Fear

"Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts."

Staying tapped into the Blogosphere will be a welcome challenge for posting relevant info here. To date, I have mainly been virtually exploring dharma centers throughout the States and describing what I perceive of spaces.

But at some point there will be a major break. My engagement with Buddhism transcends the deep attraction I have to the aesthetics of it's practice space. The manner in which Buddhist precepts are so incredibly poised to inform current happenings is, frankly, such an overwhelming topic that I have been simply simmering the issues, to give them full justice when I do decide to finally write extensively about them.

Today over at Bindu Wiles Blog a very frank and candid discussion regarding fear is underway. I have not thumbed through the hundreds (!!!!) of responses there but I am in awe of how many folks put forth a moment of effort to add to the discussion.

Fear shadows the most inconspicuous of situations. We may think things are under control and then there, there is the fear. Fear occurs at home, with the self, with the partner, at work, where you expect it and where you don't. Fear is tremendously equal opportunity in its approach. Fear does not care who you are.

Acknowledging our own sources of fear- fears we may not even be aware of- becomes crucial. Superstitions and distorted perceptions (some of the worst fear inspirers) dissolve in the face of courage and awareness. The ability to, first, acknowledge the fear inspiring source before it reaches a crescendo. Alternately, vulnerability can be seen as natural precursor to the induction of fear and part of a necessary chain of events to hone our fight or flight awareness.

Much like the parent nuzzling the child tearing up over the "monsters under the bed," fear presents us with the opportunity to discuss 'what is,' the nature of realities and our perceptions and to use love as the balm to soothe the angst and worry that fear often brings along.

A Bodhisattvic Struggle

May I be a guard for all those who are protector-less,

A guide for those who journey on the road,

For those who wish to go across the water,

May I be a boat, a raft, a bridge.

For all those ailing in the world,

Until their every sickness has been healed,

May I myself become for them

The doctor, nurse, the medicine itself.

~ An Excerpt from Shantideva's Bodhisattva Vows

Photo: Rolf Konow/Lions Gate Films

I'm going to do something a bit different with today's post. The card I pulled from the wooden bowl was 'Colorado,' a state I've been excited to make both virtual treks and in-person visits to. I hesitate to say that dharma history is more rich in one place over another, but the facts are that this Rocky Mountain state is a host to numerous dharma centers of multiple lineages and practices. The 70's saw a vital rooting of Tibetan Buddhist practices in this state and my guess is that Colorado is a rather important node in the historical spectrum of the Vajrayana's transmission through North America.

But instead of focusing on any one particular dharma center today, my mind immediately went to the film Dogville when I saw Colorado on that card.

I first saw Dogville at a cinema in downtown Tromsø several years ago. As interesting as it was to spend a few months in this Northern Norwegian hub, I was alone, far from family and was occasionally feeling some of the affects of solitude induced melancholy. The film struck a chord not only in it's minimalistic portrayal of a mountainous, frontier town and the urge to romanticize life there to some degree, but also in that it struck me immediately as a bit of a bodhisattvic tale. I'm not sure bodhisattvic is an actual word, but I like it, as indicative of the bodhisattva.

Some may balk at the linking of the bodhisattva to any of the characters in this film. The notion of 'struggle' fitting with the idea of the bodhisattva may also be unappreciated by some.

A bodhisattva is a being who, simply put, seeks enlightenment for all creatures as well as a cessation of suffering. There is a notion of sacrifice and "delaying" enlightenment on this path, in order to contribute to efforts of ceasing suffering for all creatures. Such a decision is propelled, ultimately, by compassion. The Bodhisattva's Vow is a central point in Mahayana and Vajrayana practice.

My own mundane interpretation of the Bodhisattva ideal is that it is a tremendous path in that one is essentially committing to remain in samsara (the cycle of birth and death), and regularly be confronted with all the joys, pains and experiences that such a cycle entails.

Dogville's plot tracks the journey of a young woman, Grace, who seeks to take literal refuge in a small mountain town in Colorado. The plot also follows the alert and concerned philosophical meanderings of a young male resident of the town, Tom, who essentially serves as her benefactor. He campaigns on her behalf to the other town residents to let her hide out in their town. She is clearly in some kind of trouble.

Questions arise from the town's residents, many in the vein of 'Why should we be so generous' and 'What do we risk in permitting her to stay.' Tom is intent on convincing the town's residents that Grace should be permitted to stay, that it is the town's moral duty, that it is the right thing to do.

Alas, the consensus is to permit Grace to stay, hinging on her ability to prove herself as a "good person" over the course of a couple of weeks. In those couple of weeks, Grace struggles to find some purpose and place in daily living in the community. Like a tiny seed struggling to take root in an occasionally hostile environment, Grace pushes and persists with the will to simply survive. She is initially met with stubborn and questionable resistance in all corners of the community when she offers to lend a helping hand.

