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Circumstantial Racism, Universal Exploitation

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Ta Nehisi Coates rails against White racism in his analysis of Donald Trump’s ascendancy to the Oval Office. That racism is characterized as a universal Caucasian affliction, evident even in the policies of the Clinton White House. Coates cites welfare reform and mandatory sentencing as reasons that Hillary Clinton did not command black loyalty as did President Obama. That these policies are color-conscious only in the pattern of their enforcement reveals Coates’ own racism.

In his analysis of the root causes of white supremacist logic, Coates hits closer to the truth. In the face of economic exploitation (whether as white indentured servants or black slaves, whether living in company towns or struggling to survive as share croppers), the pride of the impoverished whites was preserved by their social superiority to blacks, Hispanics and Asians. Any policies intended to even those disparities opened a yawning pit of debasement under the feet of the white electorate.

It is this fact that Republicans have used to solidify their control of that constituency. The stark evidence is seen in the exclusivity of the staff in Speaker Paul Ryan’s office. Not a colored face among them.

So Coates takes a step backwards, and argues that the true root of racism is capitalism. This is an error, as the seat of slavery in America was in the agrarian South. With this fact, we should recognize ‘capitalism’ as a stand-in for ‘exploitation.’

Exploitation is a universal phenomenon that manifests as deforestation, water pollution and global warming. It is consumption of resources without consideration of costs to our neighbors or descendants. It is a phenomenon seen in every hierarchical culture on earth, not excluding any race, ethnicity, religion, or economic framework – and in fact driving internecine conflict that belies any attribution to those causes.

Given that universality, Coates’ calls for retribution against those that celebrate those causes (such as those co-ethnic to slave-holders in America) are counter-productive until we can demonstrate a political and economic framework that mitigates against exploitation. Without it, we are simply adherents to the ancient policy characterized satirically by:

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Nothing to Fear but Your Self

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At Bible study last night, Pastor Sammie asked us why we were afraid. We struggled to produce a good answer. Buddhism puts a point on this: because of our attachment to material things. Christianity goes the other way. It asserts that we find the strength to resist fear only in embracing God.

But in the interval between surrender of materiality and the embrace of God, we feel pain. This is not just because the world tries to punish us for abandoning it. As Christians, we feel pain – we “pick up our cross” – because it is only through our pain that love knows where it must bring healing.

Even Jesus struggled with this:

Father, if it is possible, take this cup away from me.

Followed by the humiliating:

But not my will, but yours be done.

To avoid that pain, we choose to try to love ourselves. We pass judgment upon others. This one is fallen. That one is genetically inferior. All the -isms and -alities that divide us, and justify our reservation of our power for people like us.

In doing so, we make a grave error. The Most High loves all things, so in choosing not to love someone, we divorce ourselves from love.

The devil does not corrupt us. The devil only attempts to convince us to choose to reject love. He heaps pain upon the weak, and then whispers in our ear that God does not love us.

But if we lift our heads, the strong realize that in beating us down, Satan has loosened his grip on those around us. We receive their wonder and gratitude. We become meaningful. We become powerful.

Surrender your self. Be weak in the face of evil, and find strength in the Most High.

Weather Watch: California Weird

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As has become the pattern in Southern California, September has brought triple-digit heat to inland areas. Kevin reports triple-digits in San Jose, but it was Greg’s report that made me pause: triple-digit heat in Berkeley. Berkeley!

Port Hueneme has been spared the worst. I’ve been crediting Hurricane Lidia – though you’d think that overcast would cover more of Southern California. Along with the cool air, we’ve had some fantastic sunsets:

LidiaSunset

Many will recognize these clouds, of course: warm, humid air condensing as the sun sets, with rain overnight, and possibly thunderstorms.

So I guess that I shouldn’t have been surprised this afternoon.

It was hot at 9AM in Oxnard, forcing the passengers under the overpass while waiting for the train to arrive. The bike ride through Santa Barbara to Ecstatic Dance was also sweltering. After the dance, the gentle slope toward the shore was a relief, and after lunch a cool breeze blew in my face as I rode down to the Art Walk.

After a quick stop an John Grandfield’s booth, I found a wonderful surprise at Steve Richardson’s booth. He found inspiration in the legend of the Black Madonna, and I bought two pieces that I’ll write up after he brings them down on Tuesday. While I was talking to Steve, Mandy Starr was packing up her booth, looking at the gray wall heading down from the hills. Steve and I teased her, but she had the right idea.

