Awake in This Life

Sojourners has set up a way to “report” ourselves to the appropriate authorities if we espouse social justice in our interpretation of sacred scripture.

Feel free to join me. Here’s my report:

Dear Mr. Beck,

I’m a Buddhist who believes in the compassionate call to social justice upon which so many historical wisdom traditions base their teachings.

I stand in support of the traditions of the Hindu, Muslim, Hebrew, Buddhist and Christian prophets that echo the teaching of an infinite intention for justice in every aspect of our individual, social, and economic lives. Practicing this intention, after all, helps us embody the most sacred of all spiritual teaching, regardless of tradition.

With this in mind, I hereby “report” myself to you, and promise to report myself to the appropriate organizational authorities. I hope you’ll be hearing from them as well.

Sincerely,

Michael McAlister

This is interesting. I’ve always thought that a commitment to social justice was at the core of Christian (as well as other) spiritual teaching. At least that’s what Thomas Aquinas seems to point out in his writing.

Perhaps Beck has something on Aquinas.

Money quote:

On his radio program, Fox News’ Glenn Beck encouraged listeners to leave their church if it proclaims a concern for social justice:

I’m begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words ’social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!”

You can listen for yourself here.

In this talk, Michael talks about the guidance offered by the famed Heart Sutra, and uses its closing words to illustrate the Path.

via Infinite Smile » ISmile243 – Relization, Hooray!.

In this talk, Michael talks about deconstructing spiritual work in ways that enliven, rather than deaden, the deepest aspects of our lives.

via Infinite Smile.

In this talk, Michael talks about a “question” posed to him recently: “Doesn’t Religion Suck?”His response to this question is at once nuanced and humorous, touching on the broader issues surrounding attachment in our daily lives.

via ISmile241 – Doesn’t Religion Suck?.

Soren Gordhamer, organizer of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, writes that we need to 1.) know that our external reflects our internal, 2.) do one thing at a time, 3.) invite instead of force, and 4.) know where our attention is most needed. Phrases for any spiritual practitioner to live by.

As a conclusion, Gordhamer gives us this money quote:

In the coming years, the amount information at our disposal is only likely to increase. When Google recently launched Google Buzz, their team addressed the challenges of this information era, saying, “we want to present some tools and techniques to help you manage your attention better.” While this is partly a technological problem, it is also an internal and life balance problem.The challenge of our time is to live connected and use all the great social media available to us, while at the same time harness and direct our attention where it is most needed at any given time. After all, where we decide to put our attention is, essentially, how we choose to spend our life.

Blogger, Matthew Yglesias suggests:

The map lumps the plains states in with the church belt, but if you look at the data more specifically you’ll see that nine of the ten churchiest states are in the south and the remaining one is Utah.

Question: How does one go about dedicating their life to this practice? I’m 25 and don’t have many responsibilities, so I have more flexibility and time to give to it.

Answer: It’s like that old Nike slogan: just do it. There are ways of going about “doing the non-doing” but in the most basic terms, one must fearlessly commit himself to “doing” the path so that the path can, ahem, “do” him.  Once this fiery resolve is born within, the next opening to address is how. With this in mind, I have one bit of advice: go methodically, with care. This doesn’t mean for you to be timid. Instead it means for you to be aware of your steps since desperation nearly always defiles and derails the process. Loosen up while at the same time let the light of your fire show you where you are clinging. Study the clinging with complete curiosity and fearlessness, over and over and over. This is what allows for us to ascend… even as we descend. Weird, but language gets in the way at times.  A word of caution… don’t turn your search into another attachment. Time and again I see people that give up everything to start anew and they burn out after a relatively short time. Your path is wherever you are. Travel won’t necessarily bring you any closer to your own experience. It might, but it’s usually a romantic distraction that serves to only minimally enhance the process of awakening. The real work is right in front of you, right in this moment.  Is there a felt sense of openness and space in your experience right now? If not then there is clinging. Look there and begin the search for a guide that can keep pointing you in the right direction.

Had this enjoyable conversation with Vince Horn of the Buddhist Geeks a while back. Hope you like it.

This week we’re joined by Zen-inspired dharma teacher, Michael McAlister. Michael is the leader of the Infinite Smile sangha, just east of Berkeley, in what Michael calls, “the hard edge of suburbia.” After many years of Zen practiced with the San Francisco Zen Center, Michael set up to teach a form of dharma that wasn't bound by tradition.

via Podcast Episode: Buddhist Geeks: The Mountain of Spirit (Seriously Buddhist, Seriously Geeky.

It’s hard to take much of this too seriously, but I still think two things are amazing:

1. Brit Hume’s views on what Buddhism does and doesn’t offer speaks to a significant lack of understanding, and
2. He does his best to play the martyr here even though an apology might have been the most “Christian” thing he could have done, allowing him to embody his faith.

Question: I’ve got a nuts-and-bolts question about meditation.  There are so many varieties:  following the breath, paying attention to whatever arises,  focusing on something particular (like a prayer), Tonglen, etc.  After years of teaching and practice, which methods have proven most helpful to you and your students? Is it useful to try different types of meditation at different stages?  What are your recommendations for the beginner, as well as the more experienced student?

