On April 21, 2021, a jury deemed that former police officer Derek Chauvin is a murderer. Despite police officers having the legal right to kill under certain circumstances, regarding the death of George Floyd, lethal force was determined to be unreasonable and unjustified. So, though Chauvin was charged to protect and serve, the jury concluded that his actions caused George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020.

While many breathed a sigh of relief and rejoiced at the reading of the verdict, others braced themselves for the trial of the three officers charged with aiding and abetting Chauvin, now scheduled for March 2022. (The state charges are being delayed to allow a federal case to proceed first.) Many asked the question, “Now what?”

The April verdict addresses Chauvin’s culpability in the death of George Floyd. The verdict does nothing to address the multitude of harms committed through the US criminal justice system.  This was epitomized by the police killing of Daunte Wright during a traffic stop just days before Chauvin’s verdict.

As described by Buddhist teacher Larry Ward, America’s history establishes a racialized karma, particularly in the criminal justice system, that may seem impossible to overcome. Given the world’s response to the death of George Floyd and Chauvin’s guilty verdict, we have a powerful opportunity to move towards a societal and systemic rebirth.

We are in the midst of a karmic bardo of becoming, a liminal period of possibilities between death and rebirth. We have the tools to aid us in a higher-level rebirth if we choose to use them for that purpose.

Karma of the Criminal Justice System

Collectively, Americans have crafted and allowed for a criminal justice system that operates under the guise of public safety without the proportional public good. Our actions and fears have led to seemingly intractable harm.

While we spend nearly $300 billion annually to police, prosecute, and imprison, police agencies have no legal duty to protect persons not in their custody. Police primarily exist, contrary to the common motto “to protect and to serve,” to protect business property first, then residential property.

While we train police to be “warrior cops,” we call on them to act as social workers, conflict mediators, traffic directors, mental health counselors, neighborhood patrollers, and enforcers of low-level, petty crimes. Only a small fraction of policing hours are spent responding to violent crime.

While we espouse a motto of “justice for all,” the majority of all criminal cases are against indigent persons. Most people in the criminal justice system—roughly 90 percent—are represented by court-appointed attorneys who are often stretched thin by the sheer amount of clients they represent in an underfunded system. Additionally, the people prosecuted by the criminal justice system are disproportionately people of color.

While we presume “color blindness” in our systems, data related to police stops and searches show a persistent racial bias for police engagement with individuals without finding contraband or proof of crimes to support the rates of stops and searches.

We are all stakeholders in the American criminal justice system that in its current form leads to premature death. In 2020, there were 1,100 fatal police shootings, 27 percent of those were Black people. Black males are 21 times more likely to be killed by police officers than white males. Laws allowing the use of “justifiable” deadly force have been applied in a manner that is rooted in the belief, through actions and words, that most Black males are criminals. A literal example of the ultimate cause of death being life itself—a slow death caused by living while Black in America.

The death of George Floyd has always been entangled with two questions: the singular question about justice for Floyd and the more universal question about the US justice system’s perpetually punitive impact on poor, Black and brown persons. His death has brought us into a state like the bardo of becoming, ripe with the potential for transformation. What should be done to allow the death of George Floyd, an individual, to act as a catalyst for a collective rebirth?

After Death—the Bardo

The karmic bardo of becoming, in Tibetan Buddhism, is a state of existence between two lives, a period of time after death, until the moment of rebirth. According to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, bardos are periods when life is uncertain. They occur continuously throughout both life and death because the whole of life and death are together a series of constantly changing transitional realities. All bardos are moments when the possibilities of liberation and transformation are heightened because they are charged with potential; whatever you do during these times has crucial and far-reaching effects. In the bardo of becoming, one who is spiritually capable may reduce the impact of the karma of past lives on the level of rebirth to come, or they may even attain liberation.

The key is for each of us to recognize the opportunities for liberation and make the fullest possible use of them.

In understanding karma as the natural law of cause and effect, we begin to understand how all of our actions, no matter how small, have consequences. Even when our actions seem inconsequential, the interdependence of all things bear out a different reality. These truths might seem overwhelming at first, but upon deeper investigation and reflection, we can come to learn the extreme power that karma allows us to create change. We can choose how we act and we can choose to accept the impermanence, fluidity, and interdependence of all things.

We can overcome our long history of racialized karma by choosing our actions, no matter how small, with the appropriate intent. We could choose to continue endorsing false narratives or quietly allowing our tax dollars to support harmful systems. Or, we could choose more compassionate, intentional actions, and be more aware of our interdependence. To develop the appropriate intent, we must first take responsibility for past actions or inactions. Acceptance of responsibility indicates that we understand the full implications or our actions, words and thoughts. What amazing change is possible if the 23.2 million people who were concerned enough to watch the verdict took just that one action! 

♦

The authors would like to thank Jake Nagasawa, PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, for his insights and guidance.

The post Cause of Death Part Two: Now What? appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

What does “justice” mean to us legally as Americans, in a country with a history rooted in white supremacy? What does it mean to us spiritually as Buddhists, in a country where the majority holds monotheistic beliefs? And how do we navigate our relationship to justice as Buddhist Americans, in the midst of the struggle against police killings of African American people? 

As Buddhist Insight Meditation teachers, our sanghas have called on us to address these kinds of questions. As a former prosecutor and former criminal defense attorney, both women of color, one African American and one mixed race South Asian and white, we came together across our similarities and our differences, to explore how our dharma practices lead us to respond.

People often think of justice as impartial, fair, and equitable responses to harm, and as being done either in individual cases or being inherent in a system. Systemically, criminal justice in America is rooted in the English common law and in a social contract in which power is given to the government, with the expectation the government will fairly resolve culpability for harming acts against society. This social contract manifests as laws born out of a representative government of the people; law enforcement that has the requirement “to protect and serve” as its foundation; and a court system that is expected to give ordinary citizens the benefit of the doubt, legal representation, and the opportunity to be fairly judged by one’s own peers. 

