Hawaii’s first Japanese immigrants came to Kauai in the late 19th century to labor in the sugarcane fields. In a new environment and under harsh conditions, they found ways to keep alive their traditions and cultural life. In the Lawai Valley, in a place long considered sacred by Native Hawaiians, they created a most extraordinary example of this.

Beginning in 1904, Japanese workers built along a high, steep hillside a miniature version of the 750-mile Shikoku Pilgrimage, associated with the Buddhist saint Kukai (774–835), honorifically known as Kobo Daishi. The Shikoku Pilgrimage comprises 88 temples, and its course symbolizes the journey to complete enlightenment. The path snaking up the Lawai hillside has 88 small shrines, stone images—often hybrid, sometimes playful—of buddhas and bodhisattvas. One can traverse the path in as little as half an hour, but one might well feel drawn to take time to stop along the way to admire the shrines and perhaps offer a bow or quick chant as well.

Over the years, as workers moved away, the site fell into disrepair. But beginning in 1991, under the leadership of a diminutive dynamo named Lynn Muramoto, and with the work of hundreds of volunteers, the Lawai International Center has refurbished the site and provided it with a renewed vision as a place of contemplation and healing open to all.

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Although E. M. Forster could hardly have intended that the epigraph to his novel Howards End—“Only connect”—serve as a two-word distillation of the Buddha’s teachings, it certainly is a good, and timely, one. To connect across the differences that divide us; to connect by building bonds of affection, understanding, and support; to connect in the recognition that we and all things are inextricably, well, connected—in our age of accelerated travel and instant communication, doesn’t this simple phrase offer us a promising touchstone for Buddhist practice? Is not connection with others one of the surest ways to loosen the bonds of self-concern and to find one’s best way to act in the world? It is, as well, a wonderfully economical description of the basis, the means, and the fruit of spiritual life. Our differences do indeed matter, but they don’t matter as much as this: Only connect and, in Forster’s words, “Live in fragments no longer.”

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These two statements, contradictory though they are, both express a deep-seated aspect of spiritual life. Whether or not we so recognize them, these inner tendencies shape and guide and live themselves out through our spiritual pursuits. We feel their insistent pull, even as they foil our attempts to pin them down or define them.

I’ve put the statements together in order to set their meanings apart. The viewpoints they express cannot be separated, but they can be distinguished. On the one hand, we long to find richness, meaning, depth, and beauty in the particulars of life. That is, we seek that resonance with the world that the religious historian Mircea Eliade called the “discovery of the sacred.” On the other hand, we are inwardly impelled to be free from those very particulars and our entanglement with them. That is, we seek the transcendence that Buddhists call liberation. These two movements of the inner life—the one toward some manner of sanctification of the world, the other toward a salvation from it—constitute a psychic polarity that appears in our felt experience sometimes as conflict, sometimes as congruence, and sometimes as complementarity. But deal with them as we will, deal with them we must. The claims they exert upon us remain irresistible.

No single formulation of this polarity does it full justice, and this includes the one given above. It is a subtle matter, one not of clearly delineated categories but of associations held loosely together, more themes than topics. But with each formulation, partial though it is, some light is shed upon the nature of this apparent dilemma. It has been spoken of anthropologically as the contrast between the cosmopolitan religious concern with universal principles and the localized concerns of specific groups, which focus on the particulars of place, custom, history, and the group’s relationship to the spiritual world. Philosophically, the issue might be framed by the twin principles of eros and logos: the first governed by the impulse to find in life the form of beauty; the second, to discern the design of truth. Theologically, we might speak of the contrast between transcendence and immanence. But this sort of analytical approach to the matter can quickly get too abstract. The living quality of the polarity is elusive and is easily lost.

Years ago, I helped edit an issue of the vipassana community’s journal Inquiring Mind. At our first staff meeting, as we brainstormed ideas for the issue’s theme, the publication’s co-editor, Barbara Gates, tossed out the observation that few of the meditators she knew were practicing to achieve the goal with which practitioners are traditionally presented, namely, liberation from suffering on the endless cycle of birth and death. For many, she suggested, meditation was something that enriched experience: a source of clarity and release, allowing increased freedom while engaged in daily life. We chewed on this over the next several days. Her remark seemed to point to something of significance for Buddhism’s transmission to the West. For many, the inspiration, direction, and fruit of practice are experienced quite differently from the way these things have always been expressed in the mainstream monastic traditions. Further, this seemed true regardless of one’s degree of commitment. The differences were as likely to be felt by an old-timer as by a beginning student. We soon realized that we had found our theme, which we termed “liberation and the sacred.”

The discrepancy between the traditional goal of Buddhist life and practice and the lived concerns of many, if not most, meditation practitioners remains unresolved, as many have observed, and I think that’s to a great extent a good thing. Still, what are we to make of this? Is it an indicator of the need for cultural adaptation, or is it deluded folly? Are we witnessing a process of translating the dharma to address a distinctively Western ethos or, alternatively, the watering down of the Buddha’s message? Is this a distinctly Western phenomenon or does the matter have more to do with how these traditions have been presented in the world’s multiple modernities, whether in Asia or in the cultural West? In sum, what can the situation tell us about ourselves and about the traditions in which we practice?

