As we move toward another winter season, I’m reminded that in the communities I love, there are two separate worlds unfolding. In one, people are looking forward to a season of connection where holiday gatherings, parties, and travel abound. In the other world, people are having difficult conversations about risk tolerance, taking stock of safety measures needed for travel or gatherings, or abstaining from these activities altogether. 

Over the last few years, I have witnessed the incredible dissonance between these two worlds within the Buddhist communities I practice and teach in. This spring, when the US ended the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, I saw practitioners who were thrilled that meditation centers were dropping mask mandates and couldn’t wait to get back to a “normal” retreat. I also spoke with, sat with, and cried with others who knew that for them, this change meant something close to exile from the dharma communities they cherished. Overwhelmingly, that second group of people were chronically ill, immunocompromised, or disabled.

I feel acutely aware of this in part because I currently live with a chronic, invisible illness that places me at greater risk of long-term suffering and disability were I to contract COVID. Retreat practice and sangha have always been a deep refuge for me, so I was heartbroken as meditation centers that had once been my spiritual home became increasingly risky to access. Even as rates of the virus surged, I have found it difficult, and at times quite unwelcome, to out myself as vulnerable and ask for accommodations. As a result, I have lost the unfettered access to once beloved communities, practice opportunities, and aspects of my livelihood.

For many in the US, the rationale for dropping protections, like masking and free access to testing, has been deceptively simple: today, only members of vulnerable groups or the elderly are likely to die from COVID. Take a moment and really read that carefully. Allow the unspoken part of the sentence to grow louder. Place yourself in the shoes of someone who is chronically ill, disabled, or elderly and is receiving the message from our government and institutions that their life is acceptable collateral damage to neighbors who are eager to get back to normal at all costs. Ableism like this is baked into every aspect of the culture, and our meditation centers are certainly not exempt from it.

It may be helpful to remember that COVID-19 is still among the top leading causes of death in the United States. This year, Long COVID will also induct millions of new people into the ranks of the sick and disabled. Depending on which study you review, Long COVID affects anywhere from 7.5 to 40 percent of people who contract the virus and has more than 200 possible symptoms. It can last for months or indefinitely, and there is no cure or standard effective treatment. Long COVID can negatively impact a person’s quality of life, leave them bedridden, unable to work to support themselves, and more. Unfortunately, as a culture, we seem eager to forget this reality. Our yearning to return to “normal” is incongruent with the fact that vulnerable people must continue to live, work, and practice in a world that often feels like it would rather pretend they don’t exist than adapt in a compassionate way. In the Buddhist community, how do we face this truth, rather than turn toward delusion?

Ableism like this is baked into every aspect of the culture, and our meditation centers are certainly not exempt from it.

This delusion is consistently fortified by the invisibility of sick and disabled people in public spaces. Whether these spaces are physically inaccessible, or a person feels too unwell or unsafe to join them, the end result is a disappearance from the public eye. I often think about this in relation to dharma communities throughout the country. Which sangha members are now absent from your local sitting group? Who are the longtime community pillars that have quietly absented themselves from our meditation centers? Did they just stop practicing, or do they no longer feel safe in the communities that used to be a refuge? 

I’m not alone in longing for a spiritual community that holds on to an ethos of care at a time when masking and other precautions are unpopular. Monica Magtoto, a movement teacher who supports many meditation retreats, shared her concerns about dharma centers dropping mask requirements in a recent conversation:

“As someone who has experienced the life-changing impact of retreat, knowing that that experience is now not an option, or is now a dangerous option, for so many people is disheartening to say the least. It’s a huge reminder that many dharma spaces are only created with the most privileged and able-bodied in mind. Are we living the precepts if we choose to exclude or do active harm to so many? Are we living the eightfold path?”

Today, meditation centers have a wide range of approaches to COVID, and while some protocols are inclusive, many reinforce the message that our sick, elderly, and disabled sangha members are acceptable collateral damage. For drop-in groups and daylong retreats, a vast majority of centers have eliminated previous precautions such as masking and onsite testing. Some communities offer suggested recommendations like vaccination, testing negative with an at-home test, or not attending when sick. Other centers have kept mitigations like air purifiers and CO₂ monitors, and a few even hold occasional outdoor events. For most residential retreats, precautions have typically dropped to a testing requirement on the first day of the retreat. A very small number of retreat centers do offer retreats with a focus on practice outdoors, and some retreat centers have brought back masking for specific retreats this fall as COVID cases see a seasonal increase.

