Dharma Monkey

As a child of the 1970s and early 1980s, the only exposure I ever received to world events took place during a five-minute segment on the evening news. The American TV broadcaster ABC would always place a red band in the top left-hand corner of the screen with the name of the foreign news location where the story was taking place. It seems sometimes as if the only memory I have of world news during those years is from Berlin, Moscow and Afghanistan.

In 2009, I can read in real-time about events unfolding on the streets of Tehran, Mogadishu and Lhasa. Within seconds of an event taking place, video flashes across programs like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And the news is still rarely ever good.

For the last week, I have followed a perfect stranger’s experience on Twitter. I only know him or her as @change_for_iran, a self-identified student participating in the nation’s Green Revolution. When I realized earlier today that this person stopped posting to Twitter, I started searching for real-time news out of Iran. Within 30 seconds, I found a video of a young woman bleeding to death on the streets of Tehran, allegedly at the hands of the Basij, a pro-government militia.

I flinched at first, but then made myself watch all agonizing 30 seconds of the video of a precious young woman dying. In the comments below the image, people argued back and forth whether the video was made today, or if it was in Tehran or Esfahan. To all of them, I simply ask: Why does any of it matter?

Human beings have certain fundamental rights – human rights – including the right to self-determination, and yet, with something as seemingly novel as Twitter, the entire planet can watch as a young lady bleeds to death, all because she stood up for her basic rights. We, as humanity, should be outraged.

And yet, there’s reality. So many of us, myself included, are caught up in the whirlwind of our daily lives, distracted by the new restaurant down the street, or by a new version of the iPhone, that we literally lose sight of the fact that we are interconnected. We simply cannot see that, when one of us falls on the streets of Tehran, or suffers under the military baton in Lhasa, or loses a fight to drugs and gang violence on the streets of Washington, D.C., every one of us suffers.

Somewhere today, a parent is wondering why her daughter has not yet returned home, fearful, perhaps, of that green piece of cloth tied around the young girl’s wrist. And at some point in the future, the man who pulled the trigger and the man who ordered him to do so will have to come to terms with the blood on their hands.

The girl and the men involved in her death are my brothers and sister; I can only pray and ask for prayers of compassion and loving-kindness to prevail.

Photo credit: The New York Times

June 20th, 2009 | Category: World News | Leave a comment

I was three days out of high school, and China was an imaginary place a world away. I remember grainy television footage, not unlike that which constantly flashed across the 6 o’clock news with images of war between the Soviets and the Afghans. I had no idea who I was, nor could I have understood these students on the other side of the planet.

What I did know, however, is that they were incredibly brave: who stares down four tanks in the middle of an abandoned street?

In retrospect, I understand why they died. And, more importantly, I understand why we must remember.

Bobby Yip/Reuters

Hong Kong Tiananmen Vigil Is Enormous and Somber; Keith Bradsher, NYT

Throngs of men, women and children gathered at a park here on Thursday evening for an enormous, somber candlelight vigil to mark the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings.

The organizers said that 150,000 people joined the vigil, tying the record set by the first anniversary vigil in 1990 and dwarfing every vigil held since then. The police estimated the crowd at 62,800, their largest estimate for any vigil except in 1990, which they put at 80,000.

The peaceful assemblage spilled out into nearby streets, shutting down traffic. Inside Victoria Park, thousands listened to songs and speakers who recounted the events on the night of the crackdown. A half-hour into the vigil, the lights in the park were extinguished and the attendees lit a forest of white candles in inverted conical paper shields.

June 4th, 2009 | Category: World News | Leave a comment

This story from today’s Washington Post about a man living at a Buddhist temple outside the city’s northwestern suburb of Poolesville.  Sam Pettengill, after being bitten by a copperhead (which, next to the ubiquitous cottonmouth, was among the snakes we most feared during my childhood in rural South Carolina), actually had the presence and discipline of mind to circumambulate the stupa at his nearby temple with the snake, offering it prayers for a higher rebirth, before releasing it.  Only then did he seek medical attention for what could have been a fatal encounter.  

Wow.

If you were a baby copperhead snake in Montgomery County and you wanted to bite someone, you could do a whole lot worse than pick Sam Pettengill.

For starters, there was the place the snake slithered into: Pettengill’s studio apartment at Kunzang Palyul Choling, a Buddhist temple near Poolesville, next to woods by the Potomac River. Animals are loved there.

Then there is Pettengill himself, who was still laid up yesterday at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. The 36-year-old has been known to buy crickets and worms from bait shops, bring them back to the woods and set them free.

“It’s about accumulating merit,” he said of such acts.

Pettengill was recovering nicely yesterday — after four rounds of antivenin — and was expected to return to the temple shortly.

It was about 11 p.m. Sunday when he walked into his apartment and found the snake. It was so small — about the size and thickness of a pencil, he said — that he figured it was harmless and picked it up mid-body with his right hand.

The snake suddenly coiled back, striking Pettengill’s right index finger. Twice. Pettengill grabbed the snake behind its head with his left hand and placed it in a 1 1/2 -foot-tall glass flower vase.

He received help from two friends in the prayer room, John Pelletier and Elizabeth Cohn. Pelletier searched “poisonous snakes Maryland” on his iPhone, and the three concluded that it was a Timber rattlesnake.

Before heading to the hospital, Pettengill carried the vase onto the temple grounds to the Enlightenment Stupa, a 36-foot-tall sacred structure. He walked clockwise around the stupa with the snake for about three minutes, offering “prayers for a higher rebirth,” Pettengill recalled.