Such questions circle around and point toward what are fundamentally religious questions, and such questions, I would say, are not meant to be answerable in any final sense. They are themes calling to be refined through reflection rather than problems asking for closure. One is enjoined to approach them with an attitude of active receptiveness, akin to how one engages with a work of art. The meaning of, say, a great novel cannot be cleanly separated from the social context and the individual experiences of its readers. It is generous in how it provides what the literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin saw as a characteristic of fiction: “a zone of maximal contact with the present in all its openendedness.” The novel’s meaning can’t be conclusively pinned down because the world it opens to us can’t be pinned down. In an analogous manner, the productive themes one encounters in spiritual life are dynamic, not static, having as they do core concerns rooted in life as it is lived. Individually and collectively we return to them again and again, each resolution eventually dissolving again into a question, and the process, when allowed to do its work, deepens with each turning.

Throughout its history, Buddhism has been a missionary religion transmitted largely through its texts and institutions. As with other of the world’s missionary faiths, Buddhism has leaned on cosmopolitan claims to universalism, and these have been essential to its migration across the cultures of Asia. But in its journeys, the buddhadharma has coexisted with and rooted itself within the customs and spirituality native to its host cultures. Buddhism has mingled freely with established beliefs and assumptions, folk narratives and symbols, and the shared practices and rituals of social life. It is, in many ways, all the richer for this.

As well as incorporating aspects of its host culture, Buddhism, as it is lived out, has also allowed for what scholars call “multiple religious belongings.” This is especially pronounced among the laity, who are less bound by institutional demands. One form this might take is a kind of religious division of labor, such as has evolved in Japan. There, for example, a household might celebrate a marriage in a Shinto ceremony while marking a death with a Buddhist one. The animism of Shinto lends itself to the celebration of earthly abundance; Buddhism, with its dour vision of worldly suffering, is the religion of choice for those occasions that are more, well, funereal.

While it might appear that the challenges of adapting Buddhism to a new cultural and historical context are unique to our moment, the process is as old as Buddhism itself.

For new Buddhists in the West, much of the tradition’s appeal stems from its universal message of liberation, which addresses our widespread sense of displacement by offering a spiritual home that is everywhere and yet nowhere in particular. Our modern Western sensibility can’t fully relate to or comprehend many elements that are rooted in the particulars of Asian cultures. This is both reasonable and inevitable. But in the process we have, I think, uprooted the dharma from its relationship to an embedded sensibility. And because we feel this, we seek out ways to bring the dharma to bear in our relationships, families, workplaces, and the natural world. This is, I would say, a connecting thread running through the various “Buddhism and . . .” workshops, writings, and activities one can often see on offer. “Buddhism and the Arts,” “Buddhism and Relationships,” “Buddhism and Ecology,” “Buddhism and Psychotherapy,” and so forth are ways to bring more of life into what the religious historian Karen Armstrong calls “the ambit of the sacred” and to bring to Buddhism a kind of “maximal contact” with the compelling concerns of the everyday world.

While it might appear that the challenges of adapting Buddhism to a new cultural and historical context are unique to our moment, the process is as old as Buddhism itself. It is the job of Buddhism, as it is for any religion, to address the most fundamental concerns of its adherents, and in doing this, we who practice abide in the tension between fidelity and innovation. There is great creativity to be mined in just that spot.   

In seeking both freedom from and resonance with the world, we are left straddling the horns of an age-old dilemma. One could, of course, subject this claim to a Buddhist analysis that would find it lacking. One might, for example, say that the dilemma posed here is a fallacy, because its categories are without ultimate basis. Or one could argue that the sacred is best understood precisely as that which leads to freedom. Or one might say that the apparent polarity can be unraveled to reveal a deeper unity. Sure. But, still, the immediacy and fruitfulness of the issue resists such premature closure. It is a lesson of Buddhist history that great creativity can be unleashed when contrary perspectives are allowed to work on each other. Much of Buddhism’s vitality has come precisely through its engagement with its own contradictions. Abiding in what is dynamic and without resolution can itself be a generative spiritual process. For now, rather than sidestepping or transcending the dilemma, I see much promise in taking the bull by the horns.

♦

An earlier version of this essay appeared in the Fall 1997 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 14, No. 1). Text © Andrew Cooper & Inquiring Mind, 1997–2020

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The following is a piece that was written by Tricycle‘s current features editor Andrew Cooper in 1993. It was published by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship in that organization’s quarterly magazine, Turning Wheel.

In the years since, some things have changed a lot, some not at all. One thing that has perhaps changed is the more widespread recognition of the racism afflicting American society, demonstrated notably by the diversity of the current protests. But, as recent events show, something that has persisted is the systemic nature of racism, which is often ignored or minimized by those least affected by it.

We’re republishing this article because it calls attention to what the author refers to as the “unconscious ideology” of race in the dominant culture, which still holds back our progress today, as the deaths of George Floyd and so many others make indisputable. 

***

This morning, someone on the radio said that today is the second anniversary of the beating of Rodney King. The news got me thinking about that event and those that followed, and as I sipped tea and stared at the paper, my mind wandered through its recollections. I found myself coming back over and over again to a single incident that, for all its relative insignificance, gave me a way into one corner of the meaning of what happened in L.A.

Several days after the verdict was announced, after the flames had mostly died down, I watched Ted Koppel interviewing some young black men, members of gangs in South Central. Koppel’s questions were focusing on the day-to-day violence of their neighborhoods, referring particularly to drive-by shootings, a symbol to many of the cruel randomness of gang violence. One of the men eventually interrupted Koppel in mid-sentence, asking, “What about George Bush’s fly-by shooting in Iraq?” Koppel deftly sidestepped the issue.

