank. Michael Nagler is professor emeritus of the Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and president of the Metta Centre for Nonviolence Education. Both volunteer as senior advisers to Nonviolent Peaceforce.

new book

From the publisher’s website: David R. Loy has become one of the Buddhist worldview’s most powerful advocates, explaining like no one else its ability to transform the sociopolitical landscape of the modern world.

In this, his most accessible work to date, he offers sharp and even shockingly clear presentations of oft-misunderstood Buddhist staples-the working of karma, the nature of self, the causes of trouble on both the individual and societal levels-and the real reasons behind our collective sense of “never enough,” whether it’s time, money, sex, security… even war. Loy’s “Buddhist Revolution” is nothing less than a radical change in the ways we can approach our lives, our planet, the collective delusions that pervade our language, culture, and even our spirituality.  

Review in Buddhadharma Magazine:  This new book “…might have a flashy title, but it is a serious and substantial book that poses real challenges to the reader. The book builds on a theme that Loy has working on for several of his last books—namely, that the three poisons are so intricately built into our society (greed in the market economy, anger in the military industrial complex, and delusion in the fame-chasing omnipresent commercial media) that awakening needs to happen in the social as well as the personal realm. This places the book firmly in the realm of Engaged Buddhism. However, its overarching theme concerns how to ensure that the Buddhadharma survives and flourishes in the West. Loy argues with conviction that in order to have relevance in the West, the dharma must find the middle way between its many traditional Asian forms and the contemporary Western feel-good consumerism that characterize much of today’s spiritualism.”

To order directly from Wisdom Publications at 20% off list price, click here.

a street retreat

2,500 years ago Shakyamuni Buddha led his monks each morning in the practice of begging for their daily food. Each day’s offering was received with thanks regardless of its nature or size, and consumed that day rather than hoarded from day to day. In this way the Buddha encouraged simplicity, the generosity of both giving and receiving, and undiscriminating appreciation.  

A street retreat is planned for Victoria BC from July 31 to August 3, led by Grover Gauntt, a businessman and Zen practitioner. Similar retreats have been a core practice of the Zen Peacemakers since 1991 and have been held in New York, Denver, Paris, Zurich, and other cities. 

Participants go on the streets without money and just the clothes on their backs. They eat in soup kitchens and beg for bus fare or food. They sleep outdoors, in abandoned housing, and shelters. They are of course not homeless: they’re simply living on the streets for several days, relying on the generosity of the streets to take care of them.  

Each retreatant must raise $400 through begging from friends and family or on the street; funds will be distributed after the retreat to social service agencies who support the homeless. This is a powerful practice of not-knowing and bearing witness, where the unpredictable life on the streets is the main teacher. It is a time of raw intimacy, a plunge into a side of life we rarely look at. For details click here.

image: www.walkinghome.ca

let’s talk about it, gently

Think of it this way: each morning you wake up, you have one less “sleep” … counting down from whatever your life span may be. Say you hope to live to age 74 (the average for Canadian women) and you’re now 41 … your life expectancy is 27,010 days with 12,410 remaining (not counting fatal accidents or terminal illnesses). Whether you believe in heaven and paradise, hope to reach nirvana or return for another round as a higher being … fact is, we’re all dying. At least our body is, our “bag of bones” as ancient Zen masters called it. Just look at how it has already changed over the years and how it continues to change with each day. We die the moment we’re born. 

I’m not being morose, don’t get me wrong. I’m the first one to hide my head in the sand and look for a distraction: breakfast, a shower, maybe staying in bed a little longer, read another chapter, finish last night’s video, think about the day ahead, plan chores and projects, worry about old business, scheme about new stuff. Anything but realize that this moment, this breath, could be my last. The ego, the self, just won’t have it. It refused to contemplate its own mortality.  