Built upon the principle of innocent until proven guilty, the system puts the responsibility of establishing criminal behavior on the government, rather than on the individual. The government must establish both criminal intent and criminal action. The standard for proving criminal behavior, beyond a reasonable doubt, is one of the highest, strictest standards in our entire legal system. 

While these standards and laws define the idea of criminal justice in the United States, the administration of that system is another matter. The American writer and activist James Baldwin wrote: “If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the law’s protection most!—and listens to their testimony.” For African Americans in particular, not only is there no trusted social contract for criminal justice, but anyone wanting to understand racism need only look at the criminal justice system. It provides the clearest view for seeing the truth and anguish of racism. There is a felt contradiction in what constitutes “criminal” and “justice” in the United States, because, based on race, different Americans experience the “criminal justice” system so differently.  

The framework of the American criminal justice system is often considered to be one of the best in the world. And for ordinary white Americans, the system often works fine, mostly because ordinary white Americans can rely on the presumption that they are innocent until proven guilty. For ordinary African Americans, the system, at its core, is rotten, with white supremacy undermining every aspect. As many viral videos demonstrate, racism allows criminal intent to be inferred in ordinary interactions. It is assumed that if an African American is present, criminal conduct will follow. It is assumed when African Americans enter any neighborhood, public park, store, or event where white people don’t think they should be, that they are a threat and should be surveilled. And most notably, it is assumed African Americans are carrying or doing something illegal when driving. This assumption entitles all white people to treat African Americans as dangerous unless they can, in a noticeably short amount of time, alleviate any fear. 

White supremacy creates narratives about all non-white people. It is a cloak that shrouds the law’s protections of African Americans, denying them the benefit of the presumption of innocence, fairness, justice, and equality. But more importantly, racism denies African Americans permission to protect themselves from white people. They are trapped in a system where they can only obtain justice by putting their faith in the same system that has no faith in them.

As Buddhists, with faith in the buddhadharma, our practice involves cutting through delusion to open to the truth. There are at least three dharmic truths relevant to our natural human response to seek justice in response to harm or cruelty. One truth, the law of karma, points to the overarching moral universe in which all of our volitional actions have consequences. For Buddhist practitioners, this can be a refuge and source of equanimity in the midst of our witnessing police killings and an inequitable criminal justice system. We understand that the law of karma is beyond comparison to conventional ideas of justice, as the truth of dukkha, or unsatisfactoriness, means that any legal system within this samsaric realm will never be fully satisfactory. Another truth, the immeasurable benefits that spring from harmlessness and ethical conduct, can inspire action that diminishes cruelty, even when it is not easy to see how our actions are creating benefit.

Viewed through a dharmic lens, no court could reach a more astute assessment than the law of karma about a police officer’s responsibility for killing or abusing someone. Such officers must experience the karmic consequences of their volitional actions, whether their motivations were simple anger, an express intent to kill, a desire to guard their power and its material benefits, or an explicitly racist intent. 

In the Ancinita Sutta, the Buddha said the precise workings of the law of karma are imponderable. It is not for us to know how any person’s karma will play out, and all perpetrators of violence also have the capacity to awaken. At the same time, the law of karma does not mean that the dharma leaves out all notions of justice. As Bhikkhu Bodhi has asserted, one of the many nuances of the word dharma itself means justice, in the sense of a belief that “all people possess intrinsic value, that all are endowed with inherent dignity and therefore should be helped to realize this dignity.” 

Nor does the dharma point us towards non-action. The teachings on non-cruelty call on us first to develop our own hearts and minds. The second factor of the noble eightfold path, wise intention, directs us to cultivate the intention of harmlessness, which counters cruelty in our own minds. The more we cultivate harmlessness, the more our minds will incline toward non-cruelty. Considered together with another core truth, that the mind is the forerunner of all things, our thoughts of harmlessness will engender our beneficial, compassionate actions. 

In a separate teaching, the Buddha made the striking statement that our non-harming conduct, particularly in following the five ethical training precepts of non-killing, non-stealing, abstaining from sexual misconduct, abstaining from false speech, and refraining from intoxicants, “gives to an immeasurable number of beings freedom from fear, enmity, and affliction” and that this is a “gift, primal, of long standing, traditional, ancient, and unadulterated.” 

So, just as the workings of karma are imponderable, our actions grounded in harmlessness create the causes and conditions, in ways we cannot measure, for others to experience greater freedom from affliction. This means we can trust the power of goodness to have real, though perhaps wholly unseen, fruits. Trust in this kind of immeasurable benefit and in justice rooted in the dignity of all beings could be a potent force to dismantle white supremacy, as it supports persevering even when we do not immediately see shifts towards greater justice. 

The post Buddhist Justice Versus American Justice appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When George Floyd’s murderer, former police officer Derek Chauvin, was found guilty on all charges on April 21, 2021, the world breathed a sigh of fleeting relief. I sighed too, but the breath was not my own. The emanation was an ancestral exhale for accountability, and it rattled my foundation in a mixture of grief and frustration. There was no joy. There was no rest. There was no peace.  

Four days before the prosecution rested in the Chauvin case, Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was shot by a Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, police officer who mistook her own gun for a taser. Just over a week later, Andrew Brown, Jr., 42, would be shot in the back of the head while driving away from police in North Carolina.  Between these killings, Adam Toledo, 13, was shot to death by an officer in Chicago, and Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, was fatally shot by an officer in Ohio. For many Black, indigenous, and other people of color, every shooting is retraumatizing.

