Where the streets have no name

Over the weekend of July 17, 18, & 19 a poet, a zen priest, an industrial designer, a mental health professional and a manager of a soup kitchen took to the streets of Boston to bear witness to its homeless.

We only took the clothes on our back, no money, no bedding, no tooth brush, no jewelry, no credit cards, & no desire to do anything but aimlessly meander for three days throughout the city of Boston. What did we find there? Parts of ourselves that we did not know existed.

Like the tears that came to us when we overheard a little eight year old boy ask a homeless women if her cat was homeless too and she replied, "No, he is not homeless because he is with me."

Like the fear we experienced when we woke up at 3am to discover a crack addict and his "girlfriend" shooting up six feet from our sleeping spot at Trinity Church.

Like the frustration and sadness that came to us when we were unable to connect with a young Iraqi war veteran, just home from the war, who we found in Copley Square at 6am drinking freely from a quart of vodka and crying over a friend who has AIDS.

Like the feeling of belonging when a street woman in her late forties named Nancy, who has been on the streets since she was 13, welcomed us to the Harvard Square street scene and showed us where to sleep that night and where we could get free pizza at 11pm from a nearby pizza parlor. It is their practice to put their unsold pizza out on the streets for the homeless when they finally close for the night.

Like the indifference we felt from the majority of people who walked past us, not even willing to look at us, let alone give us the spare change we requested as part of our begging practice.

We ate in the soup kitchens, shelters and churches, we slept on the ground, walked for miles on end, pissed in the bushes and scrounged enough money to split a coffee between the five of us.

We didn't go down on the streets to see what it is like to be homeless. If we are lucky enough, we will never know that reality. We didn't go down on the streets as homeless wannabes - posers in an underworld of alcoholism, mental illness, drug addiction, and economic bad luck & hard times.

We went down on the streets to bear witness to our own lives in this experience - moment-to-moment. Nothing more/nothing less.

What we found in these most impoverished circumstances is an unexpected world of riches: pain, fear, joy, intimacy, boredom, frustration, inspiration, connection and compassion. Compassion for ourselves and all God's children who inhabit the streets with no names.

BEARING WITNESS SAVES LIVES

Roshi Bernie Glassman, founder of the Zen Peacemakers; a Zen Buddhist Group whose primary mission is the alleviation of human suffering through socially engaged Zen practice, defines bearing witness as being present with our moment-to-moment experience just as it is without needing to avoid it, amplify it, attach to it, or judge it. It is the practice of simple awareness of whatever is arising in each moment. The practice of bearing witness was first defined by the Sixth Zen Patriarch, Daikan Eno, who spoke of it as the state of mind where there is no separation between subject and object, no space between I and thou, you and me, up and down, right or wrong. Roshi Glassman further defines bearing witness as, "anything we do without separation or denial, - driving a car, cooking breakfast, taking out the garbage - is practice, or bearing witness." It turns out that new research in the field of neuroscience regarding brain function may have uncovered a biological basis for the practice of bearing witness.

In his recent book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, author Daniel Goleman (he is the guy who put the term "emotional intelligence" on the map) presents evidence that our brain is wired for intimate brain-to-brain link-ups that are the basis of empathy and compassion. It turns out that the brain is chock full of "mirror neurons" which provide us with the ability to intuitively feel what others are feeling. A kind of "neural WiFi" of the brain. It appears from this research that when we are closely attending to another person, listening closely to what they are saying, watching their facial expressions carefully without judgment, etc., we actually feel what they feel. And here is the kicker, when we are closely attuned to another person in this way, we intuitively take action regarding those feelings. But here is the trick ... this innate ability for empathy and compassion, that we all possess, is not activated unless we are closely attending to the other person in an open way. In other words, unless we are bearing witness to them with a mind uncluttered with our own ideas, feelings, worries, images, etc., we will not "see" them.

Author Goleman describes an experiment in his book that demonstrates how our lack of awareness of someone else inhibits our natural ability to be empathic and compassionate. In this experiment, a number of seminary students were told to read the biblical passage regarding the Good Samaritan and informed that at some point they would be asked to walk to another building and give a sermon on this passage. The experimenters had a confederate lay down on the ground between the two buildings where the seminary students would have to pass on their way to giving their sermon on the Good Samaritan. The confederate's role in the experiment was to act like a homeless person who was injured and to call out to the seminary students for help as they passed him buy on their way to giving the sermon. The researchers wanted to see whether or not the seminary students would stop and offer the "homeless" man assistance.

Guess what? Only one in six of the seminary students stopped to help the "homeless" man. Why? It turns out that when we are caught up in our thinking about something, what psychologist Steve Hayes calls "cognitive fusion," the brain's ability to bear witness is bypassed. It's as if your thoughts create a barrier to the brain's natural ability to be present for and help others. It turns out that the seminary students were so caught up in their thinking about the sermon they were about to give that they didn't even notice the "homeless" man: a sermon on being a Good Samaritan!!