Grace, as can be intuited, is from another type of life- a bigger city or a bigger town. She arrived beat down, desperate, more than willing to do what the townsfolk said in order to have a safe haven. As the town warmed to her and began showing it's own friendly and compassionate nature, we can see Grace falling into a sort of reverie of perceiving this place and it's inhabitants as living a 'good and simple life,' as being 'good and simple people.' And herein lies her dangerous assumption that later leads to the film's volatile and sad ending. Grace truly begins to believe that these folks are somehow clearer in spirit, in heart, perhaps because their remote location and simple seeming lives lack the complexities of bigger town life. She overlooks their very human potential to cause harm or suffering. She gives them carte blanche to dictate the days of her life because at some point she begins to trust in what she believes is their essentially good nature.

This Lars von Trier film is over two hours long and it really wasn't until the last half and hour that I started to become impatient. Partly because about midway through the film, the real discomfort begins. The township has realized what a 'gold mine' they have in Grace. She will do whatever they ask, with nary a complaint. A few unfortunate events are all it takes for members of the town to slowly turn towards suspicion and outright resent of Grace, for a myriad of reasons. What ensues is a basically a bondage scenario (at one point quite literally) in which Grace has become a voiceless slave to the community and their increasingly unreasonable and vicious demands.

Grace, as her name implies, suffers through it all quietly and with, well a melancholic grace. She does not fight back. She does not condemn them. The realization of human's capacity to be utterly fickle in the expression of compassion and goodwill catapults Grace into a very dark place. As a viewer, you can see that she has done nothing to warrant this. To the contrary, every interaction with the town's residents has increasingly brought forth compassionate expression from Grace, a deep and selfless desire to make their lives better, in any way she can. And often subtly at that.

I was exhausted by the time the end credits came on. I was also fairly rocked to the core by what I perceived as a sort of puzzle inherent in the decision to continuously interact out of compassion and will to transform suffering into something informative, transformative and enlightening. I refer to this as the bodhisattvic struggle. The path of the bodhisattva is a path that sees others sufferings and enlightenment to be as critical as your own. Along this path I perceive roadblocks that are part of the dialogue of psychology and communication itself.

The end of Dogville is perhaps satisfying for many viewers as they grew tired of seeing her be abused. But the manifestation of her wrathful response is perhaps but a stark lesson of skillful means in living and acting in compassion, so that resent and disillusionment do not destroy the means or disrupt the path.

Personal Reform & Faith

The start of this blog has led to my return of reading Buddhist discussions, teachings and various aspects of Tibetan Buddhist history. It is clear to me now that this will be a lifelong track of interest that lends to increasingly new forms of engagement in my personal life as well as in society.

It is partly, but not entirely, a pursuit of the mind. I am a student at heart. I love learning. But the heart of course is human. A basic reality of many religious teachings is the focus on the human condition. Buddhism, in particular, has been widely noted in popular conception as well as serious religious discourse, as a being a faith, a philosophy, that deals quite literally in the realm of human psychology.

My use of the word 'reform' in this post's heading brings to mind criticisms I have read in some places of the use of religion as a 'fad' of self improvement. Certainly, in our religiously pluralistic society, individuals don't always commit to a specific path of practice but take an exploratory route. I certainly wouldn't want to be judged if I decided to visit a church or temple a few times for inspiration or simply out of curiosity.

The idea of reform, is for me, integral to the adherence of faith and religious philosophies. Individuals come to various faiths with all sorts of histories. Personal reform, for me, indicates not only a deep and continuous self examination, an increasing understanding of how one needlessly perpetuates suffering in their own life, but also continuing to constructively engage with the world through one's daily acts and profession.

When I make these virtual visits to various dharma centers, I see the list of teachings offered at many sites, including:

• teachings on anger and other emotional states
  
• teachings on death and impermanence
• teachings on attachment
• teachings on compassion
  

This, of course, in addition to scores of other teachings about the various paths within the Vajrayana, histories of teachers and lineages and more advanced teachings for those who have committed to a path or taken vows.

I find myself increasingly interested in how the dharma enters and is integrated in people's lives. Being in a military community, I am now propelled to find out about service members who adhere to Tibetan Buddhist teachings, or simply who have an interest in it that they intend to cultivate, and how their adherence or interest informs even their profession.

These particular questions have been bubbling up increasingly in the past few days. This morning I turned to read an article that quickly delved right to the heart of some of my 'questions.'

Thich Nhat Hanh's The Bodhisattva at Work: Skillful Means in Any Path is an article I will certainly be referencing at a later date. But to introduce some of the thoughts here, Hanh immediately delves into the skillful means of a bodhisattva which he then leads into an incredibly grounded and relevant discussion of the possibility of the bodhisattva to manifest in many forms, regardless of one's path in life. He references the reality of prisoners, police officers, even gang members being capable of incorporating the role of the bodhisattva into their life, effectively transforming communication with others around them and perhaps even conditions.

I am so moved by this article and the ideas proposed in it because I have, for the past several days, been turning over in my mind a way in which to approach and write about concepts of non-violence in Tibetan Buddhist teachings, the implications and meaning of wrathful symbolism in Tibetan Buddhist art and how teachings of the Vajrayana can help to inform how we engage and respond to shifting acts and nodes of violence in the world.

For now, I am going to sign off....but more of this to come.