Police brutality, combined with historical trauma’s cumulative effects, structural racism, health disparities, disadvantage, and poverty, all negatively impact African Americans. We are affected on a deeply cellular level, and our suffering is a bitter seduction. Untreated, pain feeds despair, an idol to our suffering—but there is a path forward. We can find our way by embracing and exploring African Americans who were bodhisattvas, and as such, provide pathways to heal our collective, historical trauma.  

A bodhisattva is someone who aspires to be a buddha but delays reaching nirvana in order to help others reach enlightenment. By extension, we might consider the Black Bodhisattvas to be those of African and African American descent who, by example, lead us toward a path of liberation, provide inspiration, direction, and healing. 

The Black Bodhisattva and first African American woman to speak publicly about women’s rights was Maria W. Stewart [1803-1879], who urged us to “possess the spirit of independence” and “sue for your rights.” Stewart wrote these words in 1831, in a pamphlet that was distributed before her public speaking engagements. She spoke to mixed crowds of both Blacks and whites, men and women, which was uncommon at the time. Stewart’s call to legal action is an example of the preparation and tools to confront white supremacy. This struggle will throw innumerable challenges as long as white supremacy is allowed to inflict its dangerous, oppressive destruction on Black and brown bodies and livelihood. Every stage of the struggle for justice will be met with a counterattack designed to preserve the status quo. The challenge is to be increasingly more skillful at managing emotional pain and equipping ourselves with the instruments to address inequality without succumbing to violence.

As a Black, queer woman who grew up in the predominately white communities of Northern Minnesota, I have spent a lifetime searching for Black Bodhisattvas to nurture, guide, lead me toward liberation. I was born exactly 58 years to the day after Harriet Tubman’s death. Tubman [1822-1913] is my kindred spirit, and her example would become the guidepost for my activism, artistry, and work as an academic in the service of my people. If the role of the bodhisattva as an enlightened being is to delay nirvana to assist others in finding liberation compassionately, then Tubman’s life and legacy align with that experience. In approximately 10 years and 13 trips, she led over 70 enslaved people to freedom and advised at least 70 more to make the journey. During the Civil War, she was recruited by the Union Army to assist fugitive slaves, and headed espionage and scouting missions that garnered crucial intelligence. For Tubman, there was no greater purpose than the freedom of her people. 

But what does it mean to march on toward freedom? Awakening? In Buddhism, awakening means to be liberated from perpetual suffering. For African Americans, awakening in one sense means overcoming the clutches of white supremacy culture as a community, as a nation. “Nations, like plants and human beings, grow. And if the development is thwarted, they are dwarfed and overshadowed,” wrote the Black Bodhisattva Claude McKay [1889-1948]. McKay was a poet and novelist of the Harlem Renaissance whose poetry and prose were and continue to be a source of liberation. He reminds us that individuals, communities, and governments all can change, grow, evolve, or revolutionize.

From McKay’s instructions, a galvanized response to oppression means the nation’s integrity will no longer be thwarted. We may march on toward freedom but not be seduced by the divisive tools of white supremacy culture. Black liberator, activist, and author Audre Lorde [1934-1992] proclaimed, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house!” The struggle cannot be won with the same dehumanizing beliefs, policies, procedures, and laws that got us here in the first place. When violence erupts, when despair knocks on the door of the heart, seek silence and stillness within because the right direction emerges in the sanctity of that which cannot be moved. In this way, we resist. 

The Black Bodhisattva assures us that the path to end suffering is consistent with the teachings, the dharma, the way. We do not have to reinvent the wheel.

In the words of the nineteenth-century author, lecturer, and anti-enslavement activist Frances Harper [1825-1911], “My hands were weak, but I reached them out to feebler ones than mine, and over the shadow of my life Stole the light of a peace divine.” Fostering community allows us to resist despair as we ease attachments to our suffering by cultivating loving-kindness, empathetic joy, compassion, and equanimity. We might come to recognize that it is possible love and rage can occupy the same place at the same time. In equanimity, we are neither passionate nor dispassionate about any of it.  Emotions are simply messages that we are experiencing something favorable or unfavorable. What is good or unfavorable at the moment may have extraordinarily little to do with the ultimate goal, which is a just and equitable society. It is the same as saying, “keep your eyes on the prize.” So, restraint becomes an offering of the wise and loving-kindness, empathetic joy, and compassion, a healing balm on exposed wounds.

The Black Bodhisattva assures us that the path to end suffering is consistent with the teachings, the dharma, the way. We do not have to reinvent the wheel. Fundamentally, this work is not meant to be conducted alone. The sangha, initially understood as a community of Buddhist monastics in study and practice together; today implies something slightly different (at least in Western lay communities). Here, the sangha is a community of healers, activists, mobilizers, poets, prophets, truth-tellers, and fellow Buddhists in whom we gain assistance. Seek them out and wear their support like an invincible shield.

The historical Black Bodhisattvas were not practicing Buddhists. However, they embodied many principles of Buddhism and community. We draw from their examples in these contemporary times as we form circles of support that promote liberation.

May we make ourselves students of loving-kindness. May we learn to delight in the joy of another wherever it may be found. May we sponsor a heart that seeks to end the suffering of others. May we recognize that these principles of Buddhism are the true north. In the end, the Black Bodhisattva guides the path. May we all find our way.

The post Finding Your Way appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I am an older Black Buddhist practitioner. Throughout the three-week trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin, I watched and experienced holding tension between the past and desire. During this time, I engaged in a practice I call “shock protection”—noticing that the fact our conditioning may not have prepared us to receive what is to come while trying to remain neutral as a way to lessen the pain of another unjust outcome.  