Then, in a grassy area near a marsh, he turned over the vase and let the snake slither away.

Yesterday, after describing the snake to an expert from the state Department of Natural Resources, Pettengill learned that it was almost certainly a copperhead.

Copperheads are the only known poisonous snakes in Montgomery, officials said. Timber rattlesnakes, also poisonous, have been found in Frederick County and points west.

At the emergency room at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, as he examined Pettengill’s swelling hand and forearm, David Srour knew right away that he was dealing with a poisonous snake bite. He has seen about a dozen in his career.

In most cases, Srour said, snake bite victims arrive with the snake that bit them, the snake being dead. Not so with Pettengill.

“He was very calm. It was unusual, I thought,” Srour said. “He talked about the snake in an almost reverential tone.”

June 3rd, 2009 | Category: Buddhism, Mindfulness, Spirituality | Leave a comment

Every seeker longs for that moment of ultimate realization — the great ah hah! moment that makes the difficult path worthwhile. After seven years of searching inside and seeking knowledge from without, I think I’ve had my moment, only to realize that I was my biggest stumbling block the entire time, and will likely continue to be so.

The intersection of circumstances that have led me to this discovery are strange, and yet, they represent the day-to-day drudgery that is my thought process – a heap of screaming monkeys locked inside my head, determined, I had always thought, to keep me focused on everything except the here and now.

Well, I was wrong. Those monkeys are part of me, and their goal has always been to keep me from realizing the fact that my ego is wickedly strong.

Ego. Ego. Ego. It’s all I could think about last night as I tossed and turned, reliving every stupid, ignorant, dumb, illegal, inconsiderate and selfish act I’ve ever undertaken. It’s as if my ego has a separate consciousness, nudging me along my spiritual path (because I/it felt that this was the correct path), all while purposely throwing up barriers to keep me from noticing the power it holds over the forward direction of my life.

Ego.

It started with unmet expectations in my current job – what I had always thought was my dream job. There was resentment and anger, and a feeling of “this isn’t what I signed up for” that constantly gnawed at me, just below the surface. I’d catch a glimpse of my ego, and tell my mind to settle down. I’m fortunate to have a job right now, I’d think, and it’s stupid of me to be anything but grateful because I’m earning a decent salary. Then I’d dive in head-first to my work again and stop trying to figure out where the feelings were coming from. This made the ego happy, and so the pattern would continue for months, going round and round like the proverbial vicious cycle.

A few weeks ago, as I struggled to come to terms with these feelings (again), I happened upon a chapter in “Awake at Work” called “Practice ‘No Credentials.’”

“Workplace credentials – our titles, college degrees, qualifications, symbols of status and authority – can sometimes help get the job done and sometimes just get in the way.”

It goes on to describe a very typical situation here in Washington – people who define themselves by their job title or occupation – and how this practice can actually hinder your ability to do your job and your ability to be truly present and mindful as you work.

“Try as we might, we cannot create a seamless, reliable version of ourselves out of our career or job. And when we expect otherwise – when we expect work to deliver something it can never deliver – we become frustrated and uptight: exaggerating achievements, glossing over failures, sugarcoating mistakes; feeling arrogant, slighted, embarrassed or smug.

By practicing ‘no credentials,’ we are willing to examine these feelings candidly, gradually unraveling the blinding effects of clinging to our credentials. We learn to let go of job titles and pretense and shift our attention to being authentic, to being who we are, where we are, at work.”

I’ve pondered this over the last few weeks, actually catching myself when asked, “What do you do.” Try responding with “I work in (industry)” rather than “I am (job title).” More than likely , you’ll be asked a follow-up question. “Oh, where? And what do you do there?” The very question of “What do you do” is like offering candy to a baby – or in this case, to your ego.

I guess this made my mind ripe for the next dose of reality, which came in the form of Sogyal Rinpoche’s “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.” I’ve felt pulled into the book, as if Rinpoche is directly answering the questions that have been lingering in my mind for the last few years. And last night, I reached the chapter on ego.

“Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to. As you listen more and more to the teachings, contemplate them, and integrate them into your life, your inner voice, your innate wisdom of discernment, what we call in Buddhism “discriminating awareness,” is awakened and strengthened, and you begin to distinguish between its guidance and the various clamorous and enthralling voices of ego. The [karmic] memory of your real nature, with all its splendor and confidence, begins to return to you.

You will find, in fact, that you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide. Because he or she knows you through and through, since he or she is you, your guide can help you, with increasing clarity and humor, negotiate all the difficulties of your thoughts and emotions. Your guide can also be a continual, joyful, tender, sometimes teasing presence, who knows always what is best for you and will help you find more and more ways out of your obsession with your habitual responses and confused emotions. As the voice of your discriminating awareness grows stronger and clearer, you will start to distinguish between its truth and the various deceptions of the ego, and you will be able to listen to it with discernment and confidence.”

I reached a point where, while reading these teachings, I set my book down, closed my eyes, and immediately feel into a state of deep thought where, for the first time ever, I was able to push my ego completely out of the way. Each time I tossed and turned during the night, the word “ego” formed on my lips as I rummaged through memories of everywhere my ego has taken me in 37 years – not a pretty trip when one is trying to sleep.

It was and continues to be profound, and I have no idea where this new perspective is going to take me, or if it will even continue.

But I’m hopeful, because I think only good can come from this.

May 5th, 2009 | Category: Buddhism, Mindfulness, Personal, Spirituality | Leave a comment