From Psychedelics

Reading Pema Chodron’s commentary on verses 1.5-6 of Shantideva’s Bodhicharyavatara last night, I finally saw a way to articulate the strong relationship between my LSD experience and my Buddhist practice

1.5
As when a flash of lightning rends the night,
And in its glare shows all the dark black clouds had hid,
Likewise rarely, through the buddhas’ power, Virtuous thoughts rise, brief and transient, in the world.

1.6
Thus behold the utter frailty of goodness!
Except for perfect bodhichitta,
There is nothing able to withstand
The great and overwhelming strength of evil.

Her comment on these two verses ends with

“Everyone knows what it’s like for the clouds to part, even briefly, and to feel a sense of potential and possibility. Without this initial or ongoing flash, we’d never be inspired to investigate this path.”

From Practice, Path, Goal and Contacts with Source

A memory from the eighties:
After the closing ceremonies of a 7-day intensive meditation retreat (sesshin) at our Zen Mountain Center I was walking alone in a meadow, enjoying the smells of the dry grasses, the sounds of the birds and insects, the textures of the trail underfoot, and the translucent quality of the sunlight. The thought arose that in this moment identifying as a human being would be a severe restriction, artificially wrenching me out of the magnificent sacred complexity/simplicity of the nameless presence. It would be a betrayal of all the life forms I would be making “other”. So many layers of concept had dropped away in those seven days that there was nothing separating me from the living presence of the meadow-earth-universe and all my brother and sister beings, sentient and insentient.

Put these 2 quotes together that I saw on Facebook yesterday. They point to the place of racism in the Republicans’ current massive attack on our now fragile 245 year experiment with democracy.

Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

and

What fuels the insurrection? For the lawmakers and corporate beneficiaries of the status quo it’s holding on to their power. For the voters and January 6 participants it’s keeping intact the illusion of white supremacy in an increasingly diverse America.

Photo credit: Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

I was musing about what things might be like after the pandemic. The possibility of starting all over drifted up. With the radical nature of how things have changed so quickly in the last month I imagined starting the country with its glorious democratic ideals, but transforming the three major original sins that were baked in: Genocide of the native people, Slavery as the engine of the economy, and Disempowerment of everybody but the white male landowners. I would add a fourth positive element that they couldn’t have known about then, the interconnectedness of everything on Earth.

So the four principles for starting over would be

1-Structural generosity toward native people, recognizing that we owe them an unpayable debt.

2-Structural generosity toward African American people, recognizing that we owe them an unpayable debt.

3-Explicitly equal structural empowerment of all who stand outside the category of white male landowner.

4-Replacing the sanctity of sovereignty with an overarching Earth-centric perspective in all relationships with other national entities.

Linked from Zen Center of Los Angeles

The other side of slipping the traps of culture is the sadness of being isolated from the sangha I lived in for 28 years. It doesn’t have to be this way. I’m reading the Sangha Sutra and feeling inspired by the idea of being woven back into the fabric of the sangha. Two old friends are visiting in the next two days. The Sangha Sutra Verse says

Stitch by stitch, breath by breath,/I take up the practice of sewing the Sangha Sutra. /When seams rip apart and tears appear,/I take up the practice of mending.

That’s what I want to do this week.