Guessing that the Art Walk would be rolling up, I rushed down to Neal Crosbie’s booth. I had just arrived when the rain started. It was a downpour reminiscent of a Hawaiian squall. I tried to help Neal keep the water from splashing on his work, and then realized that my bike was getting soaked – along with the backpack in the basket. I had just pulled it under the tarp when the wind hit, the gust blowing over most of the stands.

It was a funnel: dirty water came down in sheets. Half of the tarp blew off, and we were both soaked to the skin in ten seconds. I tried to hold the tarp down over the art as Neal loosened the stays. With the art covered, we were left unprotected in the deluge. Two minutes later, the black, foamy water was up to the curb. In retrospect, it was shore water lifted by the funnel and thrown back onto land.

Neal was stranded, his wife having taken the car in to work that afternoon, so I abandoned him to find some cover. While I didn’t see any downed power lines, a number of anchor cables had snapped off the poles. The entire downtown area was without power. This was a typical scene:

WaterFunnelAftermath

I passed one young lady walking in a single sandal. She had been on the beach when the funnel hit, and the second had blown into the harbor. I had word from Steve later that they fished fifty-six people out of the water – I would guess many from overturned boats and kayaks.

When I got back to the train station, I discovered a downed light stanchion and fallen tree over the near tracks. I walked my bike into the stall in the men’s room and wrung out my clothes. My train ticket was soaked with muddy water in the bottom of the bike basket, but fortunately the water had not reached my spare shirt.

The station crew cleared the rail blockage and the north-bound rolled in around 2:45. I biked back to the Art Walk to check on my friends. The oil painters hadn’t lost much, but Ping’s rice-paper water colors were a complete loss from exposure to the filthy water.

Arriving back at the station around 3:30, I looked up the tracks to see the north-bound stalled just outside the station. Blocked by fallen trees, it backed up, and around 4:40 become the south-bound 1790. I don’t know what happened to the north-bound passengers in Santa Barbara, but I arrived back in Oxnard around 6PM.

I’m supposed to be up in Pinecrest for the Soul Play Fall Fest from 9/13 to 9/19. I’m hoping that things will have quieted on the weather front. Greg says that temperatures in Berkeley are supposed to drop back into the 70s by mid-week. But I remember several years back when SoCal had temperatures in the 90’s into December. I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but without expectations. Just as long as I don’t find myself driving into a forest fire, I guess that I’ll be all right.

Wisdom Born

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The nature of love is to amplify its object. The wisdom that emanates from love, then, can be received only by a mind suitably disciplined to comply with its constraints. Lacking that discipline, the grasping ego will be amplified, attracting destructive forces to the recipient.

The wise teacher therefore secures his wisdom from those that it would harm. In the New Testament Jesus ministered to his generation with parables, and in Revelation spoke of his greater mission in obscure symbols.

As described by Judith Simmer-Brown in Dakini’s Warm Breath, Buddha took a different approach. He entrusted his unrevealed wisdom to the feminine charnel deities, the dakini. Each terma was to be revealed only to a receptive guru (a terton) that had prepared receptive students.

The curious must be driven to ask “But why feminine deities?” Would not masculine deities be suitable? Here is where Simmer-Brown might find a purpose for the womb that brings so much distress to women in primitive societies.

The womb creates a protected space in which a spirit can bind itself to matter. I would hazard, in fact, that gestation is not simply a biochemical process, but that the spirit within the womb defines the subtle energy framework that guides the growth of the fetus. To protect this process, the womb must construct powerful barriers to invasion by destructive personalities.

It is for this reason that Buddha entrusted his unrevealed wisdom to feminine deities. Only they would be capable of preserving its integrity, and only those allied to death would be capable of reclaiming it if a terton did not honor the gift.

The method of symbolic obscurity is also used by the dakini protector of a terma. I find Simmer-Brown’s example, however, to be astonishing. It was a spontaneous song offered by the Indian guru Naropa to his Tibetan student Marpa at their parting feast. Naropa sang:

A flower blooming in the sky,
The son of a barren woman rides a horse,
Wielding a whip of tortoise hair.
With the dagger of a hare’s horn
He kills his enemy in the space of dharmata.
The mute speaks, the blind man sees.
The deaf man hears, the cripple runs.
The sun and the moon dance, blowing trumpets.
The little child turns the wheel.

Naropa claimed that Marpa would receive understanding if he should return. That event never occurred.