In The Second Sin, the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz observes that, in the human realm, the law of survival is not kill or be killed; it is define or be defined. The language, assumptions, emotions, and values that define the starting point of a discussion shape whatever course it may take. The news media worked hard to frame the unrest in L.A. as criminal activities with little, if any, political content. The explosion of rage was portrayed as a riot of looters and gang members, not a civil uprising, a rebellion of a disenfranchised citizenry. The question the man put to Ted Koppel cut to the heart of the matter in a way that endless professional analysis did not, because it spoke from a reality in which violence in the streets and violence by the state cannot be cleanly separated. For a moment, the media’s carefully constructed frame broke down. But it was just a moment. The camera, after all, belongs to ABC.

 The question about fly-by shootings was also a question about power and the representation of reality, about the power to define the framework in which people make sense of their lives. Oppressive ideologies like racism grow out of that place where power and perception intersect. They extend themselves not only through articulated doctrine but also through unconscious processes, codes and images, and through conceptual categories that are so deeply ingrained in convention that they appear self-evident and natural. Until the framework is unpacked and restructured, one is stuck within it. That’s what that gang member was doing—unpacking and restructuring.

The idea of race is a good example of an ideological category. As Ashley Montagu argued years ago in Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, the very way we understand race—as a biological designation—is a “modern discovery,” a historical construct that developed in the 18th century as a way of justifying the slave trade. The notion of race comes to us laden with the history of white supremacy. When we take up the term, accepting its validity and forgetful of its historical production, that history exerts its power to shape our very perceptions. The starting point is already poisoned. We might have to use the term, but we don’t have to take it for granted.

The understanding that conceptual designations shape perception is, of course, a familiar one to students of Buddhism. But Buddhist analysis tends to focus on the ultimate emptiness of all concepts, and remains naïve about the historical forces that lead to the production of particular ones. But to forget this historical dimension is to be shaped by it.

 I wonder what conditions make it possible for those Buddhist communities that are overwhelmingly white and middle class—like the ones I’ve been and am a part of—to not take more seriously the issues of race and racism. The whiteness of a community may or may not be an indicator of racism, but the denial that that whiteness is significant is a sure sign of it. It’s a matter of the starting point. The question is not whether such and such a community is racist. Given that racism is a pervasive social and ideological force in the West, the question is how does it operate in our personal and collective lives. How does the life of a particular community reflect and reproduce the broader social pattern? Recognizing that no one is immune, we are less likely to step into the cycle of blame and defensiveness that undermines serious discussion.

Like any deeply held delusion, racism abides in what is unsaid as much as in what is said, in what is unthought as well as what is thought. It is both inside and outside the realm of conscious intent. It chooses us as much as we choose it. But choices are constant, inevitable, and they matter. That’s a starting point.

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I am always puzzled when I hear someone say that they have no regrets in life. I know what they mean, of course, but it just doesn’t add up for me. It’s like I’m reading a book over their shoulder: I understand the words, but only at a blurry remove. I myself am filled with regrets, big and trivial, innumerable and ever growing. My tendency toward regret is so thoroughgoing that without it, I don’t think I’d be myself. Which might not be so bad. Perhaps it’s one more thing to regret.

Where to begin? More to the point, why begin? One’s regrets can reveal a good deal about who one is, but as with so much confessional writing, this can get terribly self-indulgent terribly fast. Like talking about one’s dreams, writing about one’s inner life is seldom as interesting to others as it is to oneself. There is, though, one regret—a Buddhism-related one—that crops up so often for me that I think it might be worth talking about here. Namely, I really wish I were better at Buddhism. I’ve been at it since the early 1970s, my entire adult life, and I am not being modest when I say that my accomplishments have been modest indeed. The results of my efforts have been kind of disappointing. I thought I’d be a lot more enlightened by now.

When I read about the efforts of Olympian meditators, I feel regret that I have not developed that kind of strength of practice. Or when I read accounts by others of their life-changing experiences, I regret that I am, by comparison, rather unremarkable. This might sound like it should be pretty discouraging, but, strangely, it isn’t. At least not usually. I’ve found a home in Buddhism, off the beaten path of most of those I long ago set out with, in the Pure Land tradition, especially in the other-power teachings of Shinran. Here, the faltering nature of my attempts at progress somehow get turned upside down and become a nutrient of practice.

Shinran lived during the the Kamakura Period, which appears, in retrospect, to have been a time of great creativity in Japanese Buddhism. This was the time of such luminaries as Dogen, Esai, Nichiren, and Shinran’s own teacher, Honen. At the time, however, it was widely believed to be the onset of the age of decline of the buddhadharma, or mappo, the degenerate age predicted in scripture. This was for Honen, Shinran, and Nichiren a matter of immense importance; the gravity of the hardships and challenges of life in the time of mappo was at the core of their religious concerns and shaped their teachings.

As I do with most religious ideas, I take the notion of mappo more poetically than literally. I think people have most often regarded their own period as particularly bleak and looked to the past or future for a vision of a better world. How could we not? Even if golden ages of the past and utopias of the future are fantasies, they are fantasies that—despite their grave dangers—can serve a much-needed purpose. They give hope, but more than that, they give contour to the imaginings of our better angels and thus provide guidance for navigating the vicissitudes of the present. Like reruns of Law and Order, mappo is always on somewhere.

