Path of the Bodhisattva, Fall Buddhist Core Curriculum online, East Bay Meditation Center

(ASL interpretation provided!) Are you fed up with this bullshit federal government? Looking for a spiritual foundation for a path of action? If you like, you can explore the Buddhist Path of the Bodhisattva with me, Mushim Patricia Ikeda, in this class series on four Wednesday evenings in October. After that, there's a second four class series in November (different material, not a repeat of the first class series). And if you get truly carried away, come witness (no commitment required) OR apply to receive the Bodhisattva vows and precepts (big commitment but we take it easy!) at East Bay Meditation Center at a special daylong retreat and celebration in December 2020! All safely on Zoom, of course. For more information and registration, click HERE.

[graphic design by Candi Martinez-Carthen]

Mushim interviewed by David Treleaven on The Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness Podcast

In this episode, David interviews Mushim Patricia Ikeda—a Buddhist teacher and social change activist based out of Oakland, California. In their conversation, David and Mushim talk about her inclusivity work at EBMC, the pandemic, and the relevance of trauma-informed practice within mindfulness and social change work.

David writes, “This month I was lucky to interview Mushim Patricia Ikeda—a poet, Buddhist teacher, and social change activist. Mushim teaches at the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) in Oakland, California, where she leads an award-winning yearlong mindfulness program called Practice in Transformative Action.

“Mushim is known for her down-to-earth, humorous, and penetrative approach to contemplative practice. In this conversation we talk about her inclusivity work at EBMC, the pandemic, and the relevance of trauma-informed practice within mindfulness and social change work.”

In this episode, David interviews Mushim Patricia Ikeda—a poet, Buddhist teacher, and social change activist. Mushim teaches at the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) in Oakland, California, where she leads an award-winning yearlong mindfulness program called Practice in Transformative Action. In their conversation, David and Mushim talk about her inclusivity work at EBMC, the pandemic, and the relevance of trauma-informed practice within mindfulness and social change work.

Omitting None: The Deep Practice of Community

Mushim was recently published in Lion’s Roar. You can read her words online here.

The practice of community, says Mushim Patricia Ikeda, is more than including beyond all people, even all beings. It mean including all thoughts, all emotions, all realities — the bad as well as the good.

I’ve spent my adult life in communities and helping to build communities. I’ve been part of artistic, spiritual, social justice, Buddhist, and public school communities, among others.

In a practical sense, I know a little about the patience, persistence, relationship building, and maintenance that are needed to create community, and the diversity and inclusivity tensions always present in community life. And then there is community in the broadest sense…

Read the rest of the post on Lion’s Roar here.

New podcast interview with Mushim on "The Lotus in the Fire" podcast series!

Listen on Apple Podcasts : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/momentum-to-seed-a-new-world/id1517616176?i=1000483352898

"Momentum to Seed a New World," podcast interview by Joseph Bobrow, with Mushim Ikeda.

See the podcast series: The Lotus in the Fire, Buddhism. July 7, 2020

":...If in your country, all hope is lost in the heat of summer / the snows in my country help you to get it back." —Rafael Alberti

Joseph Bobrow says:

Today I'm joined on the pod by my friend and Dharma sister Mushim Ikeda, socially engaged Buddhist teacher, social justice activist, author, and diversity and inclusion facilitator. In this personal and wide ranging dialogue, we explore resources for and challenges of transformation and change, inner and outer, during these trying times. Mushim also reads and discusses her beautiful poem, The Stowaway Seeds. For more, visit MushimIkeda.com and EastPointPeace.org

From WTF to Please Tell Me More: Skillful Speech in a Polarized World

From WTF to Please Tell Me More: Skillful Speech in a Polarized World

 Special invitation to BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color) and open to all.

With Mushim Patricia Ikeda, East Point Peace Academy's series of talks by guest speakers, "Where Do We Go from Here?" 