One notable outlier, the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California, still has a wide range of COVID precautions in place, including masking, clear descriptions of the air filtration systems present in their space, and priority seating next to windows and air filters for the elderly and disabled. On their website, they share:

“When we commit to justice movement building and mindfulness, this means that we commit to self-care as collective care, and we also dedicate ourselves to supporting the health of our communities. This is not achieved through policing. It comes about through building relationships of trust that express themselves in our saying to one another, ‘I’ve got your back. Your health and your family’s health and the health of the people with whom you come in physical contact with are important to me.’”

While we may have seen public declarations like this in 2020 and 2021, such an explicit statement committing to collective care today is relatively uncommon. To those living with chronic illness and disability, however, such sentiments can offer tremendous refuge and allow us to better plan where we sit or go on retreat. This refuge is especially needed as meditation centers resume prepandemic levels of programming with fewer safety precautions. In the past year, I have watched the meditation centers I work with make sweeping changes to their COVID policies, often with little to no leadership or input opportunities for vulnerable groups. One colleague who works at a retreat center, and asked to remain anonymous, shared her thoughts about how dharma communities are showing up for the sick and disabled, and her own experience with Long COVID: 

“It feels hypocritical that we wouldn’t ask our sangha, who are dedicated to awakening and freedom from suffering, to put on a mask to alleviate someone else’s suffering. It feels deeply contrary to our mission. How is it that we are not open to being even slightly uncomfortable when it could mean someone else’s life? The stakes are too high and long-term effects are still not even fully known. When I share this view, people often respond, ‘Well, that’s because you have Long COVID.’ Well, yes… that’s precisely the point.”

This is not the first time a dharma community has faced this type of devaluation of sick people. In fact, it goes all the way back to the time of the Buddha, in the Kucchivikara-vatthu Sutta. In this sutta, a monk was incredibly ill with what was likely dysentery. He couldn’t care for himself and, due to his illness, also couldn’t do anything to support his fellow monks. Because of this, the monks stopped caring for him. As you might imagine, the Buddha had some things to say about this. He said to the monks:

“Monks, you have no mother, you have no father, who might tend to you. If you don’t tend to one another, who then will tend to you? Whoever would tend to me, should tend to the sick.” 

This is not far off from what we face today. Without a public safety net that demonstrates true care for us, if we don’t take care of one another, who will? The Buddha is clear that if we would care for him, then that grace should also be extended to others. This is at the heart of our dharma practice: not just to meditate and receive the teachings, but to truly live them. It’s said that the Buddha once shared with his attendant Ananda that sangha, with its admirable friendship and camaraderie, is the whole of the holy life. So many of us know this in our bones: the friendships we’ve made and the support we’ve both given and received within our dharma communities are jewels of immeasurable value. But how are we living this teaching today, if we cannot extend this sacred friendship to our sick and disabled sangha members? 

As we explore this question, perhaps even more questions will reveal themselves, opening up deeper teachings around sangha, sila (right conduct), and our own mortality. We may ask ourselves: What delusions are we clinging to, particularly in terms of how we devalue the sick, elderly, or disabled? Are we denying the inevitable reality that, in time, we too will become sick, disabled, and pass away? Are our decisions truly aligned with our commitment to nonharming? As we sit with these questions, it is likely we will also ask how we might do better. Fortunately, there is a simple place to begin: actively listening to those who are sick, immunocompromised, and disabled and taking their needs for inclusion and safety in our communities seriously.

The post Sangha in the Age of Long COVID appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The Buddha woke up sitting at the base of the Bodhi tree, his hand touching the earth as his witness and support. As he began to teach, he instructed his monastics to go find a place “in the wilderness” or “at the foot of a tree” to pursue their practice. The Vassa retreats of Theravada practitioners align with the rainy season, and the poems of the early Buddhist nuns and monks are resplendent in their relationship with and delight in the natural world. Wherever we look in the dharma, it’s clear that the teachings of the Buddha are innately connected to nature as a resource for our own awakening. But how can we bring this connection with the natural world into our practice today, especially when so many of us lack access to wild nature?