Another way of saying this is to acknowledge that to the extent that we are self absorbed, we are not likely to engage our "neural WiFi" and be of assistance to our fellow beings on the planet.

It s no accident, that Zen practice will in-time enhance our natural ability to empathize with others and be of service to them. Zazen (Zen meditation), the core practice of Zen, enhances our ability to be present in each moment with awareness and defuses the power of words, images, concepts, etc., to keep our minds locked-up in thoughts while distracting us from the life that is unfolding right in front us.

Daniel Goleman shares an anecdote regarding an experience he had while studying homelessness in New York City. He was walking through a subway station in New York and noticed a homeless person crying out for help. Literally thousands of people simply walked by this man without stopping to ask him what was wrong. Not being lost in the usual mind dream of self absorption, Goleman stopped to ask what the man needed. As he did this, others suddenly joined in with him. It turned out the man could only speak Spanish and simply needed assistance to help him find his way to his family. Within a few minutes, the man was able to get the assistance he needed.

What is the lesson here? In a world of iPhones, iPods, texting, pagers, etc., etc., we seem to be moving more and more away from our basic connection with the world as it is in favor of an insular cocoon of self absorption where we don't have to be present for the pain of others. In our attempts to "improve the moment" by listening to music through our earphones or constantly chatting/texting with whomever, we are actually contributing to the construction of a world where we don't have to feel for others. A world where we don't have to be present for the suffering that is all around us.

Bearing witness practice can bring us back to this moment. Bring us back to our natural condition of engaged awareness. You may find that by bearing witness, you may end up actually saving someones life someday. And that someone may be none other than yourself.

So let's not just walk on by anymore. Let's look, feel, and help.

REGARD ALL DHARMAS AS DREAMS

Deeply seeing into and experiencing the interconnectedness of all of existence is a precondition for genuine compassion. Even if one has a philosophical or conceptual understanding of the interconnectedness of life, it is not enough to generate true compassion. Why is this?

Without the direct and deeply profound experience of oneness, we can never actually feel for others. It is the actual feeling of oneness that is the basis of feelings for others. It is a felt experience, not an idea, image, or concept.

Ordinarily, deep seated awareness and natural feeling for others is obfuscated; i.e, clouded over, by our entanglement with fixed notions of "how the world functions." Part of the problem is due to our use of language; the medium of intellect and communication which is structured by the core assumption of separateness and the existence of fixed entities. The Dalai Lama described this rather succinctly when he said:

"The view of the world as made up of solid objects with inherent properties is reinforced further by our language of subjects and predicates which is structured with substantive nouns and adjectives on the one hand and active verbs on the other."

Without ongoing meditative practice (zazen) it is difficult, if not impossible, to defuse the effects of language and its power to continuously reinforce the notion of fixed entities, events, structures, etc.

It is only when all our fixed ideas and concepts about the "nature of reality" are completely let go of that the experience of the interconnectedness of all of life can be directly realized along with the emergence of true love and compassion for all beings, including ourselves.

Zazen is a razor sharp sword for cutting away the stranglehold that language has on our ability to let go of fixed ideas. The more that we practice zazen, the easier it becomes to see the provisional "reality" that is built into the very structure of language itself. The reality that we "think of" and in turn, construct, becomes less important than the direct experience of reality that is beyond the ability of language to describe.

"Regard all dharmas as dreams," is a gentle reminder for us to not get caught up or hung up by verbal descriptions of reality. They are by their very nature limited and incomplete so it's OK for us to let go of them, over and over and over again. Just hold them lightly and then release them, like a freshly caught trout, and keep to "not knowing" as often as possible. Our very own inherent love and compassion, which is none other than the basis of the interconnectedness of all of creation, will manifest.

It is then that we can truly be of service to others empowered by the love we feel for ourselves. To the degree that we clearly see that "self love" equals "universal love" are we able to be of service to others.

HOWLING DRAGON - A NEW BLOG ABOUT SOCIALLY ENGAGED BUDDHISM

This is the initial post of Howling Dragon: Reflections on Socially Engaged Buddhism. My intention is to reflect on the many ways that Zen can inform the work of all those who are laboring to alleviate human suffering in this world.

Zen has a reputation for being somewhat enigmatic and at times paradoxical for folks who are new to this ancient wisdom tradition. An yet, more and more, the word "zen" is popping up throughout the culture in all kinds of ways. I have seen it associated with everything from electronic MP3 players to backpacking stoves.

So what exactly is Zen? Zen Master Roshi Bernie Glassman defines it very simply: Zen is your life. Because Zen is your life, my life and everyone and everything's life, the essence of Zen, which is the very essence of our essential being is compassionate action in service to others.

This blog will explore the many ways that Zen teachings illuminate our essential nature and provide a gateway into our true hearts where compassion for others is our original intention. It is my hope that what appears on these pages will shed some additional light on the many ways each and every one of us can work to make our lives and the lives of others less burdensome.

Stay tuned ....