Of course, having received that sacred purpose, why would a dakini allow the merger of her wisdom with that held by others? In the eighth chapter of her book, Simmer-Brown reveals that they often do not do so willingly. More than once, a guru must confront and overwhelm the resistance of the wisdom-bearer before the dakini will surrender her terma.

This is the core female ego-grasping that we see played out through the patriarchs in Genesis. It is the desire to possess and control progeny. It is the fuel for Sarai’s derision, and Leah’s usurpation of Jacob’s loyalty to Rachel.

So I am somewhat suspicious of the interpretation of Naropa’s song that Marpa received in a dakini-sent vision:

The dakini is the flower blooming in the sky.
The son of a barren women riding a horse is the lineage.
The whip of tortoise hair is the inexpressible.
The dagger of a hare’s horn is the unborn.
This kills Tilopa in the space of dharmata.

The explanation continues with ever more obscure correspondences with the Tibetan Buddhist lineage, including:

Lodro is the cripple, who runs on the mountain with the gait of luminosity, free from coming and going.

In my first post on Simmer-Brown’s book, I observed that the characteristics of Prajnaparamita closely mirrored those of the Sacred Mother in Revelation. I was drawn to the conclusion that both Buddhism and Christianity have the same sacred seed. Given that insight, I am free to read Naropa’s song thus:

  • “Flower blooming in the sky” is the star perceived by the eastern Magi [Matt. 2:2]. It is Christ.
  • The barren woman is Sarai. The rider of the white horse is the descendent of her lineage claiming love’s kingdom [Rev. 19:11].
  • In Revelation 13 the dragon makes a pact with the mammalian predators to beat humanity down. The tortoise represents the surrender of reptilian aggression to wisdom; the hare represents the conquest of mammalian predation through patient self-sacrifice. The latter’s “dagger” appears in Revelation 19:15.
  • The enemies of truth (dharmata) are cast out of Christ’s kingdom in Revelation 4:10, 11:15, 14:9-10, 19:20-21 and 20:10, respectively transmitting the experience of the angels (Rev. 4), the living creatures (Rev. 11), the dragon (Rev. 14) and humanity (Rev. 19 and 20).
  • The four healings are all accomplished by Jesus during his ministry.
  • The honor accorded to Christ by the sun is described in Daniel 7:14.
  • The little child turning the wheel signifies Jesus’s victory over death on the cross.

This is so direct and obvious that the dakini‘s subterfuge becomes transparent. They were simply trying to misdirect the Tibetan lineage to preserve their privilege by preventing its union with Christianity.

Should we be harsh in the judgment of the adherents to Tibetan Buddhism? Many Christian leaders denounce the practice of yidam as “demon worship.” Certainly some of my pronouncements here echo that sentiment.

But I recall one thing that many Christians overlook. Satan, the serpent, the “enemy” that many Christians pray to see destroyed, was not created by us. God remonstrates with him directly in the Book of Job, and charges Cain to “master [him]” [Gen. 4:7]. Jesus himself charges his disciples to “love your enemies” [Matt. 5:44], and God does not ask us to do anything that he does not do himself.

So as a Christian, I would argue that Vajrayana Buddhism is not demon-worship. It is demon-redemption. Buddha started this work when he dispersed the terma to the dakini. Moreover, where Christians use the sterile practice of exorcism, the Tibetan lineage has continued to refine its redemptive skills. Neither tradition will be superior or subordinate, for Christianity is intended to propagate love into what Simmer-Brown calls the outer-outer realm of material existence. Vajrayana Buddhism is a Trojan horse that will then spread the gift to the outer and inner realms, where it will finally unite with the secret source: Prajnaparamita and her consort Samantabhadra, the Spirit and Bride that in union become the Unconditional Love celebrated by Christianity.

Slippery Slope

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I’ve been home with a prostate infection, of all things, and so managed to get through all except the last two chapters of Judith Simmer-Brown’s Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism. It’s been a difficult but enlightening read. I have some concerns with the methods of the path as she describes it.

First, though, the positive: Tibetan Buddhism has a deep model of the manifestation of sacred principles in the world. Simmer-Brown traces that through secret, inner, outer, and outer-outer manifestations.

I related the essence of the secret dakini in my last post. Prajnaparamita manifests as space, wisdom and knowledge. As she builds the lore, Simmer-Brown explains that possession of these qualities makes the feminine principle dominant in Tibetan Buddhism, for skillful means (the use of compassion to transform experience) is both inspired by and guided by them. The secret dakini can be neither visualized nor understood, only known.