For many, our introduction to the path happened indoors at classes or sitting groups held in larger urban centers, divorced from the green spaces we tend to think of as nature. Our daily practice might include the cacophony of car alarms, noisy neighbors, garbage trucks, or ambulances. As the pandemic took root, countless people also discovered the dharma online, connecting to sanghas through their computers or phone screens. These dharma doors are beautiful and life-changing. I have a particular respect today for the online offerings that have become a respite for those who are sick, disabled, or immunocompromised and find themselves all but excluded from many in-person dharma gatherings. These spaces are essential to a vibrant and inclusive dharma. But as the format and locations of our practice evolves, how can we retain the connection to nature that is an essential part of Buddhist practice?

One possible answer lies in the Satipatthana Sutta. In his instructions for establishing mindfulness in this sutta, the Buddha offers a practice of meditation on the elements—earth, water, air, fire—that can be explored and discovered in our own bodies just as they can be known in a forest, ocean, or desert. Establishing a meditation practice where we become intimate with the elements offers us a way to connect to the presence of nature within ourselves, seeing over time that we are nature, not something separate from it. This can offer many benefits, from a deeper sense of embodiment and presence to an understanding of impermanence, interconnectedness, and how vital it is to care for our planet in the midst of climate change.  

An Elements Practice 

An elements practice can be done anywhere—whether you are in a densely populated city or camping in a national forest. To begin, find a comfortable posture sitting, standing, or lying down, where you can remain alert and access a felt sense of your own body. From here, begin to connect to the elements one by one. This can be a creative, imaginative practice and you are encouraged to make it your own.

Earth: Begin by connecting with the earth element. Just like an ancient mountain, the earth element in the body is that which is solid, heavy, hard, stable, structured, or grounded. Our bones, teeth, and nails are all easy places to access the earth element in the body. You may wish to begin by envisioning a tall mountain or a large, sturdy tree. Notice the qualities that it has—its strength, connection to the earth, its solidity. Then turn toward your body. Begin at your feet, and work your way up all the way to the top of your head, scanning for the ways you experience the earth element in your own body. Feel the weight of gravity in your limbs. Notice the structure and form that your bones provide. Run your tongue over your teeth and feel their hardness. The bones in our body are composed of many of the same minerals and elements found in the skull of a buffalo, the shell of a crab, the stone we find walking in the forest. The earth element within us isn’t separate from the earth element outside of us. 

Water: Beginning with the top of your head and working your way down to your feet, start to explore the water element present in the body. Water is fluid and wet, like the moisture in your eyes, the saliva in your mouth, or the liquid in your digestive organs. But it also creates a type of cohesion or wholeness in the body. Our skin, organs, and every cell is made up of a majority of water. Even the marrow of our bones holds water. Notice as you scan the body where you can connect with the water element in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. You might call to mind the fact that all the water in your body today at some point has been inside a cloud, an ocean, a blade of grass, or the belly of an animal. Allow yourself to feel the water element in the body and remember that while this water is with you today, it will continue to travel and move throughout the earth beyond your lifetime. This water that makes up 60 percent of your being is simply a visitor.

Fire: As we continue in the elements meditation, we begin to be able to access more and more subtlety and nuance. Arriving at the fire element, start at your feet and work your way up as you notice temperature—warm or cool—present in the body. The fire element is present in the heat of the sun, and is received by the earth, plants, and animals, including you. Our metabolic processes, our ability to regulate temperature, and the nourishment we take into our body through food is all touched by the fire element. As you scan the body, allow yourself to notice heat and cold. In our climate-controlled lives we don’t experience as much variation in temperature and almost automatically associate temperature changes with a sense of vulnerability or discomfort that needs to be fixed. You might notice, particularly if you are feeling too warm or too cold, that aversion or desire begins to flare up, along with stories, planning, and more. What would it be like to momentarily drop your preferences and simply feel the fluctuation of temperature in the body? This is one of the teachings of the fire element.