Buddhism is founded on shock protection if we take into consideration that the Buddha was conditioned to not see human frailty while he remained in his wealthy province preparing to inherit his father’s powerful position. Some of us have been conditioned in this way—we have been beneficiaries of the rule of law, but many others of us have not. Shock protection is another way of practicing equanimity, but an equanimity fueled with decades of disappointment for the hundreds of millions of black people killed in the US over 400 years of slavery, Jim Crow, lynching, white supremacist-crafted criminal justice systems, and mass incarceration. It would have been foolish of me to cast this history aside while watching the trial, as the defense “retried” the case during closing arguments using the playbook other attorneys have used to defend white police officers who killed unarmed Black men. This playbook has included repeatedly reminding jurors of the deceased’s character imperfections, past criminal behaviors irrelevant to the case at hand, imperviousness to pain, underlying medical conditions and the police’s perceptions of the deceased as innately dangerous due to appearance (including inferences to the deceased being Black), along with a host of other strategies to dehumanize someone who is already dead. To counter this playbook, the prosecution needed to resort to reminding the jurors that George Floyd had parents who brought them into the world, using Floyd’s birth certificate as proof! Keeping this history in mind, I wasn’t angry, or in shock. I was reminded that this is how it has been, and it has worked in the past to convince jurors that they did not see what they saw. I’m very familiar with the cognitive impact of being invited to doubt my beliefs.

As a Buddhist practitioner, I’ve been taught and trained to question my perceptions. This is useful for lessening the suffering that comes from clinging to views that become narrower the more I cling. Some Buddhists refer to this as a wholesome form of doubt. But when the defense in the Chauvin case said in their closing arguments that jurors should doubt the evidence presented by the state about the causes of Floyd’s death, was that the same as training jurors in cultivating Buddha mind? I don’t think so, largely because so much was riding on their doubt—namely, the maintenance of and justification for the deadly use of police force remaining situated in police discretion alone. In Buddhism, our trainings and teachings in doubt are about expanding our awareness. On the other hand, the defense was arguing for the very same thing—broadening the jurors’ awareness.

Those of us who saw the viral videos saw Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for what we initially thought was 8 minutes and 46 seconds, but what turned out to actually be 9 minutes and 29 seconds. What does this mean? Collectively, we were wrong. There was nearly another minute of factual information from the police officers’ vantage points; it means that we missed facts by only having access to the viral videos taken by witnesses. This was part of the defense’s argument. The other part of their argument was that the jury had to make a decision about what a “reasonable police officer” in that particular situation would do. Contrary to what the Minneapolis police officers testified to regarding their practices not being consistent with Chauvin’s actions, the defense argued, with supporting evidence, that police have a multitude of decisions to make and each action of the arrestee is cause for a new set of decisions. The defense also said that the police officer is not required to believe anything the arrestee is saying about how they feel. In defense attorney Eric Nelson’s view, it didn’t matter that Floyd said he was claustrophobic. It didn’t matter that he said the handcuffs hurt (in fact Floyd’s wrists were bleeding), it didn’t matter that Floyd said he couldn’t breathe, it didn’t matter that Floyd was lying face down in the prone position (because he was able to talk), and it didn’t matter that Floyd became unconscious because each of these factors (according to the defense) were changeable. 

Buddhists have also been taught about changeability. We call it impermanence. The impermanence we are taught about has to do with not clinging to things that have no permanence—even ourselves—so that we do not become deluded and then distraught when we must inevitably part from everything we love as we are reminded in the five remembrances (through death and natural processes of loss that are part of any human life). The defense’s “impermanence” argument was different altogether. The defense argued that even when Floyd was not resisting, he could resist again, thereby justifying the length of time Chauvin had his knee on Floyd’s neck. We may not agree with the defense, but we know from our own teachings in doubt and impermanence that if these teachings are not grounded in the ethics of non-harm, compassion, selflessness, and truth, they can be twisted toward supporting injustice. Many Buddhists have supported injustice with indifference by not coming together as one entity, focusing on anti-Black racism. It is a political choice. What is a Buddhist to do now that Chauvin has been found guilty and the three other arresting police officers are scheduled for trial in August?

Though cities across the US, including Minneapolis, prepared for a violent response if Chauvin was acquitted, Buddhists were not prepared to stem the energetic flow of possible violent responses because we haven’t been able to harness the power we have to effectuate structural change. Still, it is not too late to find our collective voice in areas of racial justice. As we contemplate this historic guilty verdict, we can also endeavor to engage police departments across this nation on this question: How can we support you to trust that those you arrest are in pain when they say they are? We say we are students of the Four Noble Truths, and we dedicate the merit to all sentient beings, but do we, as American Buddhists, take the time to understand the suffering that is caused by the school-to-prison pipeline that includes miseducation, policing, the court systems, and mass incarceration, and seek to collectively transform this situation? Do we take that understanding to those who cause suffering, and proclaim the third noble truth—that things can change? What within the noble eightfold path can we apply to the transformation of modern-day lynchings and slavery? Let’s examine what right action means in this context.

Maybe we’ve been too immersed in our doubt and teachings in impermanence to be moved off our proverbial cushions to be the agents of change we chant in our bodhisattva vows. I think we’re more prone to magical thinking than we want to admit. Meditation, learning, and chanting alone will not stem the tide of racism, murder, and imprisonment. Nor will they stem the tide of an ever-increasing militarized police force. I often hear Buddhist practitioners say, “I don’t know what to do.” Do our practices actually serve to disempower us? Do they cloud our perceptions when we say we are expanding our awareness? We need to take a deep look at what we’re learning and practicing, otherwise we unwittingly run the risk of solidifying being agents of white supremacy.

With the new reality that a white police officer can be found guilty of murdering an unarmed Black man, how will we interpret this reality for what our lives mean and can mean? How do predominantly white sanghas make room for Black and Brown people living with an existential situation that hasn’t changed just yet? By practicing deeply with racial and cultural humility. But that’s not all. Even if Chauvin had been acquitted, sanghas need to come together, harness our power, and deploy the positive power of our practices in compassion, directing that power to the policing of our neighbors and fellow citizens. We can begin with just one goal, restoring the humanity of arrestees who cry out that they are in pain, so that police officers will also care for those they are arresting.