July 28, 2020 from 3:00 to 4:30 pm Pacific time on Zoom 

Hurling insults can feel great in the short-term, but long-term movement building across lines of difference requires mindfulness and skills. We don't have to agree with someone else's viewpoint in order to learn more about why they say and think and do what they do. "Can you please tell me more?" can even be seen as a strategic move to better understand the opposition -- and an even more strategic move to build bridges toward common goals. Let's talk about how we talk (and listen) to one another! Offered on a gift economics (donation) basis. To register, go to https://www.eastpointpeace.org/wdwgfhmushim

Mushim will be part of the upcoming Re-Awaken summit by Lion's Roar

Free of charge from Lion's Roar! Re-awaken your heart and mind in the midst of our collective crisis. I, Mushim Patricia Ikeda will be part of the teacher lineup along with 14 other wonderful teachers. The Re-Awaken summit invites you to discover your way forward in these difficult times. June 24-28, 2020.
5 inspiring days • 15 renowned teachers • 29 transformational talks, teachings, guided meditations, and practices

https://promo.lionsroar.com/re-awaken-summit-registration/

Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Get Out! Wisdom for Scary Times, a New Online Course online 4/17 - 5/22/20

If you’re drawn toward spirituality and social justice, you might have felt the ways that fear and anxiety can drain energy you could otherwise use for making change. Without wisdom, these energies cut us off from the clarity and creativity we need to address the very injustices that make the world a sometimes-scary place. Want to find out how you can use your fear and anxiety to help you wake up?

Join us for BPF's newest online course, Get Out! Wisdom for Scary Times. From April 17th to May 22nd, we'll release an audio interview + transcript each week, with supplemental study materials for you to peruse at your pleasure. Plus, you'll be invited to join 3 live video calls with teachers and community members seeking wisdom in scary times. 

A published pandemic poem! The Stowaway Seeds

The Stowaway Seeds

I am afraid to touch the shopping cart, the bright
cool hide of the fragrant orange, the wet sand on the beach.
This pandemic virus spreads RNA
where people pass too close to one another
and gather to buy food, or crowd the ocean’s edge.
“It cannot be killed because it isn’t alive,”
my scientist brother says.

But something unknown has always contained our death,
which is why we are respectful and delicate
as we lift teacups and snow
salt crystals on grilled asparagus and touch one other
and spoons and books and the surfaces of the earth
we will one day be pressed gently between,
like book pages on the fat stems of large leaves.

Such abundant offerings – these tiny crowns
and multiplying stars, the resplendent small burrs
I found in the rough striped blanket
we took to the woods before everything shut down.
They came home with me, to seed
a new world, in which
we aren’t the most important thing.

You can also read it here.

Beginning A Meditation Practice Class at EBMC

A four-class series with Mushim Patricia Ikeda open to all
Four Wednesdays, 6:30 - 8:30 pm starting January 8, 2020
Part of EBMC’s Core Buddhist Teachings – 6-month Curriculum
Offered on a gift economics basis (by donation, no fixed fees)

Register here: https://eastbaymeditation.org/ebmcreg/?event=jan20beginning

Are you looking for a way to start a mindfulness meditation practice, but don’t quite know how? These classes will give you the basics of stationary and walking/gentle movement meditation in the vipassana (insight) style, and metta (loving kindness or good will) meditation. Don’t worry about “getting it right” – if you can sit – on a folding chair, on floor cushions, in a wheelchair – or lie down – and breathe, you’re off to a good start! This series is for those seeking stress reduction, or it can be the gateway to those new to Buddhism. Meditation can help you, over time, to develop a sense of increased physical well-being, mental clarity, compassionate connection, and spiritual growth.

EBMC TEACHERS ARE NOT PAID BY THE CENTER. You are invited to offer a voluntary financial gift to them at the class. The East Bay Meditation Center operates using a generosity-based, gift economics model. This means we charge no set registration fees to attend our events and instead rely on the generous giving of our community. All classes at the Center do come with a financial cost. Class participants are offered an opportunity to make a voluntary gift to EBMC during the registration process or at an event itself. Please note that no one will be turned away for lack of funds. If you would like to explore any EBMC volunteer positions, please send an email expressing your interest to admin@eastbaymeditation.org.

In order to protect the health of community members with environmental illness, please do not wear fragranced products (including natural fragrances) or clothes laundered in fragranced products to EBMC.

East Bay Meditation Center strives to be as accessible as possible. For the safety of our teachers, staff, volunteers and participants, we cannot provide assistance for personal needs such as transferring into and out of chairs, walking, eating, or using the restroom. If you require such assistance, you must bring a personal care assistant with you when you come to any event at EBMC.

