The Stream of ConchUsness
with Sunny Sun-Downer
This is the article I've written for the Desert Valley Star Nov. 19, 2009 g.c. issue (& the very 1st published WITHOUT any editing, Yeah!) Skip down to the end if you want to read Andrew Harvey's "Radical" Sacred Activism message! Enjoy (& Thank You "Richard" for your buddha-full comment!) -= 0 =-
I think I've had a bout of "writer's blocks" lately- one block on top of another, almost like my personal "Berlin Wall" that needed dismantling to re-unite the split-apart nations of my mind...
I'm trying to connect with my flowing literary goddess/muse, so I can get the "creative juices" flowing again. Stress and/or depression from the lack of commerce with my healing arts business and the state of the world probably has something to do with these "blocks." It feels like I'm coming out of it now, and that makes me happy, as before yesterday I was going through a "Dark Night of the Soul," and being “pissed off at the world” is normally foreign to me- it is not my natural state, or one that I enjoy. It does serve as a reference point though, as in "how low can you go" before getting "free of the negativity." It has caused me to try to use it as motivation to put my energy into the survival factor, to come up with ways to earn the 'green energy' (or what I call “Dead Presidents’ Pictures,” i.e. “money”) to meet the constant flood of bills, at the risk of losing my happiness-based creativity...
And what transpired to aid in this shift? Well, instead of wallowing in my miserable mental state another day- which was accompanied by the physical 3-week-long head-to-throat-to-lungs-back-to-head-cold I've been dealing with... (You remember "The Weather Underground," the violence-inclined 70's radical group? I re-activated my own, called the "Under-the-Weather-Ground!" Oh, and no, it’s not the H1N1- because I’m holding out for the “S”-free version, the “Wine Flu,” heh-heh, with my new slogan, “Who needs a vaccination, when you can just hit the bottle on your stay-cation!” OK, I tend to make light of serious subjects with a little levity, especially when I believe that “Big Pharma,” with its ties to our government, is pulling a major scam on the people!)… I accepted the offer of the publisher of the Desert Valley Star to capture some bill-paying green energy by distributing the paper around the Coachella Valley. Half-way through the ordeal of negotiating the ever-frustrating Friday afternoon traffic and stopping at about 80-some drop-off points, I stopped for some veggie-tacos at one of them. I started to lift my tired body out of the car seat, when something quite unusual happened that caused me to pluck it right back down: the Grateful Dead came on the valley’s "Hot" radio station (I mean, you just don't hear them on the regular rock radio stations very often, if at all!). There they were again, ultimately reminding me, "You're sick of hanging around and you like to travel- (You) get tired of traveling and you want to settle down... Well, I guess I can't revoke your Soul for trying- Get out of the door, light out and have a look around..." I was instantly given a new “lease on life,” to hear one of my main musical heroes musically shining a light of inspiration in the middle of my tribulations, especially when they sang the chorus, "Sometimes the Lights are shining on me, Other times I can barely see... Lately it occurs to me, what a Long, Strange Trip (LST) it's been!" This alone gave me the energy, perhaps through the "Time Machine Factor" combined with the "Pavlovian Re-connection" of past marathon Dead Tours, to "Keep On Truckin' ," like the “Do-Dah Man,” through the rest of the day- especially looking forward to the end of the job, when I could re-iterate the final verse: “Truckin’, Im a-goin’ home, whoah-oh baby, back where I belong… Back home, sit down and patch my bones…” (And in a totally un-related point, let's not forget that the Dead's 'Truckin' rose to "Number 1" on the radio chart in Truckee, Calif., in the early 70's!)
The next day, I found myself equally depressed about the world situation, specifically with one that has been dear to my heart for decades. It’s about the “Big Lie” in the news again that the Chinese government has fostered on its 1.3 billion citizens, as President Obama travels there for the first time: that it “liberated Tibet from ‘serfdom’ just as President Lincoln freed the slaves in the U.S.” to justify its torturing and killing over 1 million Tibetans and nearly destroying their culture and the country’s environment over the last 50 years. This has Chinese university students wanting to know why President Obama would meet with this “separatist Dalai Lama” (who their government calls a “Monster in Sheep’s Clothing”- kettle calling the pot black, anyone?) at his ‘town hall meeting’ with them. And BTW, what the Chinese government calls ‘serfdom,’ was Tibetan people happily giving part of their crops to support the (unified religion/state) monasteries before the violent invasion of Tibet.