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In Buddhist thought, the ultimate cause of death is life itself. All things are impermanent, and Buddhist practice involves extending compassion for the suffering that inevitably arises. The dharma also prohibits killing: to have clear minds and hearts, we must cultivate and encourage life. Yet in the name of public safety; for the sake of law and order; and to protect and enhance private property, Americans often justify the use of force and normalize the taking of human life. 

The trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin has put complex and sophisticated cause-of-death arguments on display. The daily push and pull between the prosecution and the defense has made for a wrenching and riveting spectacle. It is tempting to look away and to tell ourselves that we are not part of this picture because we don’t think this way or that way about the situation. But Buddhist justice-making involves doing our best to stay in the present moment, to gaze without flinching, and to connect self and other. No matter which way this trial goes, we aspire to a deeper understanding of the causes of George Floyd’s death and how compassionate action can eventually lead to justice.

Five manners of death

Prone, handcuffed, and face down on the street in broad daylight. Nearly 100 pounds of pressure applied downward against his neck. For 9 minutes and 29 seconds. All of it witnessed first-hand and recorded by a group of bystanders, among them an expert martial artist who knows what unarmed combat techniques can do and a certified emergency medical technician who can tell when someone is medically dead.  Proving that Chauvin killed Floyd in the courtroom requires working with an intricate legal system that ultimately favors and rarely prosecutes the police. 

Medical examiners use five classifications when determining the manner of death, or how a person died: natural, accidental, suicide, homicide, or undetermined. The crux of the trial is on whether Chauvin committed homicide, which is defined as one person killing another person. Floyd did not die naturally of old age, and he did not kill himself. The charges—second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter—do not require the prosecution to prove whether or not Chauvin was trying to kill Floyd; to convict Chauvin, however, a unanimous jury must be persuaded beyond a reasonable doubt that the former officer’s actions, regardless of intent, caused Floyd’s death. In addition, because Chauvin was an on-duty officer, the jurors must agree that the killing was not justified. 

Over and over again, the twelve jurors have been shown what happened that day at the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in South Minneapolis. Collected from police body cameras, street surveillance cameras, and cell phones of concerned bystanders, the footage reveals: Floyd’s car and the drugs found inside it; his entrance into the Cup Foods corner store; his demeanor while inside the store; and his payment with a $20 bill. Suspecting the bill to be fake, a teenage store clerk considers replacing the fake with a real one from his own pocket. Thinking twice, he calls the police. 

Two core strategies have driven Chauvin’s defense. 

One: Encourage a doubtful mind with regard to homicide. Evidence of controlled substances and the COVID-19 virus in Floyd’s bloodstream, as shown in the autopsy report, may help sow the seeds of doubt. Since the decision of guilt or innocence must be agreed upon by all twelve jurors, if even one juror believes that Floyd died by any other manner than direct pressure from Chauvin’s knee, Judge Peter Cahill will call a mistrial. In other words: no murder or manslaughter conviction. 

Two: Argue that the use of force is justifiable under the law. To convince the jury, Chauvin’s team is painting the bystanders as an “angry and violent mob” and Floyd himself as a “large and dangerous” man so difficult to subdue that handcuffs and a single police officer were not sufficient. According to the defense, the situation escalated not because Chauvin used excessive or extreme measures but because as he applied the techniques he had been professionally trained to use, both Floyd and the crowd became increasingly more incensed and uncontrollable. From the defense’s point of view, Floyd died because the police officers themselves were at risk as they attempted to deal with a dangerous Black man and mounting threats of mob violence.

But lethal force should never be allowable on an unarmed person. The single use of a counterfeit bill is a misdemeanor that should have been ticketed, similar to a parking violation. Instead, Floyd was pinned to the ground with four armed officers using war zone killing tactics while desperate bystanders risked their own lives trying to stop them. But it’s too late to turn the clock back. The only way forward is through a justice system based on the motto “presumed innocent until proven guilty” in which even the most depraved criminal gets a fair trial.

Justifiable force as compassion and skillful means

Although the dharma prohibits killing, it is possible in extreme situations to interpret killing as an act of compassion and skillful means. A classic example in the Upayakausalya (“Skill in Means”) Sutra describes when the Buddha was a ship’s captain in a previous life, and out of wisdom and compassion—and with the rare insight of clairvoyance—he makes the difficult choice to kill a marauding pirate in order to save everyone else on the ship. While he violated the precepts, the Buddha’s mindset was clear and pure and he did not take a lower birth. 

Before May 2020, many more people would have probably accepted the story that despite the “bad optics” of Floyd’s murder, Chauvin did what police are entrusted to do: protect the public, viewed analogously to the actions of the Buddha as the ship’s captain. Is this narrative indicative of a pure and clear mindset? What would it take to foster a rare sense of clairvoyance in those who we entrust with the task of “public safety?” 

The fact is that on-duty police officers have shot and killed more than 5,000 people across the United States since 2015. A disproportionate number of those killed have been Black and Brown men. Over the past 15 years, only 35 officers have been convicted of murder or manslaughter. 

Here in the Twin Cities, it’s too soon to tell how things will turn out. The prosecution has offered meticulous evidence and precisely calibrated arguments. However, the defense has planted the seeds of a familiar morality tale in which Black people are natural criminals and police use justifiable violence to protect a mostly white public. What will State v. Chauvin reveal about America’s understanding of racism and social justice? In our next essay, we’ll discuss how we can engage our bodhisattva vows and push for justice through the courts, keeping in mind that the system is predicated on racism and wealth. 

