Do something!

Doing gets a bad rap sometimes in Zen circles. It's all about being, being in the moment, being time, no goal, just be be be. But also, while we're being we're usually doing something. Yesterday a beloved teacher asked me what my days are like, and I felt my insides blossom. My life is what I do. Now I'm writing. Before I was stretching my lungs and breathing, looking for my lats, taking a cold shower, drinking coffee, planning my priorities, folding my laundry, making more coffee, mulling things over, reading the news... 

Is reading the news doing something? How about checking email? I say yes. These are my connections to the wider world. Tomorrow I'll be co-teaching an ongoing workshop: White Work on Racism. I like to call it WWOR because when you say it you can feel the fight in it. These White people also wanted to do something. They were fed up. So they attacked our Capital, and it turns out that people who work in that Capital (and even people who don't) have feelings about being attacked. Those feelings led to more protection for the inauguration and more rejection of the ideas that fed the feelings of the mob. So now I'm beginning to think that violence is rather effective, but not for the perpetrator, at least not in the long term.

What is this White work? We live in a structure designed to protect and elevate us while degrading and making use of People of Color. Dismantling that structure requires that we challenge our insistence on comfort. I shudder as I write this because 'pushing against your comfort zone' has been coopted by capitalists who use it to become even more mighty. They don't realize that the goal subverts the injunction. What do you really get when you surpass everyone? when everyone works for you? more comfortable, maybe? 

Try it the other way. Give up something. Time or money or energy. Here's a fantastic and fun website to help White people be accomplices in the movement against anti-black racism. Click on a picture, consider doing the thing. Notice how that feels. Maybe there is anxiety or reluctance or enthusiasm or even gloom at the thought of how much there is to do. It's ok. Try doing it anyway. Then check out how you feel later. Talk to someone about it. 

President Biden exhorted us to strive towards unity. Actually, we are already unity. Everything we do matters to everyone. Every breath, every action, shapes our destiny. Savor that, and do something. 

January 22, 2020

Comments

[Pat O'Hara]

Thank you for the reminder: it's all work, and everything we do can be work for others if we pay attention. And as you say, we need to be intentional about our work, be clear and maybe ambitious, able to make change!

[Elena Taurke]

Thank you, Roshi, for your encouragement!