Settling Debts

Twelve years ago I quit my job, packed my belongings and moved back home to complete my education. I had a new baby and no savings... just a final paycheck from a clerical job that didn't buy many diapers. My parents supported me, and within a few months I landed a full-time job. Soon afterwards I started taking night classes. I'd gotten in trouble with American Express during my first college career, so at the time the only credit card I could get extended a very lean $250.00 line of credit. The limit was small enough to force me to use it responsibly. A year later, I had two cards. A few years later I had three, then four. I paid my bills on time, but I racked up debts... the majority of them the year I fled the nest for the second time. I'd only lived on my own twice before for brief periods on campus when I was spared the inconvenience of randomly assigned roomates. At other times, my living quarters were populated with friends. Finally, I found myself on my own... independent... or so I thought.

I finished school and I landed a decent job. I had enough money coming in to cover basic living expenses and enough left over for a few extras. I had habits that I considered frugal, but I racked up an unreasonable amount of credit card debt to buy furniture and household "necessities" and I lived paycheck to paycheck. In the beginning, it seemed okay. In previous years I thought I would never be on my own again, and just getting to that point was enough. I could breathe again. But as the months and years went by and I didn't seem to be able to chip away at my debt in any way that seemed significant, I decided it was time to change.

Over the past two years I've been engaged in a serious debt reduction program. I grew tired of paying rent and bills every month still feeling I wasn't getting anywhere. I'd been working full-time for a few years and I still had no significant savings... surely not enough put away to sustain the loss of my job for any extended period. Though my daughter was young at the time, college expenses were on my mind. I started to think seriously about the possibility of financial freedom. I started to make steps to turn the possibility into reality, and I'm finally starting to see the beginning of the end of my co-dependent, addictive relationship with credit cards and the beginning of a new focus on saving and living with less.

I'm not patting myself on the back. Not yet.

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited about the fact that I just paid off my car and I'm excited that at the end of the month I will have no credit card debt. But something else happened as I've watched myself take the necessary steps to get to this point... I watched my patterns. I watched how much my spending was driven by feelings of discomfort, inadequacy, or anxiety. I noticed how I tend to try to spend my way out of misery.

The ironic thing is that I'd had such deep judgements about the stereotypical female shopaholic who racks up debt for clothes, shoes, makeup, and other girlie things. I tried to lie to myself and convince myself that since the things I was consuming were more "enlightened" or geeky (books, yoga DVDs, dharma materials, technology, educational materials, things like that) I was somehow better than those girls. I came to realize that the problem (if there is a problem) is in how we consume, not in what we consume. I've learned to stop digging a deep hole, but the pattern hasn't left me completely. There is still more work to do.

I've thought a lot about myself and my responsibility in the global economic crisis that we can't seem to escape hearing about or fretting over on a daily basis. While I didn't go out and try to buy a house with my finances as they were, I didn't have the most responsible habits... and like those who lived during the roaring twenties, I didn't imagine that the economic prosperity that could be realized in this country would ever come to a screeching halt. Not again. I thought I had plenty of time to resolve my financial woes because I depended on the fact that the economy would just keep chugging along as it had been. Hadn't we learned from history? Weren't there smarter people than me out there making sure we wouldn't find ourselves in a position where we'd be destined to repeat it?

Maybe the solution to this crisis (and any crisis) lies with the fact that we, all of us in this human realm, have unskillful habits that we need to break. Maybe those people out there who work in the financial sector are smarter than I am about finance... but if they are plagued by the same unskillful habits that I am, their knowledge couldn't possibly make a damned bit of difference. I'm not an openly emotional person, but I am an emotional person. And time and time again I let my emotional response drive me. I find that I can be derailed or completely stopped (or driven and completely distracted) by nothing more than a feeling. And the custodians of the financial world, they are just like me. That is an unsettling, a sobering, a frightening thought.

I used to be embarrassed by my greed, by the ceaseless itch of craving that I feel when I'm driven to consume something, anything. In light of current circumstances, both personally and globally, I realize that I don't have time to be embarrassed, and I can tie this to my attitude towards my practice... an attitude that is shifting. When I say "I don't have time," I don't mean it's a good idea to ignore the feeling, stuff it down and pretend to be altruistic and giving so as not to see the greed that arises in me so I don't have to feel all uncomfortable about it. What I mean, is that I don't have time to waste an opportunity to use whatever feeling arises to conquer the five hindrances or to break the unskillful habit patterns that bind me.

