Because when your teacher has intentionally placed a message where you can see it, the message is more received than it is found.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Much of the reason that I began attending Friends meeting again several years ago after a long hiatus was to help me find peace within myself as I witnessed and sought to change, in my own way with my own skills, this country’s impulse to war following the attacks on 9/11. As quiet and unlistened to as voices for peace might have been, I still needed to be among a community of people speaking about peace.
One of the questions Friends Meeting of Washington invites attenders to consider, which has become a core contemplation for me, is “what do you do personally to eliminate the causes of war?” For me, this extends not just to how I vote, what work I do, and what charities I support, but what I eat, what energy I consume, what media I read and support, what I wear, and how I interrelate in this complicated global web of consumption and interchange.
Here is a letter from the American Friends Service Committee that I wanted to share with all of you.
A student and friend sent me a link to an article posted by the Center for Consumer Freedom alerting consumers that excessive levels of heavy metals have been found in the reusable bags being sold by some of the big box retailers and supermarket chains. The analyst reached the conclusion that consumers should be allowed to use disposable plastic or paper bags [environmental consequences ignored] so that they are not forced into the untenable position of having to use bags that are manufactured with unacceptable levels of toxic ingredients.
It is fantastic that the folks at CCF advised people of the potential hazards associated with the manufacture and use of certain types of reusable bags. What I do not follow is the absolutism of the “either or” choice presented: poisonous bags (forced on you by environmentalists) or disposable plastic or paper bags (with all the attendant hazards to the environment). Why does the bag you use have to come from the grocery store? The types of retailers identified might have seized another retail and advertising opportunity to make cheap, hazardous reusable bags in nations with cheap (i.e. inadequately paid and treated) workers in countries with lax environmental and consumer safety standards. But this is just another example of how corporations prosper at the expense of the health of the planet, as if the worth of the stock of corporations — the part that is separate from the world in which the corporation operates — in itself is the highest good (that’s a discussion for another day).
I write about this article because it seems to me to be a perfect example of how staying within paradigms, choices, and societal constructs presented can keep us in the kind of ignorance (avidya) that prevents us from being in alignment, from seeing the good, and from responding in the highest. I am sure you, as can I, can think of far too many other examples of how if we stay with the question as it is framed, can prevent us from finding a peaceful, loving, healthful solution. The choice here is not bad for the environment and your kids (or pets) reusable bags or bad for the environment disposable bags. The choice is between bad for the environment bags and reusable bags that made by you or someone you trust not to use poisonous materials.
I have been carrying my own bags on a progressively more consistent basis since I was inspired to invite people to participate in Earth Day when I was in junior high and high school in the 1970s. The photo shows some of my favorite carry bags. From left to right: (1) the day pack I bought in 1984 to carry my law school books, which were very heavy; it cost maybe $20 and it is still going strong; (2) cute organic cotton bag with “make love, not war, haight-ashbury 1968” silkscreened on it; I get complimented on it whenever I use it, especially when I turn down super cool disposable bags at fashionable stores in NYC (“no thank you; I have my own bag”); freebie canvas bag from Barney’s Coop; cannot be sure that it was made with union labor, but am pretty sure it isn’t one of those toxic bags described in the article.
Next time you are struggling with what seems like an choice between Scylla and Charybdis, invite yourself to soften, to open to the bigger picture, to open your heart and mind as wide as the widest space of meditation, and ask whether you are asking the right question.
A nyaya is literally a recursion, something which leads back to an essential principle. In my recent studies of meditation, we have been taught various nyayas that help to explicate the experience of meditation and the whys and benefits of steady practice.
At the place where we have been staying for our meditation and study retreats with Paul Muller-Ortega, there is a wonderful cat named Oberon. I first met him last summer when I was walking the labyrinth just before dawn. I’d heard a meow off in the distance. Lonely for cat company since my Becky had so recently left her body, I called to the cat. He came running to me and walked the labyrinth with me. Each time I have visited, I have had some special moments with Oberon, who lives fully up to his name — Oberon being the King of the Faeries.
Oberon loves the meditation hall and often tries to get in. He also brings offerings. Last winter, he brought us a mostly dead bird. As well intended as it might have been on Oberon’s part, it was not particularly welcomed in the meditation hall. On the final night of our retreat this time, we were reveling in the good fortune of having fellow students (and my sometimes teachers and the creators of many CDs in my music collection) Heather and Benjy Wertheimer lead us in kirtan. At one point, I left my place to go to the facilities. A fellow student, stopped me, “Elizabeth, the cat has a really big mouse.” I went to look. Oberon did not have a mouse; he had a young bunny. “It’s a bunny I said.” The other students who were outside were horrified.
Without thinking, I went to him, “Oberon, drop it!” I said, as if it were appropriate to speak to the King of the Faeries as if he were an obedient dog. He listened though and dropped the bunny, which remained frozen. I held Oberon by the scruff of the neck. “Go bunny; bunny run,” I said, but the bunny did not move. I then tapped the bunny on his back at the tail. The bunny remained frozen, though it did not appear yet to be injured. I let go of Oberon and went to get a towel or something to pick up the bunny. Then Oberon tapped the bunny just where I had touched it. Off ran the bunny through the shoes neatly piled outside the meditation hall. I caught Oberon and picked him up. The bunny again froze, looking back at us. At this point I was completely oblivious to anything other than the cat and the bunny. “Bunny run; go now.” Oberon squirmed, but did not scratch me, letting me continue to hold him. Finally, the bunny ran off into the scrub and disappeared. I put down Oberon. He sniffed the trail, but then came back to me for a petting when I called. “Thank you for the offering Oberon; I know it was well intentioned, but we are not so keen on bringing dead baby animals into the meditation hall.” He sniffed, lifted his regal head, and sat down to wash.
Leaving aside what my actions may have done to the fabric of the world order and the pondering I could do about the interrelationship between destiny and free will, I felt that I had been given a wonderful lesson about life and practice. Practice can bring us great freedom if we stay steady on the path. Like the bunny, though, we can stay frozen in fear and old patterns, even when we are given a glimpse of the freedom of self we can get from practice. As dire as things may be (or perhaps even when they are at their worst), we return to the familiar, regardless of whether we are unhappy with it, regardless of how old patterns are limiting our ability to grow. Sometimes it is dissatisfaction with and pain from the old patterns themselves (revealed more clearly by practice already begun) that push us to go further, just as it took Oberon getting the bunny to run again for me to realize he was sufficiently healthy to be able to run off. And just as I stayed with Oberon and the bunny until the bunny finally took his chance at freedom, the practice and the truths and freedom practice can reveal will always be there. No matter how many times we forget or return to the stuck and the familiar, the opportunity for growth and freedom continues to await.
When I am feeling stuck, when I am finding myself returning to patterns that do not serve, I will think about my own personal nyaya of the cat and the bunny. I hope it will serve to keep me moving forward, less stuck, less attached to the familiar that no longer serves.
A friend once suggested that I took photographs to give myself separation. I do gain perspective, as I do from meditation. The chaos will not go away, and our relationship with it can change.
