The Thousand Miles Journey: When Spirituality and Activism Unite.
by Alternative Voice Staff
One day I walked up to the Namgyal Monastery (Tibetan Buddhist) in Upper Dharamsala, India and witnessed a large crowd gathered around two taxis and the Indian drivers, who were furious with each other. One had a club, threatening, while the other’s friend was attempting to hold him back from fighting. He squirmed away and grabbed a tire iron out of his cab. Couldn’t just stand there and watch as the one raised his club and moved to whack the other—I stepped in. No, no hero of the day. Soon enough though, one was coaxed into his car and they left. How long can you stand around passively with the crowd staring?
How long can the monk sit in prayer and meditation while the bullets whiz outside? How long can the anti-war protester wave the sign, while he hasn’t made peace with his father? Can you see how the face of the activist is changing, yea, must change to meet the times? What is the meaning of this "spiritual activism" arising, which I found 1,350 hits for on an Internet search?
Nearly a decade ago I stood next to a street holding a big scythe, waving it at the passing cars, wearing a black robe and a mask of Death. No, it wasn’t Halloween, and I hadn’t lost it (although some of the drivers must have wondered). An organizer I worked with had called me to raise a ruckus outside of a meeting of a Senator trying to pass legislation that would allow the transport of nuclear waste across the nation by train, to the infamous proposed dump on Yucca Mountain on Western Shoshone Native American land. Afterwards, talking with another guy involved (he had the video camera), he referred to "those meditators who aren’t helping!” The chasm in our personal approaches became glaring as I shared the understanding that outer change begins within. Seemed to be a foreign concept to this seasoned activist. By then in my life, the seemingly futile and never-ending struggle against unethical corporations through various means of activism had lost its priority of importance. I knew that the inner pilgrimage was calling me. That would be a worthy protest against the exteriorized pseudo-culture of soul-denial and death, I thought. So much to learn.
A year earlier on a corner in front of the downtown Shell gas station in Kalamazoo, Michigan, holding signs to alert passers-by that Ken Saro-Wiwa and his comrades had been executed by the military government partnered and funded by Shell Oil, I wondered what good it did. The station attendants looked out nervously, not having a clue to what we were protesting about. "There’s no blood in our pumps!?" Today, most Americans still have no clue. No one’s hearing on the radio "The Freedom Song," written by Gabriel of Sedona in honor of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Most likely what’s being listened to instead is another lost Elvis song.
Around that time too, on the steps of the federal building up the street, we protested the slow murder of Iraqi children through sanctioned starvation. There was too much to get involved in and fight for. How do you pick and choose who is suffering the most, to help?
We had just gathered downtown in demand for Leonard Peltier’s release and had recently marched in Chicago for Tibetan freedom from the Chinese government’s genocide policy. A letter to the editor of the local paper got published, concerning the Tibet issue, and I had signed as president of the Buddha Dharma Society at Western Michigan University. Called into my faculty advisor’s office, I was admonished to not mix politics with the group and religion, even though he was a strong supporter of the Tibetan liberation movement and a spiritual man.
The separation of the sacred and profane seemed to me to be the split psyche of the decaying "Westernized" society. I felt disturbed and confused. Where is the line drawn? Isn’t living the way and teachings of the Buddha, of Mohammed, of Christ, in part, a path of justice and redemption for the down-trodden? They are hailed as great prophets yes, but we must remember they were also mighty reformers of the times they were in. They, along with many other of the venerated saints of the planet, were the original spiritual activists and would certainly be rocking the boat if they were here now.
What is the difference between activism and spirituality? Can a person claim to be living spiritually while ignoring the pain and suffering of others? Can a person fight for the oppressed without a sense of spirituality?
Thomas Merton (the Trappist monk and writer) had an experience in his 30s that influenced a great turn from his earlier monastic zeal. He described this in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, about the day he was in downtown Louisville and realized, "with the force of an epiphany," that he loved and identified with all the people going about their business and, further, that he and all monks were in community with them.
"It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream.... To think that for sixteen or seventeen years I have been taking seriously this pure illusion that is implicit in so much of our monastic thinking.” He touches on a serious point of consideration for every person devoted to living spiritually: who, or what, do we forsake on our path? What is the price for ascension, for the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth? Must we shun the world and all its troubles, reflected before us in our angry neighbor or in our own fractured mirrors? In this personal revelation Merton makes the essential recognition of the universal interconnectedness of mortals; the brother-/sisterhood of humankind. Without that as a foundation, where can the activist expand?
What is this fence between living a life dedicated to growing spiritually and one of involvement in the world of activism? Is this fence built, in part, of conditionings which inherently contradict themselves, such as the isolated island syndrome or the "my freedom and unbridled liberty rights" deception? When and how did the myriad of misleading and degrading conditionings that divide our consciousness come about, historically and personally? Can the two honestly be separated without one suffering?
It seems the ideal world cannot be attained by a passive state and non-interfering persons absorbed in themselves or in their religion/spiritual path. Nor do fiery die-hard activists, who are locked in the cycle of reactionary anger and blame on others for their and the world’s woes, give us Utopia. Is the separation of church and state a dusty doctrine unfortunately misunderstood and abused, a reflection of the age-old dichotomies plaguing human-kind: the heart/mind split (and the fear of one, the other, or both), the unreconciled soul/body war, and so forth?! Questions.
The courageous and heroic Cesar Chavez once said "Today I don’t think that I could base my will to struggle on cold economics or on some political doctrine. I don’t think there would be enough to sustain me. For me the base must be faith.” In him we have a prime example of a true spiritual activist. He understood the necessity for the hand of action, guided by the hand of God and grounded in the people’s temporal struggles, and yet he always anchored in the eternal. In his lifelong service amongst Hispanic migrant workers, he non-violently stood up to some of the country’s largest corporations, demanding the end of workers’ exploitation, striving to bring back dignity in farm work. "It’s not necessary to have a religion to act selflessly. I know many agnostics who are more religious in their own way than most people who claim to be believers," he said.
Ralph Waldo Emerson knew: "Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.” The direction of healing this planet requires new paradigms, whole new arenas of creative mind applications. Those who are called to devote their lives to world change should choose and should make that courageous leap from the limitations of mere belief, to the expansive and invigorating faith in this grand process we’re in, trusting that there is a higher plan for this planet, reliant upon the embracing of our personal destinies. The empire of materialistic secularism and mechanistic naturalism must be overcome by soul-force in action.
We sow seeds. We take up our walking sticks, our lap-tops, our revelations, and carry on.
"A tree as great as a man’s embrace springs from a small shoot;
A terrace nine stories high begins with a pile of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles starts under one’s feet."
~ Lao Tse