Based on his reading of scripture and his own experience as an ardent practitioner, Honen believed that in the degenerate age, few if any could reap the full benefits of Buddhist practice through self-reliant effort. Instead, he preached a way of faith in the saving power, the Buddha activity, of Amida, the Buddha of Infinite Life and Light. The Buddhist scholar Jacqueline Stone, in a 2006 Tricycle interview, spoke of Honen’s deep concern with how persons of limited capacity could fruitfully follow the Buddhist teachings. Honen found resolution in scriptural and commentarial sources that taught that by chanting the name of Amida Buddha, or the nembutsu, one could be assured of rebirth in Amida’s Pure Land and from there soon attain complete enlightenment. As Professor Stone explained:

For Honen, however, chanting the nembutsu [“Namu Amida Butsu”] was uniquely suited to the degenerate age, since everyone could do it. He said, if birth in the Pure Land depended on accumulating merit by sponsoring temples, then wealthy people could be born there, but poor people could not. But the poor are numerous and the wealthy are few. If reaching the Pure Land depended on mastering Buddhist doctrine, then the educated could be born there, but the uneducated could not. But the uneducated are many and the educated are few. If it depended on keeping the precepts, then the virtuous could be born there but the non-virtuous could not, and so forth. Since the scriptures tell us that Amida Buddha vowed to lead to his Pure Land all who put their faith in him, there must be a single practice—namely, the nembutsu—that is available to everyone.

Faith in Buddha might not be as onerous as converts like me frequently make it out to be. Let’s suppose you have an intuition of a spiritual dimension or pattern to things, or maybe your world is enlarged by a feeling of close connection to others. Maybe you have a perception that the life you are living is but a small part of the life you are given, or you have the discomfiting sense that in your calculated pursuits you are, as the saying goes, like someone standing on a whale fishing for minnows. It may be a sizable vision or it may be more of a peep. It probably doesn’t much matter. What matters is how you are able to appreciate this sensibility and to take it to heart—that is, to have faith in it. Shinran gave particular emphasis to this, teaching that more important than frequent repetition was the spirit of true entrusting, or shinjin, that one brings to nembutsu, regardless of how often it is spoken. For the entrusting heart, you don’t work toward Buddha; you make yourself available to let Buddha work toward you.

Being seized by the world—by a passage of literature, a breath of song, a conversation with a friend, or the sun’s appearance on an overcast day—these are Buddha remembering Buddha.

When I moved to the the Pacific Northwest, someone told me something that was very helpful for brightening the long, dark, rainy winters. Even during stretches when it might rain for weeks on end, there are, almost every day, small snatches of sunlight. Over time, one comes to love them all the more for their fragile brevity. I find that the spirituality of Pure Land is akin to that. It breaks through, surprisingly, through no effort of one’s own, unannounced, gently, and in the small moments of life. Being seized by the world—by a passage of literature, a breath of song, a conversation with a friend, or the sun’s appearance on an overcast day—these are Buddha remembering Buddha. And if you feel moved by gratitude to put that into words, you might happen to say “Namu Amida Butsu.”

In J. D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, the titular Zooey Glass expresses a contemporary sense of life in mappo when he says to his sister Franny, “Yes, I have an ulcer, for Chrissake. This is Kaliyuga, buddy, the Iron Age. Anybody over sixteen without an ulcer’s a goddam spy.” Zooey is using terms from Hindu cosmology, but the resonance with Buddhism’s notion of the degenerate age couldn’t be clearer or more apt. Figuratively speaking, I myself am by no means wanting of ulcers of my own. I have chronically poor health, and I am given to long bouts of severe depression. I am, by Zooey’s lights, not a spy, but if given the chance, I think I’d be tempted to trade places with one. Plus I am generously endowed with all manner of garden-variety impediments to Buddhist aspiration. Despite being lazy, ill-tempered, envious, and more, I somehow still manage to be terribly vain. In fact, I sometimes think that if my capacities and accomplishments were more to my liking, my vanity would render me completely insufferable. And I like to think that insufferableness is at least one hurdle I’ve managed to clear. At least some of the time. I hope.

Fortunately, at least for me, a heroic model of spiritual life need not be the only one. In Middlemarch, the 19th-century author George Eliot sheds light on another. The novel’s main character, Dorothea Brooke, is filled with altruistic aspiration as a young woman. But the world is not kind to her lofty ambitions, and her wishes for her life are thwarted and unfulfilled. In time, though, she finds her way to a life rich in meaning that is, while smaller in scale than what she had earlier aimed for, well suited to the reality of who she is and where she finds herself. I see in her someone who is directed by something that, while inwardly felt, is not her own to fully grasp, let alone control. It speaks to me of Shinran’s true entrusting. It works despite her striving, not because of it. And Eliot’s last word on Dorothea’s life affirms a movement of the heart that can work, without ostentation, in lives of modest attainment.

For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

I find in this passage an odd kind of solace, a solace born of hopes and goals frustrated. And here’s the thing: Even the greatest of lives will eventually become hidden, and the tombs in which those living them come to rest will in time go unvisited. So it might not be so bad if one finds that the severe constancy and constraint of one’s own limits force the issue. It allows the most foolhardy to get a jump on things.

I know that some of my Buddhist friends may not buy what I’m trying to get at here. They may think I’m making excuses for my own lack of discipline or the meagerness of my experience, or that I’m just plain misguided. Who knows? Maybe I am just kidding myself. But maybe that is not the important thing. Maybe it’s more important to not kid others, like you for instance. On either score, I can try only so much, and then I must leave it to the power of something other. We human sentient beings have a way of not measuring up to the standards we hold, though, admittedly and to my personal regret, some of us are especially reliable and adept at such failing. This being so, it’s a lucky thing we have buddhas, always ready to lend a hand.

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There is obviously a lot about Facebook that merits serious criticism. And there seems to be more each day. Still, sometimes it can be pretty terrific.