More than anything, we all need to wake up and own how our personal habits and conditioned responses get us into trouble... and how they impact what I like to call the big four—self, money, relationships and the wider world. And we need to figure out for ourselves how to stop wallowing, stop avoiding, and stop anesthetizing long enough to find within ourselves just enough courage to look at our habits and just enough willingness to explore ways to drop those that are unskillful.

I'm starting to see this financial crisis in a different light. It's not (just) about money. It's about who we are as human beings at the core. And while we look to President Obama and the new administration for a quick and easy fix, some suggest there is a spiritual solution to the problem—a solution that lies squarely in our own laps.

Entitlement

Times are tough in Metro Detroit. I live in a community that has been painfully acquainted with corporate restructuring, mass lay-offs, mandatory vacation time, and buy-outs. These terms make up a partial list of corporate-speak for a struggling economic climate--they are terms that have personal meaning for many who work and live in Southeast Michigan.

Perhaps it's ironic. The same industry that placed Detroit in the international spotlight faces crippling conditions that are challenging the most seasoned business leaders. Many families in this region face bankruptcy and foreclosure, and the housing market has stalled. Companies are filing for bankruptcy alongside the employees they've been forced to cast aside. Over time, the landscape of the city has changed for the worse, and though some might argue there have been signs of improvement, some city residents feel they are fundamentally ignored. These are serious problems that require the cooperation and innovation of the business community, government officials and citizens at large. The seriousness of the situation in Detroit makes recent news more disheartening than people who live here can adequately express.

It is national news. The mayor of Detroit is embroiled in a scandal the depth and breadth of which has yet to be revealed. So far, we have read evidence that he committed perjury in a whistleblower lawsuit brought by well-regarded police officers who claimed they were wrongfully terminated. We have read reports that suggest that the mayor and then chief of staff Beatty fired these gentlemen to cover up their personal sexual relationship--a relationship they both lied about on the witness stand. Allegations continue to surface on other issues from city contracts to interference with a murder investigation.

For news agencies, it's all there. Sex, lies, and videotape. 

Several tapes that have aired since this scandal broke continue to weigh on me. In one, the mayor (after hiding from the media for nearly a week) speaks to the city from his church with his wife at his side. He spoke of "deeply personal" issues. He spoke of the pain of his wife and children and the pain of residents of the City of Detroit. He said he was sorry, but for legal reasons couldn't elaborate.

Later in a radio interview, he said he felt he had been "called by God" to be the mayor of Detroit. He's said he won't quit on the citizens. He refuses to consider resigning as Spitzer did and can't understand why many feel he should. To make matters worse, he continues to ratchet up racially charged rhetoric that further divides a region that can't survive in a divided state.

There is not one verse in the Dhammapada that couldn't be applied to this situation in some way.

As I think about it and I think about how disturbed I am by attitudes of entitlement in general, and this case in particular, I turned to the Dhammapada for some insight. What consitutes an attitude of entitlement? The absence of humility? The belief that wrong is right because of one's own specialness? The belief that one deserves to be judged by standards separate and apart from the everyday person. What might the Dhammapada offer to one who is plagued by this attitude? I think today's Daily Dharma says it all.

I, Too

On the drive home from work today, I was reminded of a poem by Langston Hughes. I was listening to the Mitch Albom show. He was playing audio clips from Donny Deutsch's  recent interview of Ann Coulter on The Big Idea and asking, "Where is the outrage?"

Here's an abbreviated version of the exchange:

Deutch: If you had your way ... and your dreams, which are genuine, came true ... what would this country look like?"

Coulter: "It would look like New York City during the [2004] Republican National Convention. In fact, that's what I think heaven is going to look like. People were happy. They're Christian. They're tolerant. They defend America."

Deutsch: "It would be better if we were all Christian?"

Coulter: "Yes."

Deutsch: "[Y]ou said we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians,"

Coulter: "Yes."

When pressed by Deutsch regarding whether she wanted to be like "the head of Iran" and "wipe Israel off the Earth," Coulter stated: "No, we just want Jews to be perfected."

