Radish Goes to Work

As I mentioned previously, I've been feeling that this blog has gotten a little too solipsistic. And since I've become more and more fascinated and concerned with issues of work and labor from a Buddhist perspective, I am going leave this venue, and have created a new blog in which I can more deeply explore these issues. You will find me here, at Buddhism, Work & Labor. Please visit!

P.S. Just because I'm focusing on work/labor doesn't mean that I will ignore the arts in my new blog. In the best of worlds, work is an art and also play; and art is often our most serious work.

Buddhism, Mindfulness, Labor

OK, I think this subject of Buddhism, Mindfulness and work, is a subject that I can sustain for a long time (plus I want to blog about things that are not always so Self-focused), so I'm going to start a new blog, and end this one. The new blog will focus on Mindfulness and work, from the most individual and personal issues of work (housecleaning, dealing with mail, art work) to the more public realm of labor issues, diaspora and work, slavery, ethics and labor, etc.) Might take me a few days to get this going, but I will announce it here and link to the site. I will be switching to Wordpress.com

Buddhism and Labor

I was driving to work today, past the agricultural fields in the Central California area where I live. As always, I drove past hundreds of fieldworkers. And I was thinking about the hiring practices in the company where I work. I started wondering about Buddhism and Labor. How, when we think of Buddhism and human rights, it always seems to be in relation to war & peace, or perhaps to caregiving and hospice services, or charitable help to the poor or imprisoned. But why not in relation to labor? There are numerous books about mindfulness and work, but they focus on the individual in his or her workplace.

Is it that labor issues seem intrinsically oppositional? (Well, so is war and peace). Do they not fit in with Buddhist aesthetics? Is it not a "sexy" topic for Buddhists? But the issue of work is really quite huge; it can extend from individual work at home or in the sangha, to working in offices and boardrooms, to blue collar positions, to labor rights issues in universities or in the agricultural fields, to corporate globalization, to diasporic laborers, to the increasingly burdgeoning new economy of indentured servitude and sex traffiking. Yes, folks, the slave trade is alive and well on this suffering planet.

On 23 August, the world marks International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition

Self-unconsciousness

Photo by Roy Schatt, via The Official Site of James Dean

I was reading something that made me anxious today and simultaneously indulging in some conditioned reflex action, and just watching it play itself out, upon a deeply embedded assumption that my core self was or should somehow be threatened. But in watching that process, I'm no longer so sure who or what that "Self" is. Surely, the body can be at risk, and our lives. And one should respect that, the life we've been given. But more and more my sense of Self seems fleeting and illusory, a product of habit and conditioning. More and more, I catch myself at these moments, and wonder who or what on earth this self is, that's so worried, so reactive to all these things. While I was sitting there, reading, my James Dean screensaver ; )) came on, caught my eye, and started flashing pics across the screen. All those poses (I'm reminded too of Rufus Wainwright's CD, Poses). Beautiful poses of a young man flush with life, so fleeting, seemingly so real, and then gone. We are so obsessed with Self in all its manifestations, constantly making up stories about it, trying it, testing it, defending it, pumping it up, trying to catch it in pictures and words; hypnotized by these dreams of Self.

Greco-Buddhism

"Nothing really exists, but human life is governed by convention"
"Nothing is in itself more this than that" (Diogenes Laertius IX.61)

--from Greco-Buddhism (this is a fascinating article).

On Pain and Awareness

I had a migraine that lasted a couple of days, most likely due to several rough weeks at work, which means ignoring physical signals of stress, lack of healthy exercise, limited sleep (a friend of mine has also suggested that I tend to "somatize," in other words, I tend to absorb other people's stress and pain into myself, physically -- but without the healthy release that practices like tonglen provide). Yesterday the particular project I was working on ended, and I felt a sense of freedom, and release from the headache. But today, with some disappointment, I can feel a bit of the familiar pain and sick feeling returning; it's unusual for that to happen so soon. I don't get "killer" migraines like others do (I suspect this is because I don't take any painkillers at all, which I believe tend to produce rebound migraines that increase in intensity); so I remain somewhat functional, but still - I'm not a happy camper.

Shinzen Young's techniques for dealing with pain and compulsion have been incredibly helpful, but over the last few weeks, I've sunk back into my conditioned ways of dealing with pain. In other words, not! Perhaps this weekend, I can slow down a little, become more aware, and attend to my complaining body.

One nice (more than nice) thing: my sangha has moved in to the building next door to my house, and they have built a beautiful meditation space therein, with lovely hardwood floors and warmly painted walls (the space may also be used for yoga and chi kung). Yay!

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

"our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men."

--Martin Luther King