The inner dakini manifests as the deity Vajrayogini. Vajrayogini confronts the practitioner with the fear of death, and transforms it into acceptance and freedom. As a deity in Tibetan Buddhism, Vajrayogini is depicted in mandalas that define her relationship with the world. The most important elements in her depiction are the instruments of the charnel ground: skulls, flames and sharp implements. The logic of this depiction reflects the hazards of the sacred knowledge known to Tibetan practitioners. To advance, an acolyte must find a living guru that channels the sacred experience into the world, a yidam (devotional deity) to meditate upon, and a protector of the teachings that guides or violently transforms the personality to prevent corruption by residual grasping of the self.

The outer dakini mediates the transformation of the subtle energy system, similar to the system of prana or acupuncture. In Tibetan lore, all of our bodily functions are manifestations of energy flow through these channels. The central channel flows along the spine, but has two side channels that focus masculine and feminine tendencies. The goal of the practitioner is to merge the side channels into the central. In this process, the practitioner must cultivate relationships with twenty-four dakinis that originate the energies of the subtle body system. In a sense, the practitioner becomes a living mandala, and calls these energies into the world to create and transform experience.

The outer-outer dakini is the dakini in human form. In this section, Simmer-Brown celebrates the female figures in history that contributed to development of Tibetan wisdom. Here is where tantric sex comes to the fore, as well as validation of authority through esoteric action (magic). Both are cast in a positive light. Tantric sex is a method for mutual inspection and transmission of traits that facilitates personal growth. Magic is described as the means by which the physical infrastructure of the tradition is protected, including the bodies of practitioners meditating without food or shelter.

Through this summary, I hope that I reveal my respect for this tradition, whose richness and depth reflects a careful construction of interlocking elements that ensure the outcome of practice is compassionate engagement with all living beings.

However, I perceive certain issues.

First and most important is the conflation of space and mind. Mind existed long before this reality came into being, and is the realm of pure spirit to which we will return. Space exists in this realm only as a means to protect compassionate personalities from experiences more intense than they can mediate. To serve in this way, space was designed to capture and localize mind. Where that occurs, we find matter. This is the truth that Tibetan wisdom shares as the secret and outer dakinis.

Secondly we have the sense of privilege accorded to advanced practitioners. This manifests itself in the characterization of them as heroes rather than servants (the term used in Christianity) of humanity. The thanotic imagery of the inner dakini is particularly troubling. Death maintains the disintegration of spirit, something obvious in the description of the outer dakini. It’s adoption as a protector of privileged knowledge seems a dangerous compromise.

Personal privilege also seems evident in the rather sterile rendering of the relationship between tantric consorts. The gurus celebrate commitment, but not monogamy, each relationship broken off when the mutual benefits are exhausted.

This flies in the face of the most serious problem with the tradition. Simmer-Brown recounts that the assignment of a yidam (devotional deity) is driven by the tensions that exist in our lives. Meditation on the yidam resolves obstructions in the subtle energy system that manifest as perceptible heat in the body. Simmer-Brown refers to this in the title (warm breath), but never stops to wonder what tension is attendant to that heat.

Simmer-Brown gnaws at the bone of the problem throughout the book, defending Tibetan Buddhism against charges of patriarchy while postulating that its dominant spiritual forms arose from a prehistoric matriarchy. She decries the traps of feminine physicality that bring life into the world, seeing them as simultaneously a personal and cultural impediment to spiritual advancement.

This error is the cause of the warmth felt by those that meditate on Parjnaparamita, the secret dakini.

From the Christian perspective, the answer to this dilemma is obvious: all things are joined in love. Coitus is not necessary to transmission of masculine and feminine virtues, only love. Relationships persist because the love between the couple expands to include the society, and their shared experience is essential to greater service to humanity. And the dangers of esoteric knowledge are lessened because love – the source of all creative power – is unknown to those that would abuse its energies.

In patterning the female path to enlightenment on the masculine path, Tibetan Buddhism does women a terrible disservice. These are precious gifts: the ability to bring life into the world, the determination to preserve it, and the social rewards for their devotion. Any proclaimed feminine spirituality should provide practices that strengthen those gifts, rather than sacrificing them on the altar of death.

Contrast that with the promise of Spirit and his Bride:

“Come! And let all that hear say: ‘Come!’ Let all who desire come and drink of the free gift of the water of life.”

Considering the  filters and constraints of Tibetan Buddhism, this confidence is marvelous!