The post Cause of Death: The Theories Behind State v. Chauvin appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

While mourning the life of Daunte Wright, yet another Black man killed by a Minnesota police officer, people in the Twin Cities are now waiting for a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial. Chauvin’s killing of George Floyd sparked massive, multigenerational peaceful protests, the burning and destruction of cities and neighborhoods, and citizen-led attacks against police and governmental structures, banks, and local businesses in and around the Twin Cities, helping to initiate a long-overdue 21st-century reckoning with the ugly and death-dealing reality of race and anti-Blackness in the United States. Without a doubt, hundreds of millions of people rightfully demand justice. 

But what if justice is not a solution? What if instead of placing all of our eggs in the basket of the American criminal justice system, we instead lean into the deep uncertainty and groundlessness of this moment in history, energized by a society that is moving toward a fuller, more comprehensive awareness of what needs to change? Ironically, I’m finding some peace that this perpetual state of unease is impermanent and, like all things, the result of infinite causes and conditions. Buddhism offers us this insight while things are, as Pema Chӧdrӧn might say, falling apart. This, considering the long and brutal history of injustice against Black people in the United States, is a good thing.

There are three potential outcomes to Derek Chauvin’s trial. The first is that Chauvin is found not guilty, either of second-degree unintentional murder or the lesser charges of third-degree murder or second-degree manslaughter. After deliberating, the jury might find that Chauvin was well within his rights to exercise deadly force in subduing Floyd while handcuffed and in a prone position with Chauvin’s knee on his back and neck for more than nine minutes. This outcome is the most likely outcome, and one that will allow Chauvin to go on about his life. Chauvin will no doubt be hated and reviled by many, but he will be able to travel, work, and commune with people of like mind, culture, and values. 

Those hurt and outraged by a not-guilty verdict will protest, organizing acts of civil unrest until their rage dissipates. People will continue to shout and chant and post slogans like Black Lives Matter! We will live life trauma-ghosted, carrying a deep and terrifying sense that another killing of an unarmed Black person can happen at any day and time. People hoping for justice will stand at the ready, like soldiers on a battlefield, waiting to be called back into the streets to protest another police killing. 

Sadly, such an outcome for Chauvin aligns with the outcomes of several police officers who have killed Black men in Minnesota, including Jeronimo Yanez, the officer who killed Philando Castile, a 28-year-old St. Paul native who was my first cousin’s first cousin. Or Jamar Clark, who at 24 was shot and killed by Minneapolis Police Officer Dustin Schwarze. No charges were filed against Schwarze nor another responding officer, Mark Ringgenberg, with Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman deciding against filing charges against the officers, even though bystanders say Clark was shot in the head while handcuffed. No charges in spite of the thousands of protestors, including me, my children, and neighbors occupying the 4th Precinct in North Minneapolis for several weeks demanding justice.

A second potential outcome is a “hung jury”—which means the jury will not be able to reach a verdict. In this situation, Chauvin will be released and able to resume his life; millions will organize and pressure for a retrial, which may or may not occur, and the nation will be left with a deep and pervading sense of unfinished business. We will hold our breath and clench our jaws and often live our lives tight with repressed rage. Underlying this vicarious sense of incompleteness, feelings of resentment and deep mistrust will simmer just below the boiling point until these emotions explode with yet another police shooting, and police officers will retain their right to use deadly force. 

The third outcome is that Chauvin is found guilty, and be sentenced to up to 40 years in state prison if he’s convicted of the maximum charge against him (second-degree murder). And, like other police officers who have killed Black people, he’s likely to be released early.   

In this case, George Floyd’s family and friends may experience a bit of peace commingled with grief, and perhaps some small, yet well-earned sense of relief. Protesters and organizers will feel vindicated that their protests and their convictions were meaningful and worthwhile, finding a renewed sense of faith in the legal system and continuing to struggle for what they believe is right. Communities, businesses, and neighborhoods will rebuild and many will feel the economic hardship and devastation was worth it. A horrifying page in history can now be turned. Many will believe that justice has been served and progress made. 

But in this last scenario—the best of all of the possible scenarios—the racial status quo will still be upheld. Police officers will still reserve the right to use deadly force to arrest, detain, or retaliate against those suspected of any crime—which means just about anyone and especially people who have dark skin. Black people like me.

It is for this reason that I experience a deep sense of hopelessness when it comes to the trials of police officers who have used lethal force against unarmed Black people. These laws that govern police behavior emerge from a society that makes it permissible for armed men to take the lives of Black people who make them feel threatened.

But even more specifically, they run against the first precept of Buddhism: “I undertake the training to refrain from harming any living being.” Until we as a society begin to deeply embrace and practice the spirit of non-harming and non-killing, Black people like Daunte Wright, Jamar Clark, George Floyd, and many others who are killed in and across this country will continue to die needlessly. People march for charges and convictions and rights. People march for Black life. But who marches for the principle of non-harming and non-killing? 

I have no hope and truly no significant emotional, political, or spiritual investment in the outcome of Chauvin’s trial. Only when there are laws passed with more, dare I say, peace-full and nonviolent sensibilities that make it unlawful for a police officer or anyone else, for that matter, kill another living being, will things change. (What if our law enforcement officers dispensed with “policing” humans and were encouraged instead to study and practice Thich Nhat Hanh’s elaboration on the first precept in his commentary on the Five Mindfulness Trainings of the Buddha: “I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, or in my way of life.”) In other words, there needs to be an all-encompassing cultural shift that is reflected in our laws and culture that makes it inexcusable for a human being to take the life of another human being. Only then will we see a dramatic decline in the killing of Black people, and specifically Black men. Collectively coming to such a determination, however, will take a very long time.

