Bodhisattvas Remind Us: "After Night Comes Day"

In a recent DharmaSeed talk after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, Jack Kornfield, a well-known Western Buddhist teacher and author, reminded his audience and Sangha, of the famous quote by Mahatma Ghandi, the great 20th century Indian leader of the non-violent independence movement:

"Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible.  But in the end, they always fall. Always."

I have found in these last few weeks I have needed these kinds of reminders from the Bodhisattvas of all time that impermanence is a truth greater than any given moment I happen to be experiencing.

Bodhisattva is a Sanskrit term for an enlightened human being who dedicates his or her life to the liberation and enlightenment of all sentient beings. It is said that this dedication, or devotion, stems from profound compassion,  but I would add it must include a healthy dose of courage and a sense of radical hope.

I know of no English word that is an equivalent to this ancient Sanskrit word, but I've been thinking about other "Bodhisattvas" (Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Humanist, and Athiest alike) whose lives give me hope at this time.

In one of my favorite movies, Amazing Grace (2006), there is a line that has been reverberating inside of me since the result of the U.S. Presidential Election came in: "After night comes day."

These words are said in a poignant scene in the film when William Wilberforce, who would be remembered by historians as a great slavery abolitionist in Great Britain and the world, is in terrible despair that his dream of anti-slavery legislation may never be full-filled. 

Distraught, after years of what we would now call: lobbying, advocating and community organizing to end slave trade, William has withdrawn to his cousin's home in what appears to be an emotionally depressed, physically exhausted and spiritually empty state.

But then, as Hollywood loves to do, he meets the woman named Barbara who would become his wife. 

And it is Barbara who reminds her future husband that as surly as he is devoted to god and the abolitionist movement, he can also be sure: "After night comes day."

William Wilberforce, or at least the Hollywood version of him, is a bit of a kindred spirit for me at this time in U.S. history, and with that, I've been seeking out my "Barbaras."

People who, in the face of our own confusion, despair, hurt and heartbreak, help us hold the long-view of history and the cosmos.

At this particular moment in U.S. history, I believe I'm not alone in this need for a more hopeful long-view of history.

Case in point: there was street parking only at my Unitarian Universalist Church on the Sunday after Donald Trump became President-Elect of the United States of America.  It seems I was not the only one who had a need to say the UU Benediction in unison with my other fellow Americans:

Go out into the world in peace,

Have courage

Hold onto what is good

Return to no person evil for evil

Strengthen the fainthearted

Support the weak

Help the suffering

Honor all beings.

I love these words.  And I love that there are other people out there who love these words too.

Sometimes though, I need more than a remembrance that there are others who believe that humanity should "honor all beings."

There are times, like after the recent presidential election, that I need to see these people with my own eyes.  Hear them with my own ears. And touch them with my own hands- as our Reverend  had us do during the recitation of the Benediction Closing at the end of the service.

I also needed the sensory experience of comradery after another experience, spawned I believe by the presidential election results, earlier in the same week in which I had an awful verbal exchange with another fellow countryman at my local Dunkin' Donuts (an American coffee shop). 

Still upset about it days after, I shared it online with the NPR radio show On Being after their re-release of a fantastic interview with the late, great American Civil Rights Leader and Thinker Vincent Harding who words and ideas are built to help us remember the long-view.

Below is what I wrote:

"I greatly appreciated revisiting this interview after not only the election results, but also a personal experience I had the day after the election.

I was in a Dunkin Donuts and another customer, who happened to be a white man, began to say in a very loud voice for all in the restaurant to hear, a series of very bigoted and derogatory comments about a female tv news anchor to another customer, who also happened to be a white man.

Quite upset by this, I confronted this man and told him to stop repeating this profane language that I found offensive, and his response to me was to not only not stop (he certainly kept going), but he yelled at me: "I can say whatever I want and do whatever I want. You can't stop me!"

Two days later now, I am still very upset by this event, but, listening to the piece in Mr. Harding's interview where he referred to us Americans as 'amateurs' in a 'developing nation' in terms of practicing democracy and democratic values, I found it strangely comforting.

I suppose it is actually not surprising though that it would take an elder, a deceased elder at that, to help me pull back from the intensity of the current moment in order to see the longer view of history and my place in it (as well as the other customer in Dunkin Donuts on Wednesday).

I wrote to a friend this week that I have been reminded by this election and my personal experience of the famous quote attributed to Rev Dr. Martin Luther King about the 'long arc of justice.' Mr. Harding helped remind me where we as a nation truly are on that arc.