Air: As we reach the air element, we find ourselves returning to familiar territory for many meditators. Allowing yourself to scan the body from the top of your head down to your feet, you will notice old friends: air touching the nostrils and moving into the throat, the rise and fall of the chest and belly, the subtle movement of the whole body breathing. The air element is present whenever we meditate with the breath, but it is also present in the rustle of leaves in the wind, the displacement of air as a deer darts across a field, and the sound of birdsong coming from the robin in the yard. As we begin to sense the air element in our bodies, we can tend to the places where the breath is felt, as well as the places where we sense any kind of internal motion or movement. You may find that it is particularly supportive to envision the air element entering your body through each inhalation, and leaving through each exhalation. As you do this, can you tell where the air element outside of you ends and the air element inside of you begins? You may notice that when you pay attention, it is very hard to discern which part of this air belongs to you, and what belongs to the trees and grasses you share it with. 

Closing your practice: As you reach the end of this practice, simply allow yourself some time to rest in what you have experienced, taking in the sensations, insights, or emotions that may have come up. Remembering your own connection to nature, you may also want to dedicate the merits of your practice to the many plants, animals, and beings who need our care and protection. 

The elements practice is simply one entry point into deepening our relationship to nature and dharma. Whether you’re a seasoned hiker or your idea of getting outdoors is a patio table at the local cafe, this practice can be yours. Nature is everywhere, and you are a part of it. As you explore new ways to bring the natural world into your meditation, you may also want to do this with the support of a community, especially if nature-based practice feels new and unfamiliar to you. There are many incredible resources available if you would like to go deeper in your exploration of dharma and nature— from wilderness meditation retreats at places like Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center and Rocky Mountain EcoDharma, to groups offering both online and in-person practice like Awake in the Wild, One Earth Sangha, and many more.

The post A Practice for Connecting with the Four Elements That Can Be Done Anywhere appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Many of my earliest childhood memories take place in nature. Sitting at the banks of a creek in rapt silence, marveling at the tenacity of crocuses blooming in late winter, and singing, drumming, and dancing surrounded by forests and fields. In my relationship to the earth, I found wisdom, enchantment, and magic. Truly, nature was my first dharma teacher. While I did not have the language for this at the time, my fingers can now trace the shamanic undercurrent present in these earliest experiences of the sacred.

It is this undercurrent that has become a transformative part of my dharma practice and my life. And, it appears I’m not alone in this. Whether through books like Zenju Earthlyn Manuel’s The Shamanic Bones of Zen, the rising popularity of wilderness meditation retreats, or even the growth of psychedelic-assisted therapies, we are now waking up to many of the shamanic foundations of meditation, dharma, and healing. 

It was only after many years of Buddhist practice that I found myself reconnecting with the powerful experiences of my childhood and training as a shamanic counselor. I now use shamanic journey work and other practices for spiritual inquiry, personal growth, and healing. While at times this kind of practice contrasted with my Theravada Buddhist background, it has also brought me back to the magic and wonder of some of my most meaningful meditation retreats, and given me new tools to strengthen my own practice and support others in theirs. 

At the heart of things, Buddhism and shamanism both share some essential traits: they seek to explore consciousness and to bring forth a type of liberation, balance, or healing. The word “shaman” even has etymological ties to the spiritual seekers of the Buddha’s day. Stemming from the term “saman,” meaning “one who knows,” in the Tungusic language family of Eastern Siberia, this root word is strikingly similar to the Pali “samana” and the Sanskrit “sramana”—a contemplative, wandering ascetic or monastic, much like the Buddha himself. The concept of shamanism is not specific to one culture or lineage, but rather refers to earth-based spiritual practices that can be found in the history of nearly every indigenous culture, from Tibet to Ireland to Senegal, and beyond. Wherever humans have connected in a sacred way with the earth, it appears that some form of shamanic practice has sprung forth.