About the Teacher:
Mushim (Patricia Y. Ikeda) is a core teacher at EBMC. She is recipient of an honorary doctor of sacred theology degree from Starr King School for the Ministry, and she is the teacher of EBMC’s yearlong PiTA program, training social justice activists in mindfulness. Her Buddhist training has included both monastic and lay experience in North America and Asia since 1982, and she is also an author, mother, and diversity consultant.

https://www.facebook.com/events/781660988938740/?active_tab=about

Doubt, Faith & Mystery - A sermon at Lyndale UCC, Minneapolis, April 28, 2019

Doubt, Faith & Mystery

Sermon at Lyndale UCC, Minneapolis, April 28, 2019

To hear the talk, click here: http://www.lyndaleucc.org/sermons/doubt-faith-mystery/ 

What is the relationship between Doubt and Faith in this time of Fake News, the rise of white supremacist groups, and climate change?  Mushim offers a socially-engaged Zen Buddhist take on the topic, bringing the Gospel of John and the story of "Doubting Thomas" into dialogue with case 19 in the Mumonkan, in which Chao-chu (Joshu) asks his teacher, "What is the Tao?"

The first part of the sermon was not recorded -- it consisted of inviting the congregation to join me in reciting a verse from Shantideva's "Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva" and in my reading aloud part of the Gospel of John text assigned for that Sunday, ffrom the Gospel of John, Chapter 20, Verse 29:

Jesus said to him (Thomas), "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

In this story, it seems that the disciple Thomas, called “doubting Thomas” by some, had boldly said he would not believe in the resurrected Christ until he had not only seen him with his own eyes, but had touched Jesus’s body; had not only touched Jesus’s body, but had penetrated with his hand into Jesus’s wounds –

And I relate to this very deeply from my own original spiritual tradition, Zen Buddhism, in which the goal of our path, our practice, sometimes called Enlightenment, perhaps better called Awakening, is in Zen very simply and touchingly and powerfully called: Intimacy.

And just as intimacy is the restoration of the world and self to wholeness and union, doubt is separation. Who among us, whether we call ourselves persons of religion or not, of spiritual faith or not, has not experienced the sometimes overwhelming anxiety, the cutting and fearful nature of Doubt?

When, inevitably, we have experienced or witnessed the slow or swift collapse of a dominant paradigm in our own belief systems and/or in society -- when we have experienced betrayal by one we had trusted, when we have doubted our own goodness, our own potential to love and be loved, to respect and to be respected?

How do we prove to ourselves that what we believe is Truth, is Justice, is Beauty, is indeed such? Where is the proof, today, April 28, 2019, in this country and world of fake news, of a government of lies and the viral spread of white supremacy --

Where is the proof, if we believe it, for what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, -- and he was quoting others who had come before him:

“Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ arose and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated by his name. Yes, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’”

[source: In 1958 an article by Martin Luther King, Jr. was printed in “The Gospel Messenger” periodical. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/15/arc-of-universe/]

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

That, I believe, is a statement of faith... Do I doubt that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice? I do. The social ills, the violence of racialized capitalism and climate change, bring despair much closer to me than I like, much more often than I would prefer. [Listen to the rest of the talk here:http://www.lyndaleucc.org/sermons/doubt-faith-mystery/ ]

Get it now! LIBERATE -- the only meditation app by and for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.

Listen in to Mushim's guided meditation on microaggressions, and other meditations by teachers of color on a wide range of topics.

For Apple iPhones and Android phones. Brought to us by Julio Rivera. https://liberatemeditation.com/

[Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash]

Mushim in the inaugural class of Colorlines 20x20!

Introducing the Colorlines 20 x 20

In 1998, a group of dope individuals created Colorlines with the goal of popularizing narratives that center racial justice and the people of color who fight for it. Twenty years—and a slew of clones later—we’re still going strong, highlighting the advocacy and lived experiences of folks who are typically pushed to the margins.

Now, we announce the inaugural class of the Colorlines 20 x 20, a group of transformative leaders who—in the spirit of our mission—use a narrative shift strategy to reimagine what it means to advance racial justice in areas as varied as environmental justice, gender rights, labor, education and religion. This year’s honorees remind us that no matter how dark the tunnel gets, we can always create our own light.

