Audacious

‘We were not born People Of Color’, but became it by having to grapple with whiteness, schools, police and the racisms that have restricted our access to the world.  We don’t suffer the absolute, We suffer the relative. We don’t suffer that all lives matter; we suffer that black and brown lives are not mattering. We suffer in the bodies that we have.’ ~ Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

“The Reverend Williams added that we need to honour our suffering, not run away from it or try to ‘get over it’. Just because we feel pain it does not mean we should be better, and if we try to feign transcendence, to ‘Buddhize it’, we are only recreating the wheel of suffering. The suffering does not disappear; instead, we arrive at a place where we are able to smile at our own suffering, to relate to it rather than objectifying it as bad. ‘Only the wounded healers are able to heal.’

‘There is far too much focus on what white people can do for us,’ said the Reverend, and the term ‘allies’ only reifies a position of power; that we are down here and they are up there. ‘The work for white folks is to do their own work,’ she said. They are distracting themselves by trying to ‘give scholarships to people of colour’, ‘signing a cheque for our silence’, and only extending their own suffering by avoiding the deep emotional work required. ‘Don’t wound yourselves by getting into conversations about race with white folk if you haven’t healed yourself first,’ she said. ‘In fact, you don’t need to ever do it. We need to liberate ourselves even from the idea that there is something to liberate ourselves from. Some of us are activists, but for some it is enough to be kindergarten teachers, or architects, or to have a good sense of fashion. We don’t all have a place on the frontlines. But we all have a place on the frontlines of our own suffering, and that is enough.’

When I heard this last line I found myself in tears. Until that moment I had been nodding, taking notes, raising eyebrows, but suddenly I felt released, released by love. I had spent so many years getting into fearsome conversations with white people on the subject of race, arguing in panel discussions on stages, or over dinner tables or in bars (thank god I stopped before the era of Internet debate). In my twenties I devoted hours which would have been better spent sleeping, to deconstructing all the non-sequiturs in defence of whiteness, all the gaslighting. I had no idea how much I was hurting myself, retraumatising a mind that needed the coolness of rain, not more fire. The problem was that I didn’t love myself enough, had been turning myself into a martyr, believing my own wellness to be of little value beside the struggle, never quite realising that my own essence was not that of a fighter but of a human who needed love, that I could never be an effective warrior, in any case, until I healed myself.

It was only over the last ten years, after I began to meditate, that I learned self-care, had therapy, sought out loving company, gave up smoking, began to exercise, eat well, drink water instead of whisky. My writing and political engagement did not stop, but I began to put myself first. What the Reverend Angel Kyodo Williams was saying, however, the monks too, was far more radical; that I did not need to do anything at all other than be happy. This ran contrary to everything I had ever been told, which was that happiness and selfishness were the same thing.

When the session ended I went to pack my things and to say goodbye to so many friends, old and new. The following morning, I landed in New York where I spent the day with a friend from university before flying to London. I had hardly slept on either flight, and remember little of that day in Manhattan, of what we did. All I remember how good it felt to be with an old and much-loved friend, and how at the end of my life it would be moments like these that I would value, not my successes or awards or victories, not the times I’ve been vindicated or proved myself ‘right’. We live in a competitive world, but competition has never made me happy. Friendship has made me happy. Love has made me happy. I’ve always had these moments of happiness, but thanks to meditation they have been more and more frequent, mostly because I have learned how to steer myself myself away from paths that are bound to lead to suffering.

I learned this lesson once more as I readied myself to fly out of Newark and was told that my name wasn’t on the system, that I needed to rush to a different terminal and show them my passport to have any chance of flying. What I wanted to do was to start shouting  (I hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours) but somehow I managed to control myself, observe my breathing, ask them to repeat what I needed to do, smile at the woman, and eventually, I did get on that flight. I have my practice to thank for this. What could have been a dark moment, was only a little grey.

A lot of people ask me what meditation is, and I don’t always know the answer, but I think it is an act of looking. There are some things we can only see in silence, only see when we are still. What we do see can be terrifying at first, especially if we have lived for a long time without looking, though to go on like this is too exhausting in the long-run, at least for me, too unsatisfying. It’s very rare that I know how to live in the material world, and when my plans do come off, which is even rarer, they invariably take me to a different place to the one I had believed they would. The only tool I have that never lets me down is meditation, and as I sat on the plane and closed my eyes, I was relieved that I didn’t need to be in America, or any particular place, to do it.
The world may be getting worse, but the contents of my mind are still essentially the same: there’s fear, anger, and hatred, and also some spaces in between where I can feel calm, feel sure; peaceful, spaces where love can enter. This is why I do it. I live for these spaces now. Perhaps we all do. But if it wasn’t for meditation, I’d never have known they were there in the first place.”

~ posted by Rajeev Balasubramanyam

“These are extraordinary times! It is almost as if the ancestors have risen up in us to complete an unfinished war. Through us some ancestors are carrying torches against people and some ancestors are trying to save the lives of their loved ones from being annihilated by the torch-carriers. This ancient battle has been imprinted upon us. We are being faced today with who we were. So, who are we going to be when all is said and done? Can we settle the rumbles of our ancestors in our own bones?

Some of us are still act upon the great lie of supremacy among us and the subsequent primal fear of extinction. This fear breeds the poisonous thought that there is a superior or inferior living being. Prolonged ignorance breeds hatred. We can see this.

While we are in this mythic battle against supremacy it is difficult to experience the freedom that is simultaneously rising up to  the surface. This freedom begins with acknowledging the malfunction of our “civilization” and a deep knowing that surrendering to intimidation is not a choice. One of the things I learned on the path of Buddha, is that we must continue to live our lives fully despite what we face each day. This is life.

Those of us whose ancestors would not let hatred rob them of life or destroy the possibility of future generations, are still part of who we are. We are still here and we are everywhere wielding the torch of prolonged audaciousness. In peace and great love…”

~ Zenju Earthlyn Marselean Manuel, was born in Los Angeles, California to  parents that migrated from Louisiana. She was raised with a younger and older sister, in the Church of Christ where she was an avid reader of the Bible and adored the true teachings on Christ’s path.

With the deep suffering of violence experienced as a child she became a poet at the age of eight. Upon entering college, a political gate opened of which she joined a community of Pan-Africanists where there was deep healing for her. This healing led to the next spiritual gate opening within the African tradition of Yoruba. She met a visiting tribe of diviners from Dahomey who invited her to join them in ritual and ceremony. This would be the beginning of her experiencing the vastness of things unseen and the world of divination. She was forever grateful for their blessings, as the greatest storms of her life were yet to come.

Her deep experiences of suffering brought her into the deepest solace a human being can imagine. In such solace she came upon the path of Buddha without any desire to be Buddhist. The path of Buddha opened her eyes to the true nature of life. After 15 years in the Nichiren tradition/Soka Gakkai, she eventually followed the path of Soto Zen for many years and was ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest in the Suzuki Roshi lineage. She received Shiho or dharma transmission in January 2016. However, the evolution of her life continues in which she welcomes new doors to open.