One of the most common practices found across numerous cultures is the shamanic journey, a meditative form typically accessed through a process of visualization, accompanied by repetitive, rhythmic drumming, with the drum’s beat serving as an auditory driver that entrains the practitioner into a trancelike state. The practitioner enters into this altered state of consciousness and connects with a guide—a source of inner wisdom that can take the form of a light, a deity like Kuan Yin, an animal, an aspect of the earth itself, or something else entirely—for the purpose of healing and spiritual inquiry. Through this connection, a person may have visionary experiences and come away with insights that could not be accessed by our everyday, thinking mind. In fact, recent findings from the University of Michigan’s Center for Consciousness Science indicate that shamanic journey work can lead to experiences of unity, ego dissolution, and insightfulness at levels similar to or greater than a range of psychedelics.

In this practice, wisdom and healing are revealed through imagery, messages from a guide, and the intuitive sense of the person embarking on the journey. I have worked with clients who experienced collapse or harm in their sangha to gain, through the journey, a sense of closure where none was realistically possible in ordinary life. In the altered state of the journey, they received wisdom and support from their guides, spoke their mind to a teacher they were no longer in contact with, and reclaimed their own power and a newfound sense of peace. In other situations, those I work with have been pointed toward deeper truths: a young woman struggling with trauma was offered the safety and mirroring from her guide that she never received as a child and was able to glimpse her inherent worthiness. A man grappling with a profoundly painful inner critic was able to see the critical voice as empty of self and ready to be released.

I have seen this kind of journey support clients in deeply understanding the inner workings of their own suffering, building a deeper sense of trust in themselves and their practice, and bringing peace to places where confusion, craving, or aversion previously ran rampant. It is an incredibly powerful contemplative and therapeutic form, and I love to share it with longtime meditators for this reason.

But long before I came to the shamanic journey, I fell in love with the dharma. In my early days of dharma practice, I voraciously attended as many silent retreats as I could. I found in the silence a profound joy and a sense of reconnection to the states of awe and mystery I experienced as a young child. In my first retreats, long-forgotten memories rushed back: bringing chocolates and other offerings to a nearby stream and leaving them for the unseen beings I imagined lived there, closing my eyes and sitting alone in my bedroom as a 6-year-old, watching thoughts appear like bubbles from the bottom of a deep lake. Retreat practice brought me back to those formative experiences of the sacred.

As modern practitioners of an ancient mystic tradition, how do we make space for its inherent magic in the 21st century?

Over the years, I listened as elder teachers shared their experiences in India with iconic figures like Dipa Ma, who was known to have precise recall of past lives, among many other miraculous abilities. Dipa Ma became a beacon for me—not just as a mystic, but also as a woman practitioner and a householder. But while my teachers’ voices were filled with awe, their stories often left me feeling as though that possibility of powerful, mystic experience was relegated to another era. Where was the space for encounters with the sacred within our hectic, technology-driven lives? 

While communities around me rode the cresting waves of secular mindfulness, this question lingered. Beginning around 2010, as smartphone meditation apps gained prominence and many Western convert Buddhist communities embraced the scientific study of mindfulness, I began to encounter a dharma that was increasingly touched by the influences of capitalism; productivity culture; the erasure of earth-based, Asian, and indigenous practices; and a patriarchal mistrust of the numinous. This modern dharma was in an accessible, secular language that even spiritual skeptics could trust, and research had shown over and over that these ancient practices were effective and evidence-based. But I wondered, how much of the mystic, intuitive side of practice were we sacrificing in exchange for scientific gravitas?

Throughout this time, I also encountered several teachers who could embrace and lead from this place of mysticism. One teacher, in a tone that seemed half reverent and half mischievous, smiled and exclaimed, “The Buddha was a shaman!” during her dharma talk on a two-month retreat. Even without shamanic training, something in those words rang with truth for me, and I held them close.

As I began to encounter the shamanic journey, this teacher’s words resonated even more, and it felt clear that the mystic aspect of my practice had found a welcoming home. Quickly, I saw that journey work and meditation complemented each other beautifully. Through the journey, I could more easily access many of the transcendent experiences and insights that occurred for me in periods of intensive silent retreat, and together, shamanic and Buddhist practices offered new avenues to explore my understanding of the dharma.