Mitch went on to comment about the wave of attention and the number of media outlets that latched on to Don Imus and his ignorant remarks about members of the Rutgers Women's Basketball team. I suppose his point was that Coulter's comments—equally ignorant and equally charged, if not more so—deserve at least the same level of attention and outrage as those uttered by Imus.

Perhaps outrage is appropriate. But moving beyond the emotional response,  perhaps something more is required. Perhaps people who claim to love America need to be reminded when their words and views are in direct conflict with the principles on which this country was founded. Ironically, the same first amendment that grants individuals the right to stand up and make inflammatory, outrageous and ignorant statements on television, also promises the right to freedom of religion and prohibits the establishment of the national religion that Coulter desires.

In yesterday's Daily Dharma, I quoted from The Sutra on the Eight Realizations of Great Beings. In the second realization, it says:

All hardships in daily life arise from greed and desire.

Greed and desire are the forces within us that cause us to want the world to be as we are. We grasp for comfort, and often comfort comes in the form of being surrounded by people who don't push our buttons, who don't challenge our deeply held beliefs, who don't suggest that there is any way to live a proper life, save our own. But those of us who remember our civics lessons know that America was never intended to be that place. What kind of America would we live in if everyone understood and accepted that fact?

What do we do, as Buddhists, when confronted with remarks such as these? Do we dissent? Do we rally against them? Do we protest? Do we denounce? Perhaps the challenge is to become like the Bodhisattva Wondrous Sound and speak to the speaker with clarity and compassion in words she can understand.

Can You Feel Compassion for a Murderer?

My heart goes out to the students, faculty and staff of Virginia Tech. I sit in front of my television watching CNN and I cannot find the words to describe the disbelief I am confronted with as I sit with the fact that this did happen. Thirty-two people are dead.

I was thinking tonight... We spend more time in school studying fiction than we do studying psychology or behavioral science. From an early age, we learn that where there is a protagonist, there is an antagonist. We are taught to seek them out, and we are taught to view story in this way. Something happens to the protagonist. The story is about what happens to this character, often what is done to her by the antagonist. We tend to dislike the antagonist. We tend to see him as the reason why everything is in disarray in the protagonist's life.

Today, even the news is presented using the techniques of fiction. The best editors write compelling arguments for why this is and often should be the case. They speak of the reader's attention span, the need for detail, the need to be captured. In a media-rich world, the written word has stiff competition. Text must sing, tap dance, and juggle at the same time to get attention.

On a day like today, a week after this terrible tragedy, I wonder. I wonder if we will look at what happened and count thirty-three casualties of this incident. I wonder if we can summon compassion for a murderer.

I am not excusing or glossing over what Cho Seung-Hui did. It was the terrible act of a disturbed individual who lacked coping skills. I'm wondering about the wisdom in framing this incident in the stark monochromes of black and white. I'm wondering if viewing this through an us vs. him lens will get us anywhere. If these tragedies tell us anything, perhaps they tell us that we are not disconnected. There is no "that's his problem."

Tracy Chapman is always on my mp3 player. Back in 1992 she released an album called Matters of the Heart. One of the cuts on this album ends with these lyrics:

Before you can raise your eyes to read
The writing on the wall
Bang bang bang
He'll shoot you down

Before you can bridge the gulf between
And embrace him in your arms
Bang bang bang
He'll shoot you down

I, with the world, am still processing this. But I don't believe we can throw away Cho Seung-Hui like the garbage we set at curbside, pitch down a chute or toss in a dumpster. He was a human being with a heart, a troubled heart, and a family who (I would imagine) is equally devastated.

On Being A Buddhist Parent at Christmas

This time last year, I was chided by a girlfriend for not having a Christmas tree. She looked at my daughter and said, "Poor baby... you are so deprived."

This afternoon, one of the members of my parents church called and asked if my daughter could be in the Christmas program. Maybe she hasn't noticed the fact that we haven't attended there in over two years. Maybe my mother put her up to it because she hates not seeing her granddaughter on stage in a cute red or green dress reciting the lines of a Christmas speech. I've had numerous discussions with my parents about how I'm doing a disservice to my daughter by taking her to a Zen temple every week.