So we’re in a quandary. The logical mind knows about the inevitability of death and dying. Each days it hears news of death somewhere in the world; occasionally closer to home. The frightened mind, also known as the “small self”, would rather not hear or, even better, deny death alltogether. It believes that life will continue indefinitely or, at least, for many many more years.  

There’s always a middle way: it incorporates both views, the logical and the emotional. It let’s me see fear and hope, presence and absence, awake-ness and sleep. It also accepts, without criticism, that I’d rather avoid thinking about death. And it opens the possibility to at least consider my own mortality, to see it as another step along an unknown path. The moment I go there, anxiety diminishes (but does not go away); I’m able to become conscious about this phenomenon called “my life.” I begin to become curious about what it’s like to be alive. What if death is just a stage along the path — a path I entered when I was born (or even before?) and I’ll leave with my last breath (or beyond?). I don’t really know, do I? How about admitting that it’s all a mystery, something utterly un-knowable?. 

Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, writes: “We do not like to think about death. We would rather think about life. Why reflect on death? When you start preparing for death you soon realize that you must look into your life now… and come to face the truth of your self. Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected.”

mindfulness task #9

Here we resume the posting of tasks to focus on living mindfully. The instructions are sent by Jogen, one of the novices at Great Vow Zen Monastery.

This week’s task is related to the Preparing for Death classes by our teacher Chozen Bays. The first part of the task is to recite the Five Remembrances [which are essential Buddhist teachings] once a day, preferably before bedtime. We recite these to help us reflect and stay in touch with what is most essential in our lives.

The Five Remembrances are:

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.
I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
All that is dear to me and everything I love are of the nature of change. There is no escape from being separated from them.
My deeds are my closet companions. I am the beneficiary of my deeds. My deeds are the ground on which I stand.

The second aspect of this week’s task is to spend a period of meditation doing what Chozen calls “last breath, first breath.” The practice is to exhale as if it were our last breath before death, rest in the space before the turning of the breath, and allow for the natural inhalation with gratitude for another moment of life. Over and over.

image: www.mydigitallife.co.za

no difference

Margaret Wheatley is an organizational theorist and community development consultant. She writes:

“I work in many different places where people are suffering. These people live in third world countries, confronting a future that is no future. Or they live in modern organizations, confronting the loss of self and meaning. I used to differentiate, believing that those who suffer from poverty and disease deserve more support than those whining in comfortable offices. But [Buddhist teacher] Pema Chödrön dissolves this distinction when she explains, Suffering is suffering.”

source: Margaret Wheatley, “Four freedoms.” In Melvin McLeod (ed). (2006). Mindful politics: a Buddhist guide to making the world a better place. Boston: Wisdom Publications, p.189. image: Pema Chödrön

meditation in the workplace

Katherine Reynolds Lewis © 2007 The Seattle Times Company (adapted for this blog)

Imagine an executive who moves her telephone to the far side of his office. It takes an extra five seconds to answer every call. Must be unproductive, right? Not according to Jonathan Foust, who teaches meditation at the World Bank in Washington. Foust encourages his students to pause during the rush of daily life, to return to the calm place they find in meditation. With a renewed focus, they can actually be more productive — better at prioritizing work and managing distractions. When the executive rises from her chair to get the phone, she steals a sliver of time to clear his mind. “When you slow down, what is most important will come to the surface,” said Foust, warning that this takes time to master. “These practices are like swimming upstream, because you’re encountering not only your own conditioning but the culture. This culture does not want to slow down.” 

Meditation groups have sprung up in law offices, insurance companies and other workplaces, without the stereotypical trappings of incense and crystals. Employers find that meditation classes not only boost productivity, they save money by reducing employees’ stress levels. Since the 1960s, when meditation established a foothold in North American popular culture, a variety of schools have blossomed, including Vipassana or mindfulness, Zen, and Shambhala. The common thread is a regular practice of sitting quietly and bringing your mind’s attention to a single point. If you can fully inhabit the present moment, without dwelling on the past or planning for the future, you can let go of anxiety and stress.