This shifted my relationship to practice. Instead of “just noting,” as so many teachers would encourage during more visceral or visionary experiences in meditation, I found that I could call on my journey practice for support on the cushion, listen to my own intuitive knowing, and be open to the experience itself as a teacher in a deeper way. With this approach, practice became more vibrant, more creative, and more connected to the natural world. The path began to have a greater sense of wholeness because no parts of myself or my experience were left out. 

Today, when I guide others in shamanic journey work, we often explore these territories of exclusion. What has been left out in our practice that longs to be integrated and included? What messages has our culture given us about spirituality, and how does that influence our experience of the sacred? Can we trust intuitive awareness, or are we gripped with doubt and skepticism? All of this is part of our practice and part of the path. 

Like most shamanic practitioners, the Buddha spent time in nature in a deep meditative state, connecting with seen and unseen aspects of reality, and bringing back wisdom that could ease suffering. While times have changed, and we may not be wandering ascetics or samanas anymore, this continues to be our task. As modern practitioners of an ancient mystic tradition, how do we make space for its inherent magic in the 21st century?

Perhaps it first begins with opening our minds and imaginations to new possibilities. So many Buddhist stories are shared through the more animistic or shamanic lenses of the Buddha’s time but today are seen only as metaphors. The devas appear at the birth of the Buddha, a group of monastics bring metta practice to a haunted forest, or the earth herself rises up on the eve of the Buddha’s awakening. In the shamanic context, these encounters might be seen as visionary messages emanating from an extraordinary field of wisdom and compassion, but in our modern culture they easily shrink down to a fiction. 

Of course, these stories are incredibly useful as simple allegories, but I wonder, has our history of mystic experience turned into myth because our modern imagination cannot contain the possibility of something more magical, more wild? Is it possible for us to reclaim mysticism as a vital foundation of our path? What would the historical Buddha advise—the one who sat at the foot of the Bodhi tree in a profoundly altered state of consciousness? I imagine he might smile gently and say, “Ehipassiko”—come see for yourself. 

The post How the Shamanic Journey Transformed My Meditation Practice appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

As we approached the cadaver lab, I was filled with trepidation. The smell hit me first: an acrid odor of formaldehyde permeating everything it touched. It was so overpowering that even our toughest-looking classmate, covered head-to-toe in tattoos, got woozy and had to step outside. We were at a local community college, and my colleagues in a yearlong Buddhist chaplaincy training and I were about to come face-to-face with two corpses.

We were there to gain a deeper understanding of what it would be like, as chaplains, to be with death and dying, and to hone our own practice of death contemplation.

The truth is, I’d been quietly dreading this moment. In the year prior, one of my housemates had passed away suddenly due to complications from an autoimmune condition, leaving our household shocked and grieving. My mind often flashed back to the call with the hospital, and the nurse blurting out, “I hope you’re sitting down,” before they delivered the incomprehensible news. I couldn’t seem to let go of the memory of seeing my friend’s body in the ER devoid of the life I had witnessed just hours before, or the nagging question, “Is there anything I could have done?” After all that, what would it be like now to intentionally be with the dead?

If you had told me as I walked into the cadaver lab that this would be one of the most beautiful and life-affirming experiences I would ever have, I would never have believed it. But that morning, so much changed. In spending the day contemplating the bodies of the dead, I discovered a sense of wonder and amazement—and a deeper connection to my own impermanent and precious life.

Facing the truth of our own death can bring us back to life.

While death contemplation, or maranasati, is a pillar of Buddhist practice and a core element of the first foundation of mindfulness, this practice had typically left me feeling unsettled. More often than not, death contemplation yielded a sense of impending loss and grief, rather than the acceptance of impermanence one might hope to find. But here at the lab it was different. 

As I looked around the room, I saw something I definitely hadn’t expected: There were posters and cards created for the cadavers by students, celebrating and thanking them. The walls were plastered with messages of love and gratitude. There was a warmth and reverence here that was so different from my own experiences of death. This was the first of many surprises. 