Several years ago, while I was looking through my feed of friends’ postings, I came upon a comment by one Yoshi Maezumi. I was immediately struck by the commenter’s personable sense of humor. But what really got my attention was her name. Although I didn’t know her, I recognized her name as that of the youngest child of the founder of the Zen Center of Los Angeles, my teacher Taizan Maezumi Roshi.

Curious about how this daughter of Maezumi Roshi’s had grown into adulthood (she was born in 1983 and was just a toddler when I moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco), I went to her Facebook page. I have an impression of one of her posts in particular, though I suspect it may have become inexact with time. In any event, there was a photo of Yoshi standing waist-deep in swampy water, surrounded by dense foliage. She wore goggles and, I believe, a hard hat, and she held before her some kind of scientific instrument, which she was examining intently. Above the photo, she had written something like this: “Doing research on pre-Columbian fire management practices in the Amazon Basin! I love being a paleoecologist!” The pure enthusiasm—those exclamation marks!—seemed to me to stand in an odd and charming contrast to the seriousness of the work she was engaged in.

And then there was this: What in the world is paleoecology?

I wanted to know more. Yoshi and I became Facebook friends, and periodically I would see a post describing her travels, her research, and her adventures, scientific and otherwise. It was always a kick. And I found out what paleoecology is. As the word itself indicates, paleoecology is the study of past ecosystems. When I asked what that actually entails, Yoshi wrote to me: “One of the ways we can reconstruct ancient ecosystems is from lake sediments. I look at pollen grains and charcoal particles from lakes to reconstruct changes in past fire and vegetation in the Amazon.” Yoshi is particularly interested in lessons from pre-Columbian land use and fire management that may have potential management implications for more sustainable land use practices in the Amazonian forests of today.

Related: Healing Ecology

As it happens, today, as I write this, California is in the midst of the worst wildfires in the state’s history. Last year, grass fires swept through the prairies of the American Midwest. And Brazil just elected a president who believes in deregulating logging and agriculture in the Amazon Basin, the very “lungs” of our planet. Paleoecology, though it might sound recondite, may well prove to be of inestimable help to us in finding our way through the environmental perils of our times.

It is often the case that children of a parent thoroughly devoted to a life project—artistic, scientific, religious, political, or whatever kind—can have a hard time of it. And Yoshi’s father had dedicated himself fully to the work of transmitting Zen Buddhism to the West. What’s more, she grew up in a community built around sharing in that work. It can be hard for a child to find her way out from the shadow cast by a parent recognized for his or her dedication and accomplishment. But Yoshi Maezumi seems to have succeeded at that, and to have done so beautifully. She has found, through her own dedication and accomplishment, her own road.

How does the study of paleoecology shed light on widely shared contemporary ecological concerns? The study of paleoecology provides a longterm understanding of how ecosystems respond to changes in past climate and human disturbance. We gain vital insights into how modern ecosystems may respond to modern global issues, including climate change, increased wildfire activity, and increasing anthropogenic pressures—from deforestation and industrial scale farming, for example. Our research shows that thousands of years of indigenous land and fire management have played a crucial role in shaping modern forest drought susceptibility and flammability in the Amazon. This has very important implications for modern fire management and conservation efforts that have historically neglected the role of pre-Columbians in shaping the modern landscape.

One thing that really comes across in your online postings is your love for your work. Would you tell us something about the nature and source of that love? My sister often tells a story about when I was about 5 years old and she found me outside in the garden, counting ants. Thirty years later, most days you can find me behind a microscope counting pollen grains and charcoal particles. I guess it is safe to say that my love of the natural world started at a very young age and has followed me throughout my career.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Albert Einstein: “The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing.” This idea has always resonated with me, despite the fact that I did not always want to be a scientist. One of my first loves as a child (and it continues today) is dance. However, after a bad car accident that ended my professional dancing aspirations, followed by a bit of persuading from my mom, I decided to go to college to be an archaeologist. After all, what’s not to love about Indiana Jones and traveling to far-off exotic places to find lost civilizations and hidden treasure troves? Although I found the romanticized Hollywood version of archaeology to be far from accurate, and I have yet to find the Holy Grail, Pandora’s box, or a treasure chest full of gold, this early trajectory in archaeology has sent me on a journey that has been exciting, adventurous, and immensely rewarding.

While working toward a master’s degree, I had the opportunity to conduct fieldwork in Guatemala, where I became increasingly interested in past human impact on the environment. This led me to pursue a PhD in physical geography, in which I particularly focused on paleoecology of the Bolivian Amazon. During a three-year postdoc at the University of Exeter, I led several lake coring expeditions that sampled water and sediment in the Brazilian and Bolivian Amazon. In some of the more remote regions, getting to our field sites involved chartering small planes, riding motor-cycles through the jungle, wading chest-deep through murky swamp water that was home to anacondas and crocodiles, and fishing piranha out of the river for our dinner. One moment a few years back, while we stopped on the trail to our field site, the sunlight was coming through the rainforest canopy, reflecting off the wings of blue morpho butterflies, and I thought, “It really doesn’t get any cooler than this.” In addition to being in the coolest field office in the world, I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with a brilliant and talented team of people. We have had the privilege of working with many of the local villagers, who act as guides and experts in the landscape’s flora and fauna. We often have village meetings to explain our research, and we get to discuss the history through archaeological and paleoecological lenses. As I have progressed through my career, I have found that the more I learn, the more questions I have. And the questions keep getting more interesting and interconnected.

