Righteousness and Justice

Who is a tzaddik or tzaddeikit? Who are the righteous of the world? R. Zalman Schachter Shalomi, in A Heart Afire writes: "Are they not those who are participating in righteousness at that moment? That is what we are talking about here, the will directed toward righteousness in any given moment. Those who participate in that "aggregate will" are the tzaddikim for whom G-d created the world."

It's interesting that the root of tzaddik (righteous person) is tz-d-k, which also forms tzedek (justice) and tzedekah (translated as charity but really means more the justice that comes from sharing the material wealth of which we are only... stewards). Therefore, I like to think of tzaddikim as justice-ers, people working to bring justice to the world.

Extending the thinking that G-D created the world for tzaddikim, we could conclude that G-d created the world on purpose as a place intended for social action and that humans are intended to work for justice: "Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof" ("justice, justice shalt thou pursue." Shoftim (Deuteronomy) 16:20). That pasuk goes on to imply that justice is what is necessary, it is in fact a prerequisite, for us to thrive and come into our inheritance (that is, the world in which we live).

Change is our very nature

Positive disintegration

It is helpful and despair work to realize that going to pieces or falling apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed, it is essential to evolutionary and psychic transformation. For the individuals who, in confronting current anomalies of experience, allows positive disintegration to happen, it can bring a dark night of the soul, a time of spiritual void and turbulence. But the anxieties and doubts are creative, not only for the person but for society, because they permit new and original approaches to reality.

What "disintegrates" in periods of rapid transformation is not the self, of course, but its defenses and ideas. We are not objects that can break. We are open systems, whirlpools in a river of the ever flowing water, patterns that perpetuate themselves.

We do not need to protect ourselves from change, for our very nature is change. Defensive self-protection, restricting vision and movement like a suit of armor, makes it harder to adapt. It not only reduces flexibility, but blocks the flow of information we need to survive. Our "going to pieces," however uncomfortable a process, can open us up to new perceptions, new data, the responses.

From World as Lover, World as Self, by Joanna Macy, www.joannamacy.net

Enlightenment: the liberation of concepts

In Focusing, we learn that concepts can interfere with experiencing things as they are, freshly. I recently learned, through @Ali Miller, about a teacher called Gangaji. When I read Gangaji's writing about the nature of her enlightenment, I was deeply moved because I recognize what she calls the liberation of concepts. Her words make enlightenment accessible to me.

With Focusing, I already know how to experience without concepts, and have had many experiences of experiencing without concepts (so to speak). This connects me with the trust I feel in my body, as a result of what I have already known and experienced, that even more freedom is available to me as I move Focusing and felt-sensing out of the formal practice and into daily life. I feel excited and inspired about the next step forward in my understanding and lived experiencing that is supported by Gangaji's words:

"Even though there is a personality associated with this body, and a sense of a “person” in experience, it is continually revealed to be nothing in the face of truth. It is not possible to integrate this truth into anything else because truth already exists as everything and it always has. Instead, you can recognize is that your life is already inside this vastness or infinity; it is already a part of that integral whole. Then every situation in life is an opportunity to recognize the ground of beingness that holds it all.

Any thought of separation from this whole, however much suffering follows it, still is only a thought. Separation must be maintained, it must be thought, it must be proved, and it must be practiced to exist. Without this maintenance, the experience of separation vanishes.

However your daily life presents itself, whether it is a life devoted to monastic duties or a life in the midst of the world, every moment is an opportunity to realize who you are. True investigation reveals that whatever prior limitations you think keep you from who you are (be they grand or lowly) are nothing but concepts, concepts that, when not maintained by mind activity, cannot cause suffering. These concepts can be liberated so that you, as you are, can shine fully. This is the invitation extended to you."

From The End of All Excuses, by Gangaji.
http://www.gangaji.org/index.php?modules=content&op=all_excuses

The great one, who went to the mountaintop said, "You can't solve nothing with violence!" Oscar Grant I

This video moved me deeply and made me cry last night. It's the grandfather of Oscar Grant III, a young Black man who was shot in the back by a white transit officer while being arrested, speaking on July 8, 2010, after an all-white jury convicted the officer of involuntary manslaughter.