As our day at the lab unfolded, we were taken to the body of a woman. While a student showed us the corpse’s organs, tenderly pointing out the liver, kidneys, ovaries, and so on, a sense of awe overcame me. It was nothing short of profound—not only to see the intricate and beautiful inner workings of a human body for the first time, but also to be surrounded on all sides by people I knew and trusted, all teeming with life, while we stood in amazement over this body. What had once been animate, alive, full of something mysterious and vital, no longer was. The contrast between us and her was astonishing.

Questions of life and the mystery of death swirled through my mind. Where does consciousness go once it leaves the body? What is the animating force, and how can it leave a person so completely? What dies? There was something in the stark difference between my living body and her deceased one that jolted me into a distinct state of awareness. 

Instead of grief or fear, I was filled with joy and an immense sense of love. The life force that had once filled this woman’s body and connected her to family, friends, purpose, and meaning felt miraculous. And so did the force that lived within me. All of that life ultimately had left her body, and one day it would leave mine too. What happened after that remained a mystery, but suddenly, not a scary one. It felt boundless and beautiful.

For the first time, death contemplation filled me not with the dukkha (suffering) of clinging to a life I could not fundamentally control or protect, but with the sense that I had been given a great and precious gift. To experience the mystery of life inside a body, right here, right now.

In the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha provides careful instructions on a cemetery contemplation practice in order to establish mindfulness of the body. He guides the monks to whom he is speaking on how to observe corpses in various states of decay, while contemplating the existence and impermanence of their own bodies. For a monk (“he” in the quote below) to accomplish this, the Buddha explains:

Furthermore, as if he were to see a corpse cast away in a charnel ground—one day, two days, three days dead—bloated, livid, and festering, he applies it to this very body. ‘This body, too: Such is its nature, such is its future, such its unavoidable fate’…

My body, too, will die. Depending on our context and history, this can be a terrifying reflection or an inspiring one. For me, the traumatic nature of death—the sense of instability and lack of safety it evoked—had until this moment eclipsed the possibility of awe. 

But under the right conditions, facing the truth of our own death can bring us back to life. We begin to feel life coursing through us and marvel at just how wild and mysterious that state of being actually is. 

Feeling my own life force in such stark contrast to the bodies I sat with, I found that death contemplation could not actually be separated from aliveness contemplation. In turn, I regained a sense of wonder from which peace could finally emerge. It was as if death and life were two aspects of a teacher, suddenly ready to whisper secrets into my ear.

When we learn to listen to this teacher, we start to see things differently. Myself, my housemate, and all beings are actually part of some great mystery that include both life and death. Yes, we may still cling desperately to our life, health, and all the things we so dearly love—that’s human. But all the while, this aliveness hums on in the background, beautiful and finite within our bodies. It becomes clear as we contemplate death that we can no longer take life for granted. We begin to remember, as the poet Rumi writes:

“People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

The post What a Visit to a Cadaver Lab Taught Me About Death Contemplation appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

A number of years ago, I was the manager of a thriving Buddhist meditation center in a large urban center. The community was full of sincere, deeply committed practitioners, many of whom had turned to the dharma after experiencing trauma or addiction. I loved the sangha deeply and was committed to serving what had become a refuge for so many. However, it was also an extremely male-dominated sangha where many of us felt the weight of a subtle sexism that slowly eroded the fabric of a community we loved. 

When the meditation center first opened and we began to develop its programming, I remember advocating for a sitting group for practitioners who identify as women. It felt important to me given the dynamics of the sangha, but was dismissed—until Donald Trump was elected president. 

By that time, I had resigned as manager, but I joined a cohort of incredible people to co-create and lead this fledgling women’s sangha. Things changed quickly, and a year or two after the women’s sangha began, the meditation center it was born from collapsed following the sexual misconduct of its founding teacher. It was a heartbreaking time for countless people.

As the community dissolved, the women began to talk with each other in ways they hadn’t before. Deeper truths came out. I heard experience after experience of women feeling less valued, less seen, and less respected than their male counterparts in our sangha. The stories I heard weren’t about sex or harassment. They were the kind of small, subtle incidents that you feel afraid to name because people will tell you you’re overreacting, or you might get labeled as being “difficult” or “crazy.” The stories I heard reflected my own experiences—not one horrific event, but a slow accumulation of moments that illuminate the knowledge that you’re not as valued or respected as other people.