6: “The Healer” Mushim Ikeda

Mindfulness asks that a person turn their awareness to the now, that their internal focus go to the sounds and stimuli of the moment. Activists are often thinking in the past (what wrongs have transpired) and the future (what actions can be taken to right these grievances). Mushim Ikeda believes that this organizing and activism must embrace the present tense if it is to truly bring about societal transformation. And so the Buddhist teacher instructs people of color, social justice activists and women in mindfulness and meditation.

Read the rest of the photo essay here and check out the other wonderful leaders in this inaugural class.

Facing Life's Challenges by Mushim for Lion's Roar

Mushim Patricia Ikeda, one of three teachers leading this year’s Lion’s Roar Retreat, “Facing Life’s Challenges,” on finding your way through tiny successes, step-by-step.

After my husband had suffered through a deep depression for over a year, he announced that he wanted a divorce and moved out. This was in 2008, when the U.S. economy was in recession, so I was immediately in crisis on every level, including financially. I was operating at a base survival level.

I went into treatment for situational depression, and my therapist, a tough older woman whose office was decorated with drawings of cowboy boots, placed me in a crisis support group that she led along with another equally fierce woman.

Read the full post here: https://www.lionsroar.com/its-all-workable/?mc_cid=cdd06470af&mc_eid=0fed23da72

ZEN TRAINING IN THE U.S.: TRADITION, MODERNITY, AND TRAUMA.

Asian Medicine Zone Moderator’s note: Many practitioners of Asian medicine and Asian-based health modalities are grappling with questions concerning the historical roots and cultural status of their disciplines today as never before. In response, Asian Medicine Zone is launching a new series of practitioner essays exploring how changing conceptions of “tradition” and “modernity” are impacting their practice and field in the 21st century (these are organized under the tag “tradition/modernity”). If you’re interested in contributing to this series, please email a short description of your proposed essay to the moderators. Here, we’re pleased to share our first offering, which artfully explores the encounter between traditional patriarchal authority and contemporary social justice commitments in the author’s life, practice, and community.

Having spent over 30 years of my adult life as a Buddhist practitioner in the U.S., I’m certain of only one thing, which is this: in the process of spiritual maturation, the path is not always clear and straightforward. In my personal experience as a practitioner, there’s been a lot of both/and – a particular experience can be abusive and traumatic, and it can lead to insight and breakthrough. Necessary spiritual surrender can mix potently with what Western psychology calls poor boundaries. And, it seems to me, some people will always be drawn to take paths of greater risk in varying degrees, up to so-called crazy wisdom. Others will develop by staying true to conventional mores with quiet patience.

In 1984, I was living as a renunciant under a vow of complete poverty in a Buddhist community in the United States.

Read the rest here: http://www.asianmedicinezone.com/global/zen-tradition-modernity-trauma/

Mushim made CNN.com -- because of STAR WARS!

Mushim is featured in a wonderful article on CNN.com discussing the spirituality of Star Wars.  Mushim Patricia Ikeda, a Buddhist teacher and social justice activist, said Yoda reminds her of the monks she studied with in Korea: wise, cryptic and a little impish. 

"I watched those movies and I thought, check, check, double-check," said Ikeda, the community coordinator at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California.

Read the rest of the article here.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/26/us/star-wars-religion/index.html

VMRC People of Color Silent Meditation Retreat

http://www.vallecitos.org/retreats/397/meditation-retreat-for-people-of-color/

Book now and get 15% off listed prices. Offer valid until Dec 31, 2017. 
People of Color Silent Meditation Retreat
July 1 - 7, 2018
Taught by East Bay Meditation Center teachers Mushim Patricia Ikeda, Noliwe Alexander and Melvin Escobar at Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center
(an amazingly beautiful ranch and national forest inholding at 9,000 feet in the mountains outside of Taos, New Mexico)

In many traditions, people journey into the wilderness for contemplation and purification. How often do we have the opportunity to connect to our deepest intentions and to experience spiritual renewal? Taking place at 9,000 feet in beautiful meadowland in New Mexico, the Vallecitos People of Color Retreat is designed to offer and support a practical introduction to insight meditation (vipassana). Meditation embodies the essence and wisdom of the teachings of the Buddha and has been the foundation of Buddhist teachings for 2,500 years. It is a simple and direct practice. Meditation is extraordinary in its simplicity, its lack of dogma and, above all, its results. This path to self-awareness can be successfully applied by anyone to their everyday lives. The ancient and profound teachings of interconnectedness and compassion are the foundations of spiritual awareness.