Two things happened that helped me with this. First, I received an email of a talk given recently by author Andrew Harvey, who is an advocate for “Buddhist Global Relief” (www.buddhistglobalrelief.org). This is a new organization founded by an American Buddhist monk, Ven. Bikkhu Bodhi, that is an inter-denominational community of Buddhists and friends of Buddhism who seek to give concrete expression to the Buddha’s great compassion as an ongoing project in the contemporary world. Andrew’s message was so moving and heart-opening as it ‘cut to the bone’ regarding how to deal with the anxiety and frustration so many of us are currently feeling towards the world situation with its wars, aggression and rapidly deteriorating environment, etc. His talk is quite radical and ultimately involves developing what he calls “Sacred Activism.” Space limitation doesn’t allow its inclusion here, but you can read it at my blogsite posted at the end.
The other “mental saving grace” that occurred that evening was experiencing the “Musical Love Fest” of Larisa Stow and her “Shakti Tribe” at Urban Yoga in Palm Springs (Larisastow.com). Larisa, near the beginning of their heart-chakra-opening performance, touched directly on these negativities I’ve been referring to, asking how many of us are going through it in our lives? As the ‘dancing-room-only’ crowd agreed that they could relate, she reminded us about Mahatma Gandhi’s tribulations. What activated him back in his era, was buying a 1st Class train ticket, but then being forced to sit in 3rd Class because of his skin color. He then took his anger and channeled it into the positive activism of his “Satya-graha” (the Hindi word for “Truth Army”) which ended up non-violently liberating India from British oppression.
Also, BTW, for a brand new take on Gandhi’s story, I recommend the ‘hip-hop’ music version by one of the stars of the recent Joshua Tree “Bhakti Fest,” the yoga teacher/songwriter “MC Yogi.” Called “Be the Change” after the chorus: “Be the Change that you want to see, in the world Just like Gandhi!” You can view it on Youtube and/or see the lyrics at his website (http://www.mcyogi.com/lyrics/be-the-change) and let the music help you, as it did me, dance all over those blocks!
(Sunny’s blog is www.conchustimes.blogspot.com, where you can also see his past un-edited articles for the Desert Valley Star in their entirety!)
Transcript of a brief talk by Andrew Harvey, mystical scholar, Rumi translator, poet, and architect of 'sacred activism' - at the recent launch of Bhikkhu Bodhi's "Buddhist Global Relief" in New York City.
I would like to share very briefly my vision of sacred activism with you. I’d like to begin by saying that I only believe three things. I believe that we are heading into the eye of a perfect storm of crises, which threatens the human race and a great deal of nature. I think it is extremely important that we all stop denying just how dangerous and insane and savage the terror this perfect storm of crises is and just what it actually means for all of us and the world. I think you know what those crises are. There is a holocaust going on that the doomsayers had predicted. There is a retreat amongst many of the major religions into fundamentalism, which disorders our unity. There is a domination of a kind of corporate mindset of all of the different rounds of activity of corporate magnates that is brutal, that is addicted to power, that is addicted to domination, that is addicted to exploitation, and addicted to greed. There is a mass media, largely owned by corporations, filling our minds with violence, trash and celebrity trivia, at the very moment where you and I need to be inspired, galvanized and given the authentic information.
And there is a lifestyle which you and I both live, which is hectic, driven and multi-tasking, which makes it almost impossible, for even for the most well meaning of us, to have the kind of pleasure and peace in which to hear the voice and soul that could guide us. And when you bring all of these crises together, and add to them a population explosion which will have three billion or more people on the earth in 2050 to feed, and a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of grade A lunatics and psychotics, such as the unfortunate head of North Korea and the completely insane head of Iran, then what you and I are looking at is a perfect storm of interrelated crises that are all the manifestation of a selective force - human self. A human self that has lost the most fundamental connection of all, which is the connection with our own deepest sacred nature, the sacred nature of creation and the sacred nature of life.
That is the first thing I believe, and I think it is very important that we all wake up fast, because all those who are not awake now, are going to be awake very soon. The crisis is not going to relent and it is going to get very much fiercer very soon. If that is all that I believe, I would have asked Bhikkhu Bodhi together, make a vat of Jim Jones Kool-Aid, recite the verses from the Dhammapada together, become One one last time and die together. But that is not happening.
The second thing I believe is this storm of crises is an evolutionary possibility of unprecedented intensity. Because it gives us the opportunity to gaze into the mirror of our destiny, and to see very clearly, that unless you and I evolve to the next level of putting our deepest principals and our holiest compassion and our greatest passion for life into direct clear radical action on every level, we will simply not survive. In other words, this great death that we are living, that we are manifesting out of our addiction, our greed, our extraordinary apathy, our fantastic lack of concern for life, this great death is also potentially the birth canal of an enormous and unprecedented birth. The birth of a chastened and humbled humanity opened at last by tragedy and awakened by the knowledge of the shadow, to really claim all of our innate sacred consciousness and start acting truly and deeply from our heart to turn apocalypse into grace. Turning nightmare into opportunity- a terrible tragic situation into a gathering together on a massive scale to transform the world.
