Sangha Speaks
By Amy Predmore, one of our Teen Program Teachers
As a yoga teacher working mainly with
adults, my students often lament to me that they wish they had
started practicing earlier. Their bodies have grown stiff with age,
and they marvel at how much work it takes to do even a simple
movement, like touching their toes, which was too easy to be
considered exercise when they were younger. I reassure them that
yoga starts where you are and that the benefit of the practice lies
in being present with the body as it is, not in aspiring towards some
pretzel-like ideal. Yet, beneath the surface of my yoga teacher
wisdom, I can’t help but empathize with their regret, not because I
started yoga too late, but because I started meditating in my
mid-twenties, too late to avoid a whole parade of unconscious
decisions in my adolescent years that led to much suffering.
It’s not that I was an
extraordinarily “bad” teenager. In fact, I was fairly ordinary
in retrospect. I was a good student, a star athlete, and a class
leader, but I sought answers to deep questions in the wrong
places—through drugs and alcohol, pop culture, and my perception of
society’s expectations of me.
This pseudo-dharma was all I knew at
the time; it’s all most of us knew, and it led me further away from
myself and, consequently, deeper into suffering.
Ten years into my meditation practice
now, I remain grateful to have stumbled upon a wisdom path that leads
me closer to my own truth and, consequently, deeper into happiness,
but I ache for the Amy that suffered so much in her earlier years.
Perhaps it is in response to my own
suffering that I have hurled myself so enthusiastically into work
with teen meditation retreats, where adolescents engage deeply in
mindfulness practices that enable them to look closely at the truth
accessible through their own bodies, minds, and hearts and to connect
with peers, mentors, and teachers around the truth that’s unfolding
for them. To bear witness to and support this unfolding fills me
with such joy as I observe the effects of these practices on young
people even physically apparent in their sparkling eyes as they
settle more fully into mindfulness.
More enduring for me than the joy,
however, is the hope that one day retreats such as these will be more
accessible and acceptable to teenagers than pop culture’s quick
fixes, that they might provide a meaningful modern day rite of
passage to replace drugs, alcohol, and the fast track to success, and
that kids won’t have to wait to wake up until they suffer the
inevitable mid-life crisis spurred on by too many years spent too far
away from home.
Our
Socially-Engaged Buddhism KM Group by Linda Capacchione March 2010
It
was Fall 2005, the onset of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation and the
related global climatic change reports, when I was propelled into
motion to reclaim my environmentalist roots, which were abandoned a
dozen or more years earlier after a frustrated stint with the Sierra
Club. Indeed this time, I knew that to be involved again as an
activist, it would be wise to be better equipped with a special
tool-set to avoid the “burn-out” previously experienced. That
is why I most gratefully initiated the Socially-Engaged Buddhism
(SEB) KM-Group within our Insight Meditation Community of
Charlottesville (IMCC). (If
you are unfamiliar with the term, “KM,” it is an acronym for
“kalyana mitta,” a Pali word meaning spiritual friends.)
I knew that I could benefit and find solace when gathering with other
like-hearted/like-minded friends who could impart the compassion and
encouragement that I needed to sustain my energy and effectualness in
serving our community. Our
SEB KM-Group is unique in that it focuses on social-engagement as a
spiritual path. We find that applying the Buddhadharma (spiritual
teachings) is a valuable resource in supporting our personal
commitment to service and social activism locally and globally.
During our group meetings, we share our challenges, our interests,
our reading and discuss the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, Bernie
Glassman, Joanna Macy, Joan Halifax, the Dalai Lama and others as
topics relate to our chosen ways in making peaceful and positive
social and environmental changes that may benefit all beings.
After
over four years, I continue to find that this group of spiritual
friends fosters and mobilizes my social-engagement which sustains
great growth and authenticity in my life.