The retreat is based on the intensive training retreats that are traditionally the heart of Buddhist practice. The daily schedule, conducted in silence, is comprised of group sitting meditation periods alternating with walking meditation outdoors. There are group interviews with the teachers and a daily discourse from the teachings of the Buddha. In addition, there will be opportunities for optional group hikes and mindful movement to allow practitioners to fully experience Vallecitos’s beautiful natural setting, and to support physical joy and ease. Gourmet vegetarian meals add to the special nature of this retreat. To cultivate the meditation process, please note that complete silence is maintained at all times throughout the retreat, except during meditation practice interviews and the talks by the teachers, which may be followed by a communal conversation.

This retreat continues the ground-breaking tradition established at Vallecitos over the past two decades. People of color come to the mountains, the forest and the river not to conference, network, analyze or plan, but to practice one of the world’s oldest and wisest contemplative traditions. For some, the retreat may be the first extended period of meditation practice and practicing silence. No previous meditation experience is required to participate and the retreat is suitable for individuals at all levels of practice.

*This is a retreat for people of color. If you do not identify as a person of color, we are happy to help you find another VMRC retreat.

One Activist's Oath: First, Vow Not to Burn Out

From dailygood.org

Mushim Patricia Ikeda is  a teacher, an artist and an activist. She's a published poet. She's worked tirelessly for the upliftment of the marginalized, whether that's in education through inspiration or otherwise. She's received an honorary doctorate in sacred theology. She's been the subject of multiple award-winning films on the topic of poetry in spirit-based activism.   She’s  been a single mother.  She’s earned an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa.  She underwent monastic training in her spiritual lineage, Korean Zen Buddhism.  And for the past eleven years, she's  been one of the senior leaders of East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California.  The center has a focus on inclusion, social justice and gift economics

I have just gotten so much joy and happiness out of helping to build a East Bay Meditation Center as a board member and now I'm part time on staff.  I've always been a Buddhist teacher and a Dharma teacher with EBMC.  My enjoyment has been that it has for me been the dream that I've had for many years of being part of a Dharma based activist community that is trying to create, embody and manifest the values that we are also trying to teach,” she said.

Ikeda is also the  guiding teacher of a year-long program at the center called “Practice in Transformative Action” or PITA.  The program teaches secular mindfulness for agents of change and social justice activists.  While creating the program, she realized she did not want the practice to be  “another thing on their list of things to do”.  

Ikeda realized that the major danger for activists is burnout.  “We need tools to address and prevent burnout and we need to go to the root of it,” she said.  It was in her earlier years during activist work that she recognized an acceptance, if not cultivation, of a mindset that understood being an activist meant martyring oneself to whatever cause they chose to work for.

Burnout was expected.  Everyone was expected to work themselves into the ground and always be unable to make rent.” she said.

The underlying cause of burnout, Ikeda discovered, is greed.  Whether from a Buddhist standpoint or a social justice activate standpoint it can still be described as greed.

Greed itself can take many forms,” she said.  “We can be greedy from the Buddhist point of view for good things.  We can be greedy to help others, we can be greedy to get enlightened and to be of benefit to all things.”

It is this form of greed-more must be better- that entices activists and other agents of change to  ‘do more’.  The form of greed that motivates one to sign up for yet another cause without any idea of the impact of doing even more.  “The greed to do more and says I think I will sign up for another three causes and then suddenly you find yourself still up at three in the morning, angry at your family, unable to find time to get your car maintained which can cause problems and then your life starts to fall apart and you get get angrier and more irritable,” she said.

Ikeda says that the question for all of us on Planet Earth right now is “how much is enough?”  and asked out of the context of materialism.  “The question of enoughness- how much is enough for me to be happy, to be of help to the world, to meditate, to be watching netflix, that question of balance and sustainability and of well-being - that is to use a great Zen word, the “koan” of the work we are doing.”

Supporting that “koan” in a sense, led Ikeda to create what she calls ‘The Great Vow for Mindful Activists”.  It was published in Buddhadharma Magazine in the Fall of 2006 in an article called “I Vow Not to Burn Out”.