Ever since this vision was given to me - it wasn’t something that I awoke to - it was something that was transmitted to me by my greatest teacher, the man who transformed my life, Father Bede Griffiths, who sat me down at the age of eighty-six, in his quiet hut in South India. On the last occasion we were together, he said, “There are three possibilities, my dear Andrew, for the future of the human race. The first possibility is that the human race will wake up to the horror of what it is creating and ask for immediate transformation and start changing everything. This is totally unlikely. The second possibility is that the human race will prove so stubborn in its addiction and so addicted and so apathetic and so rotten and broken down by the corruption and power that it has chosen that it will continue in its nightmare and suicidal and matricidal power and take the whole world away in its apocalyptic madness. He said I don’t think it is likely either. Because the God that I had in the deepest recesses of my mystical experience is the God of all embracing humanity, all the resourceful intentions, and a God that will go on, going on reaching out to us to give us the strength and the passion and the wisdom to awaken us even in our darkest and especially in our dark humanity. And then he said that there is a third possibility. And this is the possibility that I have experienced in the depths of my life and you will experience in the depths of your life. And this possibility is that this crises is the equivalent on a global scale of a crisis that a mystic goes through at a certain moment on the path when they go through what is called in the Christian mysticism the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’, in Sufism ‘banar’ (?) and in the metaphysical systems of Mahayana Buddhism the shattering of the false self, the shattering of the created self. If humanity can see this immense consciousness as a God sent, God given, God ordained opportunity to unlearn all our dangerous attainments. And if humanity could settle in the deep ground of divine inspiration and learn to how to go through the shattering ordeal with authentic grace, with authentic commitment to transformation then not only will humanity survive, but humanity will be transfigured and transformed and will be born into an authentic divine power, an authentic divine nature through the death of the collective false self that is manifesting this great death that is wrecking everything. Ever since that conversation, I have asked myself, day after day after day after day, one question. One question has burned in me, and that is why I have spent five years writing my latest book when before things came supernaturally, or rather easily. And that question was, if this great death is the birth canal of the great birth, then what is the force, what is the power that can birth this birth? What in us can birth the birth of the divine humanity, transformed by tragedy, illumined by the shattering knowledge, and transfigured by divine grace? What force can give us the power to turn this devastating situation around?
Four years after Bede died, I found a kind of answer. I had a dream in which he showed me two rivers. One river was a river of fire which was going toward the sea and the other which is a river of even more intense fire which was going toward the sea. And at the sea they met and they erupted in a glowing and glorious radiant divine Hiroshima of energy. And then I heard this voice saying, “these two rivers are the two noblest forces of the human psyche. And these two rivers are the river of the fire of the mystic’s passion of the God and the river of the activist’s passion for justice. When these two rivers meet, what happens is a third fire is born and that fire is the fire that is ordained to transform everything and that fire is the fire of divine compassion and love in action.” And it was that dream, that vision that gave me the term “sacred activism” and it is in honor of that vision that I wrote my book and it is in honor of that vision that I honor the work that the Buddhist Global Relief is doing and it is that honor of that vision that I stand before you and ask you to do one thing which has meant anything to you. And if you truly believe as I believe that we are where we are, facing extreme danger but with extreme opportunity. And I ask you in the name of the Buddha to get up at three o’clock in the morning someday soon and to surround yourself with the peace of God in whichever way you understand it and to ask yourself one question, what of all the causes of this beleaguered and damaged world breaks my heart the most? What of all these causes breaks my heart the most? I ask you to dare to ask yourself this question, and I ask you to dare to listen to what your heart says to you. Because you will find that if you do that your heart will reveal to you a sacred mission that belongs to you, just to you, and that will be the most deepest and most radiant voice of your soul and that you will be given, at that moment, an injunction and direction. What you do then, is to join with other people with similar heartbreak, and to work together in your local community, to do something real about what it is that you advocate in yourself.
My last thing that I like to offer to you is what I am doing. I am going everywhere talking about this vision of sacred activism but I am also bringing out a way of grounding it in the world. On Thanksgiving Day, I am releasing a global website called “Networks of Grace” and these networks are going to be cells of between six to twelve people gathered around a heartbreak, or a profession, or a passion dedicating in their local communities to start getting this grassroots radical revolution of the third power, Love in Action, going and it is the only way which we will get a chance of it working. If you are waiting for the corporations to transform your situation, you will wait until the last tree is burnt down. And if you are waiting for the politicians to have major spiritual transformation and suddenly give millions away and start feeding the poor, you will be waiting for the last animal to disappear. This revolution of the soul in action depends upon you and I. You and I getting real about three things: about this tragedy of where we are, about the opportunity of where we can go, and about the heartbreak that you and I all feel. And when we get real about all of those three things, then we are impelled to work together in the networks of grace to do something about them.