Years later, as a practitioner and counselor of Depth Hypnosis (a therapy that draws on Buddhism, hypnotherapy, and shamanic wisdom), I still occasionally work with members of that sangha as they grapple with that experience of shattered trust, as well as many others who have experienced harm in spiritual or religious communities. I’ve witnessed and known deeply the kind of spiritual harm that corrodes an entire community when women and other groups are not treated fully as peers. That is some of what’s on my mind now as Roe v. Wade is overturned. 

For all of us who are members of a sangha, we must acknowledge that more than half of the people in our community are currently faced with a deep and painful spiritual question:

How do we navigate our relationship to faith, to community, and to ourselves when we are living in a society that no longer deems us worthy of bodily autonomy?

This question will touch all of us, but particularly the most marginalized members of each sangha. For many, this will be far more than a spiritual and philosophical question. It will be a question about survival. How do we survive and practice the dharma in a world where crucial choices around health, our bodies, and our lives can no longer be exercised? How will we respond as the overturning of Roe v Wade disproportionately touches the lives of our sangha members who are women, but also women who are poor, disabled, queer, transgender, or from BIPOC communities? As practitioners, leaders, and as sanghas, these are questions we must answer.

Lama Rod Owens shared on Instagram earlier this week, “Just to be clear, as a spiritual teacher I will continue not abiding by any law, tradition, belief, or etiquette that jeopardizes access to basic resources supporting the safety, happiness, and health of myself and others. I will also continue helping others do the same.” 

As Buddhist practitioners committed to ethical conduct and to liberation from suffering, it is appropriate to question (and at times actively disobey) the rites and rituals that take us farther away from truth or that cause harm and suffering to others. Even if those rites and rituals are handed down to us from the Supreme Court.

So how do we address this in our sangha in the days and months that follow? Here are some possibilities for communities to explore:

1. Understand the impact on your community: It is important to understand that many people in your sangha are reeling right now. Their ability to safely choose whether or not to bring a child into this world, whether they can seek legitimate medical care for an ectopic pregnancy or other deadly condition, or address pregnancy after incest or rape has been deeply jeopardized. This has medical, psychological, financial, legal, and spiritual implications for everyone involved. This will be a life and death issue for some. 

2. Honor the emotion, lack of safety, and trauma that arises: It is also important to know that the fear, grief, and anger your sangha members feel today is connected to all the places where their bodily autonomy and sense of value or belonging in society has been violated in the past. This ruling may leave members of your sangha reliving the times they have been harassed, assaulted, or made to feel small and powerless. They carry the weight of their own trauma, and perhaps also the trauma of their mothers, grandmothers, and beyond, as a sort of epigenetic shadow. It is our task now to do everything we can to ensure their safety, respect, and wellbeing. I mean this directly around access to safe and legal abortion, but also relating to lifting up their place and belonging in the sangha. 

3. Uplift the voices and stories that need to be heard: As we move forward, people in your sangha may need to share their stories—of abortion access, of childbearing, of bodily autonomy, and of the many ways that patriarchy has colored their lives. They will need to see these stories reflected and honored by the voices of their teachers. They may need to come together to make meaning, to deeply grieve, and to express their fear and anger. This is part of the immense healing capacity of being in a sangha—if we choose to make it available.

4. Take action: Your community may feel called to organize and find ways to advocate for change and this may be an impactful way for your sangha to explore, or continue to explore socially engaged dharma. Members of your local community (or people in other states) may also need practical help and support—money, travel assistance, mental healthcare, childcare, and more. This is something that your community can actively organize around.

A final note: It is important to remember as we grapple with the spiritual and practical issues of bodily autonomy, safety, and belonging, that we still have a choice. We have the choice to be there for each other. To acknowledge that this issue impacts all of us, whether we can become pregnant or not. To respond with compassionate action. Making this choice is how spiritual survival can occur, and how we can live deeply into the truth of our interconnectedness with one another.

♦

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The post How Can Sanghas Respond to the Overturning of Roe v Wade?  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.