Feminist Buddhism and Interdependent Liberation

"How was your weekend with Pema Chodron?" many people asked me coming home from Awaken Chicago last weekend. It is true, I was very excited to be in the same room (mind you, large chapel) as Pema Chodron for the first, and likely only, time in my life. I have long loved her books, her talks, her retreats. Like many people (women, especially) she has saved my life and heart many times. And because she is the name most people know, I told people about seeing her ahead of time.

But the fact is I also knew that Angel Kyodo Williams would be there, and I was excited to see her. I had no idea how much she was going to be involved - it turned out, a lot, giving the very first keynote talk - and how powerful she was going to be. She was uber in her element - completely riveting and engaging, encouraging us to disrupt via our meditation practice and life, as much as finding peace and spreading equality in more calm and traditionally meditative manners. 

Liberating Inheritances

When people die, they always leave something.  Plenty of people lose parents and were left with, say, thousands of dollars of hospital bills instead of thousands of dollars of bonus inheritance. That is still  something. Whether we are left with negative or positive, there's an inheritance.

I have privilege. My parents didn't leave behind as much money, but their parents did. And likely because my parents died so young - in their fifties, and while I was a teen - the money from their parents, who were all gone by the time I was twenty-two - came to me and my brothers. Enough to help me get a house, help out with some debts and investments. Enough to give me security for my future as a self-employed contemplative arts instructor. That's a definite positive inheritance I wanted to acknowledge before I point out some less positive gifts.

I also inherited a strong sense of needing to blame: blame someone, find fault, or, if no one else can be pinned for it, blame myself. I know this is societal as much as it is personal - find someone in the Midwestern, middle class, liberal white world who doesn't either struggle with blame or shame or both, and you've found an exception, not a rule. However, the flavor of it in my family, when tied to severe illnesses - both physical and mental - and sudden or early deaths, took on a sense of importance above and beyond the usual.

Cool Versus Cold

Miniature Train show, January 2012, Discovery World, Milwaukee WI

One of my favorite quotes about Buddhism is - many of my favorite quotes, truthfully, are - from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In True Perception, the Path of Dharma Art, he says: "Usually people think that if you lose everything - your ambition, your self-centeredness, your integrity and dignities - you will become a vegetable, a jellyfish. But it's not so. Instead you are suspended in space. It is quite titillating!"