Does your work as a scientist inform your outlook in areas of life that generally lie outside the domain of natural science: matters of meaning, values, and purpose—in other words, questions about how best to live? One of the things I love most about my work is meeting other people with the same level of curiosity that I have. I think this transcends the boundaries of my own personal research. A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak at the British Ecological Society’s Ecology Summer School, which is geared toward inner-city low-income minority college students. It was an honor and privilege to work with such intelligent, engaged, and conscious students. They recognize that the upcoming decades present increasing global challenges, including climate change, water and food shortages, overpopulation, deforestation, increasingly large-scale wildfire activity, and so forth. Despite this knowledge, they are optimistic, enthusiastic, and want to make a difference in the world. It is my great privilege to teach and, I hope, inspire the next generation of scientists and global citizens.

When teaching, I often refer to something one of my favorite authors, David Quammen, writes in his book The Song of the Dodo: “To despair of the entire situation is another reasonable alternative. But the unsatisfactory thing about despair, in my view, is that besides being fruitless it’s far less exciting than hope, however slim.” This idea of hope and optimism influences all aspects of my life and shapes how I interact with my students and the world in general.

As the daughter of a prominent Zen master, you, unlike almost all your father’s students, were born and raised in an environment in which Buddhism was just part of the atmosphere. How would you characterize your relationship with Buddhism? My earliest memories are of living at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. I remember peering into the zendo when no one was there, the sound of temple bells, the smell of incense filling the air as the students prepared for early morning zazen. Our mom would meditate with us in her lap. When we grew older, we spent Sundays at the Yokoji Zen Mountain Center for service and sitting. I did my first sesshin when I was 14 years old. I clearly recall how difficult it was for me, as a child, to be quiet and sit still. Well, things have not changed much. As I got older, and as a result of the car accident, I found zazen very painful and difficult for my body. As a dancer, I’ve found that so much of how I interface with the world is through the physical body. I have always found that moving meditation practices, such as yoga, suit me better.

While in college I took a second BA, in Religious Studies. In reading the texts of the major world religions, I was, and still am, struck by the commonality in the basic principles and moral teachings among different belief systems: don’t kill, don’t cheat, don’t lie, be kind, live a good life, and so on. To me, there is more than one way to shine a penny; different teachings and practices suit some people and not others. As a scientist, I am naturally more at home when religious views are not in a contentious relationship with science.

To me, it does not really matter if you are sitting still or moving, as long as what you do helps bring calm and clarity. Be kind and loving to yourself, be kind and loving to others—this practice is what I try to incorporate into my daily life. That said, I was born Zen and raised Zen; I consider my dad’s successors to be my aunts and uncles. Zen so infuses my worldview that it would be nonsensical to say I am not a Zen Buddhist, even though I do not formally have a regular sangha or teacher.

In my yoga practice, I try to find a balance where I can for a time leave my work and other stresses of life, step on my mat, and simply move and breathe and be present. As I am extremely passionate about my work, I find it very challenging not to bring work home with me: I think about science throughout my waking (and sleeping) hours. Meditation practice becomes crucial for balance.

When you were growing up, did the rather unusual circumstance of having a Zen master dad present particular challenges for you? If so, how did you meet them? My father was away a lot, as much as nine months out of the year, so I really did not spend much time with him while I was growing up. When he came home, he often stayed in his study reading, meeting with his students, resting from jet lag, and so forth. He really did not have much time or energy left to be a dad. Many of his students knew him better than my siblings and I did. After he died, people would tell me stories about the life-changing experiences they had had with him. At first, I could not help but feel envious, but as I’ve grown older, I have been able to develop wonderful relationships with many of his students. Through their stories and memories, I have been able to get to know him a little better and to see him through their love and appreciation of him as a teacher.

“As I have progressed through my career, I have found that the more I learned, the more questions I had. And the questions kept getting more interesting and interconnected.”

Growing up in a Zen household gave me the opportunity to be curious and ask questions about everything. I was never given very direct answers to my questions; rather, I was encouraged to explore and figure out answers on my own. Today, these qualities inform all aspects of my life, including my life as a scientist. Buddhism instilled in me moral values based on a sense of ownership for my actions and responsibility for their consequences. This idea of cause and effect is often how I observe the natural world and make sense of things around me. Buddhism has taught me much about how to be a good person; science is my passion. I strive to meld these two aspects and live my life to the fullest. My father used to say, “Appreciate your life,” and that is precisely what I aim to do.

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Years ago, when I worked in a psychiatric halfway house, there was a pair of terms used by the staff as a kind of shorthand. “Within normal limits” meant that a resident patient’s internal distress and behavior toward others were not so disruptive or dangerous as to require a new treatment plan. If, however, a counselor described a resident under her care as having moved in some fashion “outside normal limits”—through an escalation in aggressive actions, for example—this told the rest of the staff that that resident’s treatment needed to be attended to and adjusted.

There are many ways of characterizing the current resurgence of nativist movements in the United States and Europe, and I find myself often thinking of those two terms. For whatever we might think of the the current state of U.S. political culture, it is safe to say that it is outside normal limits.

Nativism is dangerous, as even a cursory knowledge of recent history makes abundantly clear. But it is not dangerous to everyone in the same way and to the same extent. Nativism is not a doctrine, though it can be, and often is, codified into one. It is more than anything a rallying point for those who feel beset by uncertainty, fear, and resentment. It collectively expresses a feeling that one’s way of life and one’s very identity are under attack. The challenge for leaders of nativist movements is to inflame their supporters’ sense of embattlement by aggravating established social divisions, such as those based on ethnicity or religion or culture or regional affiliation. There must be targets of blame. These are not hard to find—one simply looks for those most vulnerable. During times when nativist impulses are strong, the reliable due north on the compass of blame seems always to include immigrants and religious minorities.

