Sunday morning, I rise and go through my usual routine — shower, meditate, eat breakfast, write. At 8:45 I grab my meditation bench, bundle up in my over-sized wool hoodie and a scarf, and head off to The Calgary Buddhist Temple. It’s a Jodo Shinshu temple, a school of Zen with a rather ‘church-y’ feel to it. Services involve reading from a book, chants selected like hymns, the sensei guiding the ‘flock’, punctuating our time with five or ten minutes of meditation here and there.
I don’t always stay for the service, though. Today I am going to sit, for thirty minutes, with whoever else might show up. It’s a quiet, comforting space. The high ceiling does not amplify sound as you might think. There are soft murmurs of greetings; the senseis pause to discuss something by the shrine at the front of the room. I bow as I enter, and then go set up a space to sit to the left or the right, my decision utterly arbitrary.
I am not a student of Zen, although I appreciate and study teachers like Charlotte Joko Beck and Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. I am familiar with many of the practices and take delight in the Namu butsu recitation done in this particular sect.
“It can mean many things in translation,” one of the Senseis said during a service for which I did stay. “But I mostly think of it as saying ‘let go, let go, let go’.”
Sometimes I recite this following the meditation, but more often I dedicate the merit, as I have learned from my schooling in Tibetan Buddhism. And to say ‘schooling’ does not mean I have formal qualifications. I am my greatest teacher and every moment is an opportunity to practice. This is what I have learned from my other teachers. My schooling is my daily practice, the regular application of dharma to my life and experience.
Regardless of the lineage or school of Buddhism, the core of it is the same. As I sit here in a temple and take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, I am grateful. I am welcome here, even if this is not my lineage. I am welcome, and I feel at ease.
I sit in meditation until the gong rings to indicate the end of the session. Then I gather my meditation bench and head out to my car. I have twenty minutes to get home — plenty of time.
I’m going to listen to The Link, a live-streamed talk that happens every Sunday. It’s put on by Mangala Shri Bhuti group. I discovered it when I was looking for free talks given by Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel.
I love The Link. Each week a member of the community is invited to share their practice. It’s about listening to ordinary people who make up any group discuss their study and the application of it to their lives. It’s honest and beautiful, and today I need it. I need to hear voices outside of the fearful ones in my head. I need to hear voices outside of the dismissive ones I see online. I need to hear how others are handling this groundlessness, this fear, this collective trauma as a brute and a bully steps into a role for which he has no qualifications.
This week, like so many weeks, the woman invited to speak shares a story that reflects much of my experience. She talks of specific anecdotes, sharing small realisations along her path that showed her how she could work with her mind. She’s sharing this from south of the border, in a room with many others. I’m not there, but I don’t feel outside this community. I am one of many tuned in from elsewhere. When she finishes speaking, questions and comments from people sitting in the room with her continue to buoy me.
I raise my virtual hand, typing that I’d like to make a comment in the chat room box. I’m called upon to speak, my microphone unmuted. I thank her for sharing her practice with us. I thank her too, for her role as a therapist at this time, for being there for the trauma and pain of so many people. I say that this is a reminder to myself to consider our friends and family who are in these caring roles, to remember that they need care too.
But mostly I speak of beloved community. I talk about the profound effect of finding people who live what they believe. I am not an official member of this community, although I am a student of Elizabeth, and I am not a student of Zen, and yet I find welcome and belonging in both these communities. I do not face rejection for not being the ‘right’ kind of Buddhist or the ‘same’ sort of Buddhist.
Afterwards, alone with my journal, I write of how I find beloved community in other places too. It is not limited to places of worship or affiliated with a particular system of belief. I find it in my circle of friends, the ones who ask questions about things bigger than themselves, who seek to understand life beyond what they have been told growing up. I find beloved community when I listen to On Being and hear someone reflect my very thoughts and experience of creativity, developing self-awareness or living compassionately. I find beloved community when I speak with a Christian about their practice of study of scripture and how they apply it to their life the same way I study Dharma and apply it to mine. I find beloved community within myself when I don’t settle for being a good person but strive to be a better one.
It is easy to despair, to get lost in the sense of not being able to do anything. It’s easy to become complacent or to decide something is so beyond our ability to change it that we might as well not bother. But this isn’t about coming up with a solution or being the one to solve the problems of the world. It’s about how you matter — what you do, what you say, how you think — and how to live in the world when you have that understanding.
Each of us can create beloved community. What it takes is the choice to remain open-hearted, to be kind and to not cause harm. It’s an act of not rejecting anyone, not thinking anyone unworthy of empathy. It’s an act of understanding that, for any one group to heal, everyone must heal. We all play a part and while there are acts that should be condemned, the condemnation of a human being will always create a rift, a fracture and imbalance.
We can come to understand that empathy and compassion do not condone wrong-doing, nor dismiss it, nor turn a blind eye to it. They can and should be fierce. What they reject is wrong thinking, not human beings.
“There shouldn’t be groups that it is fashionable to be empathetic toward and unfashionable to be empathetic toward.”
- E.J. Dionne
Imagine a gathering of people, regardless of religion or belief, coming together out of love. Not romantic love but love borne of recognition that we are all in this together. We are responsible for each other. No one’s happiness should be at the expense of another’s rights and freedoms as a human being.
This is not something soft or complacent. It does not open us to harm, and it does not lack action or drive. Indeed, it is fierce in its determination and unwavering in it’s discernment.
Beloved community is not owned by any single faith or practice but shared, created through seeing our connection to each and every other person on the planet. Beloved community is not secular nor religious. It is not determined by embodiment but by our oneness as human beings, and that the variations in that oneness should not be subject to discrimination, exclusion or privilege.
The beloved community is fierce compassion.
The beloved community does not tolerate evil ideologies.
The beloved community stands strong against ignorance and hate.
The beloved community opens our hearts.
The beloved community listens in a way that people are heard.
The beloved community recognises the multiplicity in oneness.
The beloved community strives ever forward, for the benefit of all beings.
Every moment is an opportunity for us to create this beloved community, within ourselves, through our actions. As a beloved community, we learn to recognise our personal responsibility and make an uncompromising commitment to take care of each other.
This piece is dedicated to the many people who have fought compassionately for equality regardless of embodiment, and to those who continue to fight.
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Originally published on Medium.
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