This moment provides a challenge for all of us who aspire toward a deeper sense of justice than the outcome of any individual trial. I understand that may not happen in my lifetime or my children’s lifetimes. Still, my faith in the impermanence of this moment gives me the confidence that an era of peace and nonviolence will surely one day be upon us. This insight gives me great peace.

The post Hopelessness and the Continued Use of Deadly Force appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

After a police officer killed George Floyd last summer, large-scale protests and riots erupted through the city of Minneapolis, and violence, which was often instigated by white supremacists, spread throughout our neighborhoods. More than 1,300 properties were destroyed in the mayhem, and 100 buildings were burned to the ground entirely (including the police department’s third precinct station house). The total cost of the damage was estimated at $350 million. 

In the months that followed, community activists put together plans (such as The People’s Budget) to prevent such destruction from happening again, and many more took part in protests and other forms of direct action to make sure that the people with the power to enact change could not ignore these proposals. Yet, as the murder trial of former officer Derek Chauvin began, the City of Minneapolis, rather than investing in the community and addressing the cause of the problem, was spending public funds—with a projected price tag of more than $1 million—on fortifying government buildings and bringing in thousands of additional law enforcement officers. This plan does not protect the residents of Minneapolis; it protects the city officials who were widely criticized for their slow and ineffective response to the destruction at the time and now are seeking to avoid a similar situation during the trials. 

Those of us invested in community activism can become angry and impatient when we contemplate how much money and resources city leaders are funneling into property protections and police. We can lash out in our thoughts and actions because, despite numerous community conversations, those in positions of power still don’t seem to “get it.” But this reactive energy will not help us. Our rage keeps us focused on what could have been rather than on building the capacity to be wise, kind, and tenacious— all mind states that this work requires.

It’s not easy to let go of these afflictive emotions and move onto the next challenge. But we can begin by recognizing that our frustration is not entirely the fault of the city officials who ignored us. They bear full responsibility for the pain that they have caused and will continue to cause the community by refusing to listen to its needs. But they are only partly to blame for our frustration, which is fed by our attachments to the outcome that we had imagined. 

The Buddha taught us that attachment fuels samsara, an endless cycle of suffering. He also taught that lessening those attachments—letting go of our need to cling to things that make us feel good or push away the things that make us feel bad—allows us to develop equanimity and act skillfully to bring an end to suffering in an ever-changing world. 

You have to believe in what you are doing because of your conviction that it is the right thing to do, not because you are attached to any tangible result in the world.

We can see that getting attached to the dream of the City of Minneapolis investing in a more holistic, humane, and sustainable approach to community anger about Floyd’s death is neither a wise nor effective course of action. City leaders have known that this moment would come, that the trials would take place here and stir up trauma for Black Minnesotans and everyone else. Stakeholders have had multiple chances to pursue other courses of action besides protecting property and increasing police presence. Holding onto our hopes that city officials will take proper action when all evidence suggests otherwise only sets us up for further disappointment and frustration. But facing reality about our current situation does not mean giving up on our future. It means putting aside this particular version of what the future can be in order to begin to imagine countless other possibilities. 

We don’t have to be upset or disappointed by the City’s relentless commitment to upholding the racial and economic status quo. We just have to keep working to envision and create a more equitable—and therefore beautiful—world, while at the same time leaving room to acknowledge and honor our completely valid sadness and rage. We have to keep pressing for equity, both within and outside the courts, knowing full well that we may never get it. You have to believe in what you are doing because of your conviction that it is the right thing to do, not because you are attached to any tangible result in the world. That might sound delusional, but it is more grounded than the alternative of ignoring how the world really works or giving up hope that things can change—despite the fact that, for better or worse, things will always change.

I would argue that this is, in essence, what the Buddha taught: That by getting intimate with the way things are, by facing the truth of our existence, we can actually be more present with the vagaries of present moment experience without getting confused or attached to them. 

Any student of social movements knows that the victories are small and infrequent, the losses large and everyday. To keep going, we have to be resilient, and we have to be nimble enough to change course when the situation demands it. In this context, attachment—holding onto what could or should have been—becomes just another impediment to doing the work of social change. We see this when we can’t step away from our organizing work to relax. We may be tempted to power through, clinging to our idea of what we should be doing, but a burned-out activist is less effective than a healthy one. We also see this when we allow our egos to lead when strategizing with friends, neighbors, and colleagues, and let our attachments to what we think should happen blind us to new possibilities. 

Likewise, when we become so frustrated by the endless cycle of investing in police rather than community, we believe we have no other choice but to react in anger and violence. These are the aftereffects of an attachment that leads to more suffering, not less—an unfortunate characteristic that is endemic in activist and community circles. 

We know what we have to do, but following through is a separate challenge. How do we care deeply about something without getting caught up in it? How do we show up to fight for George Floyd and all the other Black and Brown citizens murdered by police without becoming overwrought, burned out, or bitter? And how do we begin to take responsibility for our own actions, and our own minds and hearts that have led us to them? 

The Buddha didn’t just teach about the cause of suffering (that is, attachments). He also taught us how to reduce and bring an end to that suffering—through a regular dharma practice that helps us to stop clinging to our thoughts and feelings. By locating feelings in the body, we can lessen our attachments and find equanimity. This teaching and practice can help us navigate the trials, as well as the responses to them from police and city officials. And we can also keep it in mind when it comes to positive change, too. 

The Buddha said that everything we need to guide us on this path to being fuller, more compassionate human beings is right here in the body. Right now. The tightness of the shoulder blades. The clench of the jaw. The eagerness of the fingers. The intelligence of the ears. There is so much we can learn from just being with the body in the present moment, but most of the time we are too distracted by our thoughts, stories, and obsessions to notice. 