Two articles in the new issue of Tricycle—an interview with the Buddhist scholar Duncan Ryuken Williams and a discussion with the American Muslim activist Sofia Ali-Khan and Zen teacher Kurt Spellmeyer—are our attempt to shed light on Buddhist concerns related to the workings of American nativism. One tells of the past—the internment of ethnically Japanese Buddhists during World War II. The other focuses on the present—the targeting of American Muslims. Placing the two articles side by side will, we hope, allow the past to illuminate the present and the present to illuminate the past.   

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This excerpt from Tricycle’s features editor Andrew Cooper comes from his 1998 book Playing in the Zone: Exploring the Spiritual Dimensions of Sports. In it, he chronicles the role that mythology and fate played in the Cleveland Indians’ 1995 World Series appearance.

As we speak, it is late October 1995, World Series time, and this year marks the Cleveland Indians first appearance in the series since 1954. In their coverage, the sports media make frequent reference to a single play from that series forty-one years ago: Willie Mays’s over-the-shoulder catch of Vic Wertz’s mighty line drive. If ever a sports event glowed with numinous power, it was that catch, and Mays’s subsequent throw to the infield to hold the lead runner at third.

The 1954 Cleveland team had compiled the best regular-season record in modern Major League history, and they were heavily favored to beat Mays’s New York Giants. In the first game of the series, with the score tied at two, Wertz crushed a Don Liddle pitch 460 feet into the cavernous expanses of the Polo Grounds center field, the deepest in the game. At the crack of the bat, Mays took off, running full speed, his back to home plate. At the last moment, still at full speed, he bends his head back, extends his glove, and like a sparrow returning to its nest, the ball settles into Mays’s grasp. Then, just as remarkably, Mays spins on a dime and makes a perfect 300-foot throw to prevent even one run from scoring. What should have been a triple, or even an inside-the-park home run, is now just another out.

The Giants went on to win the game and eventually the series in a four-to-zero sweep. Had it turned out differently, the play could well have broken the Giants’ spirit. Instead, that was Cleveland’s fate. And not only for the series. With that play, Cleveland began a plunge into mediocrity that was to last for decades.

So now it is 1995, and in describing the Cleveland Indians’ return to World Series play, sports commentators can scarcely avoid discussing the aura of magic that still surrounds the event. Mays’s catch seemed to mark more than a shift in momentum; it seemed to occasion a shift of fate. That is what these mainstream commentators are talking about, and they are wondering whether things have finally shifted back in Cleveland’s favor. They might as well be speaking of the favor of the gods, for as Michael Novak writes, fate is “the unseen god of sports events,” presiding over sports as over life.

From one perspective this talk of fate is just an example of the necessary hyperbole of sports talk. If you were to ask, say, Bob Costas whether he believed that these events really represented the workings of fate or some supernatural agency, my guess is that he would say no. But whether or not one believes in such things, for those with faith in the game, fate feels like an actual presence.

The question of whether the transpersonal forces—fate, mana, God and gods, and so forth—are psychological projections or objective realities is a necessary question for the rational mind. But as the historian of religion Henri Frankfort and others have pointed out, such questions, based as they are on a detached distance from experience, on a series of sharp dichotomies—subject and object, inside and outside, reality and appearance—[ ] are foreign to the mythic mode of thought, in which either/or distinctions don’t apply. Or rather, they apply solely on a practical level. Mythic thought reflects an experience of continuity among all aspects of a single reality.

In Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Early Man, Frankfort writes, “Whatever is capable of affecting mind, feeling, or will has thereby established its undaunted reality.” In the second world of sport, we can feel the presence of transpersonal agencies without the burden of assigning to such feelings theological or scientific justification. In a modern world that is otherwise hostile to its viewpoint, the mythic mind finds in sport room to play.

For us, as for the ancients, sport exists in the borderline realm between jest and earnest. But the nature of that “in-between” place is not stable. It changes in response to the variousness of cultural attitudes and worldviews. For us, the borderline realm is more reflective of a psychological perspective than a cosmological one. Its truths are more metaphoric than literal. The sacred experience it models is based not on theological belief in revealed truth but on faith in the truth revealed by fictions. Befitting post-modern society’s plurality of viewpoints, sport today is laced with a strong dose of irony. And although our world lacks the unifying vision and stability of premodern societies, the second world of sport provides a niche in which mythic consciousness can flourish, allowing us to feel a world graced with depth and meaning. It demonstrates, if not a synthesis of the mythic and rational modes of thought, then a form for their playful interaction. In so doing, sport penetrates our intellectual arrogance and reminds us that, in W. H. Auden’s words, “we are lived by powers we pretend to understand.” Finally, it teaches us, whether we know it or not, to view this very condition as an expression of the mystery of play. Or as the poet John Webster put it:

We are merely the stars’ tennis balls, struck and bandied
Which way please them.

♦

Excerpted from Playing in the Zone: Exploring the Spiritual Dimensions of Sports, Shambhala Publications, 1998.

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Nearly 20 years ago, I wrote a book on the spiritual dimensions of sports. The book, Playing in the Zone, closes with some reflections on Muhammad Ali, who was for me and countless others the epitome of the athletic hero. Following his passing, I reread the section, I suppose as a way of gathering my thoughts. I’m sharing parts of it here, with the wish that it might lend something to the reflections of others.

Goodbye for now, Champ. If fortune is kind to me, we’ll meet again, farther on up the road.