Daisaku Ikeda, in an essay called the Courage of Nonviolence, writes, "Nonviolence is the highest form of humility; it is supreme courage. Prime Minister Nehru said that the essence of Gandhi's teachings was fearlessness. The Mahatma taught that "the strong are never vindictive" and that dialogue can only be engaged in by the brave. "

In Liberation Magazine (October, 1959) , the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote, "There is more power in socially organized masses on the march than there is in guns in the hands of a few desperate men. Our enemies would prefer to deal with a small armed group rather than with a huge, unarmed but resolute mass of people."

I pray for the day when I can be a one in a huge, unarmed but resolute mass of people who are brave enough to live in dialogue, creating the very peace we wish to see in the world.

May we, Oscar Grant, his family, Johannes Mehserle, the jury members and every one of us affected by Oscar Grant's killing and the verdict against Johannes Mehserle, be filled with lovingkindness for ourselves and others.

May we all be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

May we be well and happy.

May we know peace.

What we can offer one another

"The only thing I think we have to offer someone else is our own centredness, our own being all right, and knowing beyond a doubt that they're all right. If I know that about myself in a way that lets me know that about everyone, I speak with true authority, in the sense of knowing what is so. But if I don't have that experience of being all right, if I am afraid for you because I am afraid for me, all I have to offer you is my fear. "Maybe if you quit drinking..." or "Why don't you try such-and-such?" That all comes from my own fear.

I think it's disrespectful of someone else's life process to assume that they are inadequate to their experience. It would be good to follow that back and see how I am simply projecting my own fear of inadequacy onto them. I simply cannot know about someone else's life... The contribution I can make is to clean up what's mine... I can't remove the obstacles to your path, but I can avoid putting things in your way... I this way to do I most deeply vow to train myself."

Cheri Huber, Good Life: A Zen precepts retreat

Discipline, submission and love

Inspired by Bindu Wiles' 21.5.800 challenge (see http://binduwiles.com/buddhism/my-new-project-21-5-800/) and her writing on discipline, "Discipline, the word we mostly cringe at (http://binduwiles.com/buddhism/discipline-the-word-we-mostly-cringe-at-21-5-800-day-8/comment-page-1/#comment-1158):

For me, I think of discipline as surrender, not as in I surrender to an opposing army but as in I surrender, swooning, into the arms of a lover.

If
- I envision the practice to which I submit myself as my lover,
- love infuses the act of surrendering myself to the lover,
- in surrender I reach out, not closing but rather opening to the fullness of the experience, as my vulva, vagina, cervix and uterus swell with blood to support the sexual experience

then the whole experience of submission or surrender to discipline is transformed.

There are some things in life - especially, for me, I have noticed, the subtle experiencings of my emotions, soul, spirit and heart - that require aspects of to submission or surrender, an opening and turning toward, for me to experience them at all. Otherwise they pass unnoticed. This has become most clear to me since beginning a personal practice of Focusing, which I do without fail a minimum of once a week, and often more.

I *love* the experience of discipline when I think if it this way. One of my yoga teachers said that if we are ready, the experience will happen. (I'm sure this is not unfamiliar to many of you.) Surrendering in love to discipline is how I make myself ready.

Bindu, thank you for opening the space in which I can reconnect with the juiciness in me in relation to this topic.

Shulamit

Felt-sensing occurs in us every day

Eugene Gendlin gives an example of how felt-sensing occurs naturally:

"Imagine you have that funny feeling that you have forgotten something, a kind of inner discomfort or conflictual feeling inside yourself that just won’t go away. You scrunch up your face, bring your hand to your head, searching around inside of yourself. Not this, not that . . . and then, suddenly, “oh yes, it’s that!” Ah ha—you and that feeling have made contact. You are left with a sense of resolution for now understanding (i.e., being able to communicate) something that had been disturbing and unknown before." Gendlin, E. (1981). Focusing. New York: Bantam Books.

Focusing is a method for directly accessing this kind of knowing. With training or support, you can find the entry point to your embodied knowledge. After that, you can become able to stay long enough to interact with it. and surprising new steps of change, thought, and action can come from it.

Focusing is supported by a long series of operational research studies conducted first at the University of Chicago and now internationally.

I offer guided Focusing sessions or Focusing instruction. $75/hr or save $25 with a three-session package for $200.

www.shula.ca
shulamit@shula.ca
613-868-9642 (Eastern Canada time zone)