Aware of suffering and injustice, I, _________, am working to create a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world. I promise, for the benefit of all, to practice self-care, mindfulness, healing, and joy. I vow to not burn out.

Ikdea says that for people who are passionately committed to social justice there needs to be a strong intention not to burnout, and a dedication to asking the following questions, "How can you make your life sustainable—physically, emotionally, financially, intellectually, spiritually? Are you helping create communities rooted in values of sustainability, including environmental and cultural sustainability? Do you feel that you have enough time and space to take in thoughts and images and experiences of things that are joyful and nourishing? What are your resources when you feel isolated or powerless?

She said, “We can do our own mindfulness intervention and say, ‘ I have vowed to not burn out’.  To ask on a daily basis, ‘what's my personal plan for today to both achieve my goal that's helping to build a more just, loving and caring society and sustainable world, and not burn out all of that together?’ ”

Mindful Resistance Webcast: How To Resist without Burning Out

Mushim is a part of a webcast on Mindful Resistance on 9/21/17.
Watch the video recording here or on the media page. 

"Mindful Resistance: How to Resist without Burning Out"! 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plkxXxsQwF0&feature=youtu.be 
Parallax Press Webcast, 9/21/2017 

A Story for Buddhists in the ICE-raid Era

From lionsroar.com

Mushim Patricia Ikeda shares a small piece of Buddhist history that she’s never forgotten, and that she hopes, in this age of ICE raids and the repeal of DACA, we’ll always remember too.

Here’s a true story that, I think, all U.S. Buddhists should know.

Back in 2000, I was guest editor of the “Buddhists of Asian Descent in the USA” issue of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship’s journal, Turning Wheel. In it was an article titled “Internment Camp Buddhism: Memoirs of Rev. Koetsu Morita,” translated by Rev. Ryuji Tamiya and my cousin, Rev. Mary Jiko Oshima Nakade.

One of the stories in that article goes like this:

Rev. Morita, a Soto Zen priest from Japan, was arrested in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese. He was relocated to numerous concentration camps—it’s good to remember that these were concentration camps, not just “internment camps”—starting out in Sand Island, Oahu, Hawaii. In that camp, there were thirty Buddhist ministers of various Buddhist sects from all over the island of Oahu.

When Buddha’s Birthday came around on April 8, Rev. Morita recalled, the ministers wanted to celebrate the traditional Hana Matsuri. Like the other ministers, he had only the clothes he was arrested in, and they were filthy. He had only one pair of pants, so he couldn’t wash them; what would he wear in the meantime?  (Evidently, Rev. Morita wouldn’t get a change of clothing until his family was able to send him more pants, months after his arrest.) He had no belt, either, so he used a piece of rope from a tent on Sand Island.

In 1977, in his memoirs, Rev. Morita wrote,

But no minister had a robe with him except for Bishop Kubokawa [of the Jodo sect], who was asked to officiate because he had been arrested in his robes…. We chanted the Hannya Shingyo (Heart Sutra) and Bishop Kubokawa delivered a Dharma talk. He said, “…Your participation in those filthy clothes can be likened to the Buddha’s teaching of the lotus blooming in the mud. Let us hold on together, praying that peace arrives as soon as possible, and may we be guided by the Buddha’s teachings and life of peace.” To this day I can still hear the voice of that nearly eighty-year-old priest.

So the U.S. government arrested and put into concentration camps Japanese immigrants and U.S. citizens (the children of the immigrants) alike in World War II, including many Buddhists—and Buddhist priests were among the first to be arrested in Hawaii. They’d even arrested a priest in his robes!

As Buddhists in the U.S., I think that if we knew our own history better—that is, the history of Buddhism in the U.S.—we would understand that the ICE raids (which were going on in full force during the Obama-era) and the repeal of DACA have very, very much to do with our own dharma practice. And, because of that knowledge, we would resist—employing all of the determination and concentration we have developed through our various Buddhist practices.

And then there’s the equally valuable community-building skills that Buddhists in this country have carefully nurtured in order to provide safe and happy and welcoming places for ourselves, our families, and our dharma friends. When we foster and share these skills, we increase our resilience.

We’ll need our determination, concentration, and resilience. Because this trying era we’re in will end someday, but it’s not likely to get better very soon. We’ve got to be in this for the long haul.