Answer: This is a great series of questions about what is core to any authentic spiritual practice. So let me first start by saying that the heart of enlightenment, or awakening, or whatever you want to call it, is stillness. We can uncover the stillness that is the source of everything when we become truly still in these bodies we inhabit. Now as simple as this sounds, most of us find it rather difficult to actually become still. There is always a sense of movement, be it in the body or the mind, that minimizes our recognition of stillness. We might recognize it briefly, but then in our excitement we find that it’s gone. So we practice, over and over, moment by moment, year after year, to open ourselves to the deep quietude that permeates and lies beneath all experience, by meditating.

When we start out, we usually find it difficult, so we do simple things like following the breath, scanning the body, or reciting a sacred verse or mantra. All of these are great ways to open our experience to stillness, since they tend to allow our discursive minds to take a break. Suddenly we notice that the chatter has died down and there is a vastness to our experience that we may never have known before. It’s not beginner’s luck. It’s an invitation to the amazing party of authentic spiritual work, a celebration that is at once glorious and challenging.

As we get better and better at stilling our mind, we can begin to use any number of different techniques to train ourselves more deeply, allowing us to explore the various meditative states that are always available to us. However, I’ve seen this exploration lead people astray for years. They become skilled at uncovering various meditative states and confuse these states with enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a state. Rather, it’s the groundless ground of all states that is consciously integrated into the lives of those practitioners interested in sharing it. This is why I prefer to encourage students to simply open to what is showing up in the moment, then watch without commentary as each thought or feeling shows up. Just watch. As this watching continues, a subtle awareness of what we might call the “watcher” develops.  This is a naked awareness that is both still and totally oriented in the present moment. Consciously meeting our lives from this open stillness can’t help but awaken us to what is eternal in us.

Give it a shot… and report back.

I was asked recently after giving a talk on engaged politics, what I thought of peace as a political orientation.

What came out of my mouth made me laugh.

“I’m pro-peace,” I said.

The young man just stared.

I then went off a little bit on how an attachment to peace can be viewed in the same way as one might view an attachment to non-peace. Without going into great detail, the conversation was an interesting one.

Carter Phipps writes of this issue in a recent blog post. The issue of peace versus war

…it is one where the Left, with its nonviolent and pacifistic tendencies, too often cedes the wrong kind of ground to the Right, whose enthusiastic embrace of military might too often shows little of the subtlety, nuance, and complexity needed in this age of political self-determination.

He goes on,

for all the failures of war, peace hasn’t always been a good alternative. Krishna knew it 2500 years ago, and it is still true today. Witness the tragedy in the Balkans or Rwanda, or the slaughter in the Sudan, or World War II not that many decades ago. No one has yet convinced me that there is or was a nonviolent solution to those conflicts, as much as we would like there to be. In the long term, of course, anything is possible. But we can’t allow our dreams of peace tomorrow to cause us to make fatal and disastrous mistakes today. Obama spoke directly to this in his speech. And moreover, I’m convinced that the very idea that peace should be the goal of our human endeavors—politically, socially, and even spiritually—represents an outdated context for our moral and philosophical life. And this is where I would take a step, philosophically and theologically, beyond what the President offered.

via Peace Is Not Enough: Thoughts on Obama’s Nobel Speech.

Here’s an argument that I’ve danced with for years: where do we draw the line on the Buddhist precept of not killing. Having just gone through a round of anti-biotics, I knowingly killed lots of things in my body.  The name of the drug regimen “antibiotics” even means “against life”. What’s more, I’m glad that I’m now better able to care for my kids because I was aided in “murdering” the bacteria that was flattening me. Violation of the first precept? I wonder.

And what about my Vedanta friends who don’t eat anything that has a face? Or my Dharma friends who smugly proclaim their vegetarianism on ethical grounds yet dig into tuna fillets that have been seared rare on an open grill, but won’t touch any lamb? Is it the cute principle? When I ask they can’t really say.

Whatever your stance, it’s a great place to observe our attachments.

…before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze.

via  Another Challenge for Ethical Eating – Plants Want to Live, Too – NYTimes.com.

In this talk, Michael asks the question: “What is it that you want from others?” In his explanation, he points out that if we find ourselves caught by the answers to this question, we discover that we are locked in suffering. The way out of this trap is to uncover our deepest sense of generosity and then express it fully in life.

via Infinite Smile » ISmile240 – Being Generous.

When suburban youth deliver…

Originally uploaded by Michael G. McAlister

30 local families are getting gifts this season because of these kids.
Bows.

In this talk, Michael weaves his talk around the issues of greed and karma in our daily lives.

via ISmile238 – Simple But Not Easy.

In this talk, Michael weaves his talk around the issues of greed and karma in our daily lives.

via ISmile237 – On Greed and Karma | Infinite Smile.

Sisters

Originally uploaded by Michael G. McAlister

The Littlest Buddha

Originally uploaded by Michael G. McAlister

Miss Mave Harper Storm McAlister

In this talk, Michael continues his discussion of the temporary nature of all things. As we begin to practice with this fundamental truth, we find that we can begin to accept what is and move from negativity into freedom.

via ISmile236 – Turning Spiritual Lead Into Gold | Infinite Smile.