"All they do is play," my father shakes his head. "At our church she would be given opportunities to do things... to join in the service... to stand in front of people and speak... to sing in the choir. These are important skills for young people to learn." (Nevermind the fact that my daughter is wrapping up her participation in the school play this week, which I would say is comparable).

My parents know that we practice Buddhism. They know that we've been going to Still Point for a couple of years. They know that we are members there. But the attempts to make me feel guilty somehow, to make me feel like a "bad parent" because I choose to be Buddhist don't stop. Perhaps they never will.

I get tired of the distance I see between the "true meaning of Christmas" and the commercial message of Santa Claus. You've been good this year? Let me reward you with a bunch of toys you won't play with once the afterglow wears off. You've been bad this year? No GameBoy for you.

My daughter made a Christmas list this year. We talked about it. I told her how I felt about it.

"We've got to stop feeling like we have to have more and more things to make us happy. You have a room full of past Christmas gifts that you don't play with, things that you will never use. This year I want to use the holidays... the time we have off from school and work to get rid of things. Think about who could use the stuff you don't play with anymore... Like the time you were in the hospital and they had all those toys and books for you. Maybe you could give some things to the hospital. I'm not going to pull the plug on Christmas completely, but don't expect to hit the toy lottery on the 25th."

I wonder if I'm sending a mixed message by exchanging gifts at all. It is impossible to be in my family without Christmas, though.

I'd like to hear from other parents (really anyone who has an opinion or a thought to share). Am I the only one who goes through this with my family? How do you deal with being Buddhist at Christmas wit your children? Do you have a tree? Do you have Christmas decorations? Do you exchange gifts? I've heard that some communities celebrate Bodhi day in a manner somewhat similar to Christmas... that gifts are exchanged. Is this true for your community?

Lest We Forget

It seems like a lifetime ago, but I was robbed and sexually assaulted by a man who had AIDS. He was drugged out and broke, needing a fix. He was a stranger to me. But when I later saw him on the street and called the police, when I completed the visual and the voice line up, when I met with the attorney and the detective and told them my story for the 100th time, they told me he had AIDS.

AIDS became very real for me that day. It hit home in ways that it hadn't quite hit me before. And in certain ways, I've never been the same. I knew how lucky I was to walk away from an experience like that HIV negative. I also knew that people all around me were dying. People were losing loved ones. It broke my heart. It still does.

Today I was moved by these blog entries by Terrence and J, and I thought about someone I loved who lost his mother, and someone else I loved who lost his father. I thought about the alarming rates at which people in the Black community continue to contract the disease, and I thought about the terrifying months I spent waiting for the results of my HIV test.

AIDS is real people. Be mindful.

Friendly Dragon made some valid points in response to my last post:

We tend to 'demonize' disease want to 'cure' aids, cancer - whatever by 'doing battle' with them. Is it not a vain aspiration to believe we can fix samsara? Old age, sickness and death are natural phenomena. The cause of death is birth. We all die.

Her words reminded me of Buddha's words quoted in the Dalai Lama's book Advice on Dying:

A place to stay untouched by death
Does not exist.
It does not exist in space, it does not exist in
   the ocean,
Nor if you stay in the middle of a mountain.

[... from pg. 40]

These are truths we cannot avoid even if we try. Suffering and Impermanence surround us. And while Buddha taught us these things, he never suggested that we should throw our hands in the air when we cross paths with people who are sick or suffering. Buddha taught by example that we should care for the sick and dying... that we should do whatever we can to help them. Buddhists understand that they will grow old and die, but they don't deny themselves medicine or medical treatment to speed along the process.

That some people right now, every day, choose to apply Right Action and Right Effort towards a cure for AIDS is not vanity. It is service. It is compassion. One medicine won't cure all of the ills in the world, but if it could help alleviate some suffering where is the wrong in that? If wanting a cure for AIDS is greedy and grasping, maybe I'm just greedy and grasping. I want to see a cure for AIDS in my lifetime. And I am not alone.

Where Are We With HIV/AIDS?

There used to be a time when you couldn't turn on the television without hearing about it. I'm talking about HIV and AIDS. First, it was a quiet disease attacking (or so it seemed) a specific community... the community of gay men. As the disease reached out to more "mainstream" audiences, everyone started to get very concerned. AIDS became very real for our country when people who weren't "supposed" to get it started getting it. For a while, it was front page news. Everybody was talking about it. Everybody was concerned about research and development. What new superdrugs were being developed to attack what seemed un-attackable?