But, now let's see if we can move that arc forward. As the old saying goes, in every crisis, there is an opportunity to take a big step forward."

Last summer I had shared with you all that my neighbor's house burned down to the ground.  Luckily everyone including the children and pets survived, but the house did not.

This past week I decided to drive up the road to see how reconstruction is progressing.

Seeing the bare bones construction of their new house reminded me again: "After night comes day."

May it be so.

Spiritual Lessons from Nature: Part VII

This past summer my hydrangea, just outside the door of my house, did not have one blossom.  Not one.

In the 9 years I have lived in my home, this beautiful bush has created the most gorgeous blue flowers every other year.  Not this year though.

Why was this I wondered?

I did nothing different in the way I cared for it.  I was exactly the same. 

Which left me questioning if other conditions, conditions in my environment outside of my control, did change.  Or maybe, a condition had been accumulating over the past few growing seasons that I was not aware of- or perhaps, ignoring.

A fan of Oprah Winfrey's television show Super Soul Sunday, I have often heard Ms. Winfrey ask the prominent spiritual and religious thinkers she is lucky enough to interview: What spiritual lesson did it take you the longest to learn?

Such a great question.

For me, right now anyway, it is this: I can do everything "right," and still lose big.

Yeah, still working on that one...

I think though, like my hydrangea, it may have something to do with some of those mysterious concepts that Vietnamese Buddhist teacher and author Thich Nhat Hanh speaks and writes about that intrigue me so- like:  Interbeing and Interconnection. 

I'm also wondering about some of those other Buddhists concepts that I don't pretend to understand, but rather bat around in my tiny brain, like individual Karma and community Karma that speak to the power and influence of causes and conditions- even when we may not have entirely discovered what those causes and conditions are.

As always, these days especially in the post-election United States, there is much to contemplate and many opportunities to practice from the moment you walk out your front door.

Blessings to you in your own contemplation and practice today.

Poetry 107: Merging Landscapes

Merging Landscapes

I no longer know where I begin

and where I end.

Am I the sky,

the wind,

the ground upon which I stand?

When sadness and joy

stand beside each other

under a cloudy sky,

where is the luminous sun?

The reflective moon?

As always,

I seem to have more questions

than answers.

Yet when the cold air enters my skin

as I move through the mundane,

or the hot air forces sweat down my brow

as I write these very words,

I feel the unmistakable

merging of landscapes

that makes the pain

of the world bearable

for just

one

more

day.

Because I know,

the manufactured borderland

of internal and external

disappears into only sensation

in the end;

when all that remains

is infinity.

In these transcendent moments,

I am no longer me,

And you are no longer you.

When creation is creator,

And creator is creation.

When we are all finally free.

-Me

Kindred Spirits: David Whyte

No One Told Me

By David Whyte

No one told me
it would lead to this.
No one said
there would be secrets
I would not want to know.

No one told me about seeing.
seeing brought me loss and a darkness I could not hold.

No one told me about writing
or speaking.

Speaking and writing poetry
I unsheathed the sharp edge
of experience that led me here.
No one told me
it could not be put away.

I was told once, only
in a whisper,
‘The blade is so sharp-
It cuts together
-not apart’

This is no comfort.
My future is full of blood
from being blindfolded
hands outstretched,
feeling a way along its firm edge.

This poem, "No One Told Me" by David Whyte, that I read for the first time the other day, felt like looking in a mirror. It reminded me of what I had wanted, had tried, to convey in July of this year when I posted a poem under the title "Bittersweet Awakening."

I'm loving the mystery of this crazy perfect universe.

Poetry 106: Just As I Am

Just as I am

Maybe I  am more like,

just like,

the blade of grass. 

The crow. 

The cloud in the sky. 

Maybe, just maybe,

god  wanted me 

just 

like 

this. 

Just as I am. 

Could that possibly be possible?

I can't even fathom,

and yet, I now wonder. 

Often. 

Because if that's true,

as things like god and theology can be,

then, what?

Do I sit?

Take a breath?

Maybe two. 

Do I let go?

Do I step outside 

to sing, celebrate and breakdance in the street?

What if I am already the person I am supposed to be?

What if my mind is the mind it is supposed to be?

And my body is the body it is supposed to be?

What would I do then?

How would I proceed?

To realize, at age 39, 

that me 

and the black bear outside my door 

are exactly as we should be,

seems like the worst April fools joke

that could simultaneously mean my freedom. 

If I embody myself,

just as I am,

what would happen next?


-Me