We can begin to train ourselves to get interested in the body, our first and best teacher, by establishing a mindfulness practice. Sitting or walking meditation, for example, can help us see the loop of thoughts running through our minds that often stop us from experiencing everything the moment has to offer: the banality, the awe, the pain, and yes, the joy. These practices show us the futility and, ultimately, the pain of attachment. They also show us a way through and around suffering: letting go. Surrendering to what our senses are showing us now, in order to learn, be and do better for all beings. Even as the buildings are burning down the street, the white nationalists are terrorizing your neighborhood, and city leaders are calling for more barbed wire, I have discovered that one can still be whole, moment to moment. We can hold it all: anger, fear, doubt, anxiety—letting it move through us rather than move us. We can breathe in, breathe out, wherever we are, sensing the freedom of a gathered mind and heart. A heart held up, fortified not by soldiers or fences but an expansive commitment to justice.

The post Showing Up Without Burning Out  appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Ever since Rodney King in 1991 was mercilessly beaten by several Los Angeles police officers, the world has known that police who brutalize or kill unarmed Black people in the US are unlikely to be found guilty of their crimes. The fact that the nation for thirty years has watched visual and audio documentation of police perpetrating violence with impunity most certainly emboldened the cops who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. What else in our culture could explain an officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, in broad daylight, surrounded by many witnesses with cameras pleading with the officer to release Floyd as he struggled to breathe? 

Floyd’s death and the response to it—peaceful and destructive protests calling for the officers involved to be arrested and charged—were predictable. 

It seems to be an endless cycle, but I believe we can do better. 

That’s why my colleagues and I have created the Buddhist Justice Reporter: The George Floyd Trials, an engaged dharma practice project that may offer a constructive interruption and inject a fierce and wise compassion into all of this. We see an opportunity to bear witness to the existential plight of the policing of Black people, equip Buddhist activists with insights into criminal law and the Constitution, and constructively engage in society—all guided by compassion for our collective suffering. And we intend to do this by writing about the trial of the police officer charged with Floyd’s murder.  

This project began with Floyd’s death, which happened as Cheryl A. Giles and I were putting the finishing touches on our anthology, Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom. We asked our publisher to delay the book’s production while we wrote something in honor of his life. About a month later, I wrote an open letter to BIPOC Buddhist communities in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area where George Floyd was killed and where I was living at the time. I wrote that I had been changed by this attack, and that I felt we needed a different kind of sangha to address BIPOC Buddhist practitioners’ wholesome desire to live and work for justice. I suggested that there were some principles we might consider including being committed to collective wisdom, collective action, freedom, and justice, as well as choosing or creating our own bodhisattva archetypes for inspiration. 

Others expressed interest, too, and we eventually became a group of ten people who call themselves the Order of Freedom. We’re multicultural, multiracial, and come from the Insight Meditation and Zen traditions. As we got to know one another, we learned that we shared a passion for and experience in writing and critical analysis in addition to our concerns about racism, injustice, and healing. We come from different fields—law, academia, psychotherapy, art, fundraising—but all of us are advocates. 

We found that Buddhist practitioners, by and large, have an ambivalence toward engaging in justice-making endeavors, yet they tend to support bearing witness to suffering. We felt we needed to be a different kind of engaged Buddhist group, trusting in our own experiences as people of color irrespective of whether Buddhist texts or practices address our specific existential concerns. 

We have invited Buddhist practitioners who are writers and lawyers to help us be more fully resourced for watching, reporting, and offering legal and Buddhist analysis regarding the trials. And we’ve partnered with Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, to publish our writing. We’ve also received support from Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis, a place that miraculously (or mysteriously) was left untouched amid the property damage that resulted after Floyd was killed, as well as the Kataly Foundation. 

Recently, while I was sitting with the deaths of Floyd and all those stricken by COVID-19, Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, came to me in the image of Ida B. Wells (1862–1931), one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As a journalist, Wells made it her mission to write and publish about the lynchings of Black people by white mobs. She wrote:

In some of these cases the mob affects to believe in the Negro’s guilt. The world is told that the white woman in the case identities him or the prisoner “confesses.” But in the lynching which took place in Barnwell County, South Carolina, April 24, 1893, the mob’s victim, John Peterson, escaped and placed himself under Governor [Benjamin] Tillman’s protection; not only did he declare his innocence, but offered to prove an alibi, by white witnesses. Before his witnesses could be brought, the mob arrived at the Governor’s mansion and demanded the prisoner. He was given up, and although the white woman in the case said he was not the man, he was hanged 24 hours after, and over a thousand bullets fired into his body, on the declaration that “a crime had been committed and someone had to hang for it.” (from Ida: In Her Own Words).

This is our legacy. Wells was a bodhisattva, in the sense that she refused to turn away from the brutality of white supremacy. She chose to tell the truth in its gory detail, and she worked to create an organization that would advance human rights and dignity of Black people. 

We’re calling this project Buddhist Justice Reporter: The George Floyd Trials not because Floyd himself is on trial, for he now resides with the saints, but because the trials are really about whether Black people should continue to be treated by the state as they have been for centuries. When a police officer kills an unarmed person, that officer has essentially put them on trial, convicted them of being guilty without due process of law, and has meted out a cruel and unusual public punishment of a death penalty. We choose to use Floyd’s name, rather than the police officers’ names, to bring attention to him and how he represents the plight of Black and Brown people in the US. 

We hope you will join us during these trials. 

♦

You can learn more about Buddhist Justice Reporter: The George Floyd Trials on our website, www.buddhistjustice.com, and see our writing on Trike Daily. You can offer dana to our project through Common Ground Meditation Center. Starting on March 29, we’ll be holding Truth and Justice Vigils for Bearing Witness, Cultivating Courage, and Healing Our Collective Trauma, led by Stacy McClendon, and fellow African-descended Buddhist teachers and scholars. You can learn more about the vigils on the Buddhist Justice Reporter website. 

The post Buddhist Justice Reporter and the George Floyd Trials appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.