It spilled over from hospitals, clinics, hospices and research labs into theaters, exhibits, poems, and music. It hit popular culture square in the head and it didn't stop there. Prevention seemed a primary concern. Education about HIV/AIDS and how not to get it became paramount. Kids in schools across the country sniggered and elbowed each other as their red-faced teachers talked about safe sex. Some parents were outraged. Others were relieved.

Yesterday I saw an afternoon matinee of RENT with a group of girlfriends. I never had an opportunity to see it on stage, so I was really looking forward to it. I admit it, I like musicals. But I really didn't know what it was all about. I didn't know the storyline. A few weeks before the premiere, I started to get curious. I read a brief history on Wikipedia, and understood its ties to La Boheme. I listened to them talk about the upcoming movie on Mitch Albom, and I think (sorry Mitch if I'm misquoting or misrepresenting you) I remember Mitch saying something about Rent being yesterday's news... suggesting that it's heyday had passed.

As I sat in the theater, I thought that nothing could be further from the truth. I think we really need RENT today. We need to be reminded that there is still an AIDS epidemic. We need to be reminded that there are still human beings whose lives are touched then forever altered by this disease. We still need to work on removing the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. There is still such a distinction between how we treat people with cancer and how we treat people with AIDS. There is still too much judgment, too little compassion. We need to be reminded that no matter what we are up against, we still need to love, to connect, to have a little help from our friends.

I loved the characters in this story. I think I loved Angel the most because she was glam, fun, happy compassionate, giving and downright lovable despite everything she was going through. I loved her relationship with Collins. I also loved Collins because he was played by Jesse L. Martin who I have had a serious crush on since he played Dr. Greg on Ally McBeal. I loved that the gay and lesbian people in this movie got to be gay and lesbian people... characters with depth and dimension, not the stereotypical caricatures we often see.

I need to ask a question. Is it just me, or are we less concerned about HIV/AIDS today than we were 10 or 20 years ago? Is it just me, or has this issue quietly receeded into the background? There is still plenty of room for concern. What it feels like to me is that there is a lack of engagement with the issue, and that lack of engagement is hurting people.

I used to be pretty active with an HIV/AIDS prevention program in Detroit. Seeing RENT reminds me that there is still work to do for those who will do it.

Making the Impermanent Permanent

Browsing the Buddhism News Feed, I came across this article that caught my eye. It contains one Relgion reporter's reflections about a recent visit to the Body Worlds exhibit in Philly. I guess I'm just late or out of touch because I hadn't heard of the exhibit or the plastination process that makes it possible. Says Weiss:

This will be old news for some of you, I’m sure. The exhibit has been around in one form or another for about 10 years. It’s the creation of German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, who figured out how to “plasticinate” dead bodies. What he has done is take 200 donated human corpses and preserve them with his technique in a way that leaves the tissues intact but with every cell completely sheathed in plastic. Muscles look a bit like beef jerky. Organs are more pallid than their fresh counterparts, but retain the exact shape and size they did in life.

The original exhibit can be seen in Philly until April 23, 2006 at the Franklin Institute Science Museum. Version 2 is showing in Toronto through February 6, 2006 at the Ontario Science Center.

I Don't Know What to Do With This

A Thai monk, center, looks at the ruins of a temple burnt by suspected Muslim separatists in Pattani Province, south of Bangkok, Sunday, Oct. 16, 2005. About 20 suspected Muslim separatists stormed a monastery, hacked an elderly Buddhist monk to death and fatally shot two temple boys Sunday in southern Thailand, police said. Six other people were killed in separate incidents across Thailand's three southernmost provinces, where more than 1,000 people have died in an insurgency that flared early last year.

[...from the Buddhist Channel article Monk, Temple Boys Murdered found here]

So, I don't know what to do with this. I will chant. I will bow. But I can't fix my brain around the senselessness of this.