Understanding Emptiness

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Having discovered a central role for women of grace through my interpretation of Revelation, I was hungry for more insight. It arrived for me at Thunderbolt Books in Santa Monica, in the form of Judith Simmer-Brown’s Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism.

As I explained at Love Returns, Unconditional Love cannot judge, for to judge would be to reject experience that must be understood to bring healing. This is the central tenet of Buddhism: the acolyte must avoid attachment to phenomena, seeing them clearly without judgment, and use compassion to transform experience. This principle is called “emptiness.”

Christianity struggles with this wisdom, for it foretells of an era of universal love guided by Christ. When people hurt others, Christians categorize them as “fallen,” as among the goats the Jesus separates from the lambs in the Last Judgment.

Being the least subjective of our great religious traditions, in my reading of Dakini’s Warm Breath, it appears to me that Buddhism has advanced most closely to the underlying nature of reality.

Dakinis originated in Indian Buddhism as carnal demons that protected nature from exploitation. Perhaps understanding that Humanity was going to place itself in opposition to nature, they originally sought to stifle spiritual development. In Tibetan Buddhism, this changed when enlightened persons projected their commitment to compassion and honor for all aspects of reality. Discovering a partner in those practitioners, many dakinis took cause with them, becoming defenders of the wisdom teachings from corruption. Having removed this impediment to relation with the divine feminine, Tibetan masters then encountered the Great Queen Prajnaparamita.

The parallels with the Book of Revelation are too obvious to ignore. The carnal dakinis would be Whore of Babylon; Prajnaparamita would be the Sacred Mother. Indeed, Simmer-Brown explains:

So, she who manifests as Prajnaparamita is the Great Mother of all the buddhas of the past, present and future.

Parjnaparamita has specific characteristics that allow her to serve in this role. She is space. She “shows the world for what it is.” and she “reveals the thoughts and actions of other beings.”

In Love Works, I advanced a model of spirit that explains these characteristics. The primary duality of existence is self and other. To have compassion, we must preserve our self. That is the gift of space, without which all phenomena would collapse into a single point. Space is not empty, but a lattice framework that supports the evolution of spirit.

When an event occurs, space does not transform the event – it does not seek to interpret or change the event. Those that seek the truth are given access to that history, while those that serve the self must fight against the resistance marshalled by the truth.

All events unfold into spirit. To those that do not impose themselves upon the world, instead choosing to negotiate win-win outcomes for all beings, those thoughts are freely available. Those that work for selfish ends trap themselves in their materiality, and so are cut off from this source of wisdom.

As Simmer-Brown explains, the Buddhist knows this through experience, but has no answer to “Why?” The Christian relies upon the promises of Christ, and answers “Why?” with “Because God loves us.”

In the first hundred pages of Simmer-Brown’s beautiful, wise and compassionate treatise, her teachers emphasize that the dakini is the root of Buddhist practice. The bodhisattva is a practitioner of “skillful means” that propagate the dakini’s wisdom. This seems to deprecate the masculine role.

At Love Returns, I offer this: Love seeks to create marvelous relationships. In a wounded world, to do so it must divide into two parts: a masculine part that changes and a feminine part that preserves what is good. Neither is superior or subordinate. Eventually, they unite, and our division from love is healed. Masculine virtues will continually invent new experiences, but only under the guidance of feminine virtues that prepare space to receive those manifestations.

Sensual Connection

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A comment inspired by Sherry’s post out at Community Soulwork.

Sensual – that’s a much wider space to play in than “sexual.”

My first clue regarding the mechanisms of sensual connection came in a full-contact-improv class. The instructor passed around pictures of fascia – that fibers that tie our body tissues together. It is most readily identified by moving the skin over your muscles until the fascia reaches (rather suddenly) its limits.

When I dance, I feel that I am dragging spirit around. My fascia grows warm – it tingles. My partners told me that I was a great dancer, but being untrained I thought that they were just flirting. It was only much later that I realized that the spirit I was dragging around was wound in them as well. That was the cause of their wonder.

As I have explored this connection to the energies of life, I have discovered that when interrupted by another’s sexual advance, it flees. Sex is often brutal – a forcing of energies into certain tissues, rather than a collaboration that releases far-flung, pent-up desires for communion.

The Complete Love Returns

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I’ve finished my video series on John’s Revelation. While not much attention has been attracted, I finally found words to explain the gift that I bring into the world. Maybe they’ll help others to receive my love simply, just as I offer it.

So here it is:

Consummation – Revelation 21 and 22: Christ and his Bride unite the masculine and feminine virtues, and present to us the undying gift of the water of life.