—Andrew Cooper, Features Editor

In Ali the contradictions, the virtues and flaws, of the heroic character were made vivid. In his days as an athlete, Ali was a man of both joyous and deeply troubling passions. In his training camp he would take time out to perform magic tricks for children and carry on to the delight of everyone. But he could also be cruel. Outside the ring, he shamelessly and unfairly taunted Joe Frazier, calling him stupid, a gorilla, an Uncle Tom. In the ring, in a state of battle frenzy, he sadistically tormented the overmatched Floyd Patterson and Ernie Terrell for refusing to call him by his Muslim name.

But to my mind, no one in my lifetime has so embodied athletic virtue. His blend of physical gifts of grace, speed, and strength was a wonder to behold. More importantly, the skill and intelligence with which he put those gifts to use were unmatched. But he had something else, something more. Jose Torres, a world champion himself, writes of Ali’s ability to call up “those mysterious forces.” As much as any athlete anywhere, Ali possessed an indefinable spiritual force that animated and poured through him.

Today Ali is a hero to most every sports lover, even those who used to hate him. Partly, it is because the passage of time and being out of the public spotlight have created more of the distance of heroism. Partly, it is because of his charm and his generosity of soul. But it is also because he has, in the classical sense, paid a price for his heroism, and he has done so without regret. His excellence led him to hybris, to inordinate pride, but despite his physical afflictions, his spirit seems now to be at peace with his moira, with his portion of mortal life. Because he was a hero, and because he fulfilled his life heroically, that fulfillment graces with self-recognition all who let it in.

Many say we need heroes show us how great we can be. I disagree. Heroes do something much rarer and more important. They show us how great they are, and in doing so, they allow us to participate in that greatness. I am not speaking of living through them vicariously, though obviously that does occur. What I mean is that through them we live mythically. Through the numinous power they gather and bestow, they help us feel the gem-like flame of life’s majesty. For this they deserve our discerning yet unreserved gratitude.    

From Playing in the Zone by Andrew Cooper, © 1998 by Andrew Cooper. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO. www.shambhala.com

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Jesuit priest, activist, and writer Father Daniel Berrigan died in New York City on April 30. He was 94.

Berrigan was perhaps best known for taking draft files from a U.S. Selective Service Office in Catonsville, Maryland, with eight other Catholic activists in 1968. The group, which became known as the “Catonsville Nine,” then burned the paperwork with homemade napalm to protest the Vietnam War. Berrigan was later sentenced to three years in federal prison for the act.

In recent years, Berrigan protested the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and joined Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. In 2001, Berrigan said he’d stop protesting “the day after I’m embalmed,” the New York Times reported.

Berrigan was named Fordham University’s Poet in Residence in 2000 and held that title until his death, the university said in a statement. Berrigan’s wake is set for Thursday and his funeral on Friday at the Church of Saint Francis Xavier on 46 W. 16th Street in New York.

Below, Tricycle Features Editor Andrew Cooper recalls shepherding Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh—who were friends and co-authored The Raft Is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward a Buddhist-Christian Awareness—around New York City.

My parents were dubious, when I was in my 20s and 30s, about my career as a professional Buddhist. Still, they were good sports during my annual visits when I brought to their apartment on the Upper East Side the occasional roshi or bhikkhu—and even one radical-pacifist Catholic priest—in need of respite from New York City busyness.

In 1983 I accompanied Thich Nhat Hanh for six weeks as he visited a number of North American Buddhist centers and gave a series of public talks along the way. The final event on the trip’s schedule was a talk somewhere in Midtown Manhattan, at which he was to be introduced by Father Daniel Berrigan. Thich Nhat Hanh and I made the long drive down from a Zen center in upstate New York and, before going to the venue, we stayed at my folks’ place for a couple of hours. As arranged, Father Berrigan joined us there. The two peace activists had not seen each other in a long time, but it was immediately apparent the bond between them was still strong.

Based on Father Berrigan’s famous and dramatic anti-war actions, I somehow expected a correspondingly larger-than-life personality, maybe even something of a firebrand. Here, though, he was most soft-spoken, gentle, and very, very kind. Kind of like Thich Nhat Hanh. In fact, there was something twin-like about them—both of them poets, activists, intellectuals, and religious contemplatives steeped in their traditions even as they endeavored to reform them. It was as though each was the Buddhist or Catholic version of the other. They spoke not of matters large or deep; rather, they asked after each other and shared news, of a personal sort, of old friends. I suppose you could call it small talk, but there was something terribly moving about it as well. Maybe it was that very smallness that made it so.

We eventually headed out for the talk and I hailed a cab in front of the apartment building near East 83rd Street and Lexington Avenue. The driver grew visibly impatient as I tried to round up my drifting cargo of bodhisattvas and get them into the taxi. A car behind us honked loudly. I was about to follow them into the cab when I looked up and happened to see a large man standing about 20 feet away, looking on with a wide and delightful smile. He looked familiar, and after a moment, I realized it was the actor Peter Boyle. I gestured with my thumb back to Thich Nhat Hanh and Father Berrigan, now, finally, seated in the cab, and then, as New Yorkers do, I threw my arms up in the air and let them flop down to my thighs in the instantly recognizable gesture of “Whaddayagonnado?” Mr. Boyle nodded in understanding, and I smiled and nodded back. Later, as the talk was about to begin, I noticed him sitting in the audience, way in the back, not wishing to draw attention but only there to listen and see.

People who spend a lot of time in the public eye often get in the habit of filling up the space in the room, but that was not Father Daniel Berrigan at all. But of course he was as fearless and determined and, in his way, as dynamic as they come. He never gave up on us. He really did help us to be better people.

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