A Final Word on Bennett

Jeff joined the conversation last week and I drafted this post. I just forgot to come back and post it. The Bennett issue was still on my mind because I still had some comments I wanted to make in response to statements made on other Buddhist Blogs. I refrained from making the comments because it seemed the conversation was over and I didn't want to feel like I was "beating a dead horse." But with Jeff's recent toss into the hat, I'm going to conclude my comments on Bennett, et. al.

First, I want to address Nacho's comments found in responses to his latest post on the issue, More on Bennett:

What we've seen is a dismissal of the remarks as not worth our time or outrage -- by dismissing that the guy could have truly meant that. What is forgotten is that the damage is done even if not intended. Such a dismissal has not come from black people, or others who have suffered discrimination, either. It cuts way too close for us to dismiss them. If anything, the dismissal by the black writers I have read that have commented, has been the kind of "what else is new?" The dismissal does not make them innocuous. It makes them even more insidious, it is a disregard for the feelings of others and for the potential consequences of those words.

"What else is new?" is a question that nicely sums up the reaction of most Black people when racist or stereotypical statements are made about Black people. We are not surprised. It is business as usual. This does not mean that we expect these statements from every non-Black person in the world. This does not mean that we are not disgusted when public figures (or any other figures) make these statements. We simply bump up against racism in our daily lives. We might not have fire hoses or dogs turned upon us, but we share common experiences that remind us that racism is alive and well. We know this intimately, and we don't need a pundit's public statement to remind us. Terrence already made this point, so I'll quote him:

Stop the next half a dozen black folks you meed on the street, and ask any of them if they’ve ever been suspected of being a criminal or treated like one for no other reason but their race — whether it’s being placed in handcuffs and put in jail or just being watched closely while shopping at the mall — and I bet you three or four of them will say that they have experienced just that.

I have to say, I'm still intrigued and slightly curious about Nacho's call for an apology. Personally, I am not naive enough to believe that I can coerce or pressure people who make these statements to apologize... I don't even want the apology. What I come to understand is that I am not in that person's circle of concern and no amount of outrage is going to put me inside their circle of concern.

The defense of Bennett's statement is just politics as usual. The belief is that such admissions will weaken the party, and no one wants to do that when election season is around the corner (and it always is).

As Buddhists, we are taught to eat all blame, so the statement "I was wrong," is a powerful statement and a sign of inner strength. Unfortunately, that line of thinking  does not permeate politics as it permeates Buddhist discourse or ways of being.

Nacho seems to be looking at this through the lens "You're either a part of the solution or you're part of the problem" and is (quite passionately) trying to be part of the solution. I applaud his motives. But the sum of his argument is the belief that people need to change. They need to change what they say. They need to change what they believe. They need to change how they view and respond to matters of race. They need to "know better." So I want to ask him What changes people? I would pose the same question in response to the Diversity Trainings he posted weeks ago.

People who care about diversity don't need mindfulness trainings on diversity. They naturally respond to people and events around them in ways that promote and celebrate diversity because it matters to them. For people like this, putting diversity trainings on paper is like preaching to the choir. The question becomes how do you get someone who doesn't care about diversity to care? How do you get someone who doesn't like black people to care when they offend black people?

People don't change because we want them to. People change because they choose to.

My next post on emptiness will include the following quote from http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/wisdom_emptiness.html

I can change the world, if I start with my own mind.

Yes, I think there is a place for what people are calling Engaged Buddhism. I also think that from a Buddhist perspective we understand that our power lies in our own laps. I could be out there “fighting the power” and making a lot of noise about who and what needs to change when, where, how and why. But first I have to take responsibility. I think uncovering where and how the issues manifest in my own mind is a good place to start.

I understand where Jeff is coming from:

Stop externalizing racism: it is truly “inside” all of us to the degree that we participate in activities that foster and sustain racial oppression. Americans are pretty good with Right Attitude. But when it comes to Right Action, there is a sad unwillingness to acknowledge the complexity of racial issues and what may be needed to address them.

We all need to own up to our own hypocrisy. Whether it comes into play through our politics, through an indifference to certain issues, through our actions, through our lack of action, or even through attitudes buried in the store consciousness that sometimes see the light, we need to own up and take responsibility if we really want to do something to eradicate the issue. Jeff makes a valid point... clinging to the fact that we don't purport racist attitudes while we support policies that prolong racial oppression only carries us 1/8th of the way.