For
me, being spiritually social-engaged provides a creative outlet to
serve in various ways. I have actually integrated my
visual/performing arts and yoga training to support various local
causes. This includes four years of contributing to the development
of more bicycle paths in Charlottesville, Earth Day and recently
participating in our city’s Dialogue on Race as well as IMCC’s
community-building activities, including our new teen meditation
program. In serving others, I continue to realize that I am much
more energetic when I engage in the spiritual practices of
loving-kindness and compassion, as this allows me to serve more from
the heart and less from the ego. Even though I falter at times,
when I meet with our SEB KM-Group, I feel renewed, realigned, and
re-energized to stay on the path of social activism and to do my part
to make a difference.
This
past November, our SEB KM-Group hosted a pot-luck dinner in honor of
our visiting guest teacher, Bernie Glassman, and his extensive work
in Socially-Engaged Buddhism. In honor of Bernie’s great societal
contributions, our IMCC teachers invited us to collaborate with them
in coordinating a month of socially-engaged activities that supported
our local community’s homeless (with PACEM) and house bound (with
Meals-On-Wheels). Our group was most influential in declaring
November as “Socially-Engaged Buddhism Month” at IMCC.
Other
SEB KM members share about their experience of this event and our
group process as follows:
Judy
Grismer, writes about her related experiences--
As
we have met together monthly, we have explored a range of definitions
of socially engaged Buddhism through reading and dialogue, and
supported each other in our various ways of being socially engaged,
learning from each other’s thought and practices. Through this
process I have become more aware of what social engagement means for
me at this time, and have therefore expanded my engagement into
different areas.
The
largest movement for me has been on expanding my awareness of how I
practiced engagement both in meditation and in actions. Most
recently, the readings and lecture of Bernie Glassman have introduced
me to the three tenets that I have incorporated into both of these
practices:
Attempting
to be aware of conditioned mind and body sets as I approach
meditation and engagement, and attempting to let go of fixed ideas
and stances; bearing witness to what arises and allowing ourselves to
be in relationship and to stay present to all that arises, and
finally, taking healing actions that arise from this process toward
ourselves and the universe. This process anchors me as I continue and
expand my engagement.
Also,
David Grismer writes--
The
socially engaged Buddhism group was an invitation to begin a journey.
The destination was not well-defined, but there was trust in the
process of meeting regularly, meditation and discussion. Meeting once
a month and sharing not only our desire to become more socially
engaged, but also sharing the obstacles in our life that were in the
way, helped to deepen my own thinking about how to make my life more
socially engaged. However, I found few teaching resources that
actually proved directly relevant until reading Bernie Glassman’s
two books. His books provided for me a recipe for beginning to live
life in a way that might lead to deeper social engagement. I also was
struck by his practicality in meeting the daily challenges of life,
and his attitudes toward entrepreneurship and managing businesses
that struck a chord with me. For me it began to connect my belief in
sound economic systems with Buddhism which for me had always been
somewhat separated and problematical. I have been involved with
micro-financing for awhile, and his work helped bridge my beliefs in
the role of incentive based economic systems with my spiritual
beliefs.
Dale
Abrahamse states—
I
started as a rather reluctant member of the SEB KM group. Since I am
married to Linda, it was hard to decline the invitation to join. I
am glad to find my participation rewarding. While I run a for profit
business, I still strive to practice “right livelihood” and to
make a positive difference in the world. This is a practice that
pushes me against my constant avarice for more and better. The SEB
KM group is a place that I can share my process and actually be
understood that this could be a problem in finding peace of mind. I
find it refreshing to share with my fellow travelers. I am grateful
to them for showing up every month.
The
Socially Engaged Buddhism KM group is a work in progress. We are
open to new spiritual friends joining our meditation, sharing, and
discussions. Most of us want to make a positive difference in the
world. We are not blind to the suffering of our fellow human beings.
Buddhism has a lot to offer to make action in the world a spiritual
path. The sharing we do helps to steady our course and keep our
energy positive and loving.