After reading Penny Red’s great post Life-Hacks of the Poor and Aimless , I have some words.
First. Yes I consider myself a progressive, a anarcho-socialist, and a buddhist. I am also an old white guy, who has played the game on the easy setting my whole life. Not that it felt easy to me, but that daily life, school, work, love, social interactions, all came with the privilege of being a white male. This is why I pay close attention to the voices of women, people of color, the homeless, the poor. It is their voices and experiences that inform this post.
“The state wants you to be overwhelmed. They want you exhausted.”
The state will give you spectacle after spectacle to keep you confused and helpless. They will tell you it is your fault. They will charge you for the technological gadgets that keep you quiescent, and running away from human mutual aid. They will pit men against women, blacks against hispanics, poor against rich, straight against queer. To segregate you into smaller and smaller affinity groups, thus easier for them to manipulate and disavow.
“Would you hit your left hand with a hammer, to make your right hand feel better! Just as your left hand is connected to your right hand, so all of us are deeply connected.”
The first days of a better nation are here. Love is not a noun, it is a verb, action moves the world. Yes we must act. We must speak out. We must not turn away into nihilism, and or some self-help parody of caring for ourselves. Yet, how do we do this?
For me, it is the practice of western Buddhism. Not in any religious sense, but in the day to day practice of clearly looking at what is going on. Clearly seeing and feeling what I can do next that will help. I keep coming back to mutual aid, the idea that we are all in this together. That we must not buy into the cycle of self-hate, and distrust of others. This takes work. It is so easy to be distracted, to check twitter one more time. To follow our addictions into self-loathing.
Yes just sitting down, doing nothing for a while. Paying close attention to how my mind works. Noticing my mind’s capacity to delude itself. Taking a breath. Letting it go. On and on. This has been for years my self-care, and yes it has helped. To not react to the latest outrage, but to be aware of it, seeing its cause and effect. Then taking action to support those who will fight against it. It is what I call mindful resistance. Here is one insight that might seem strange, “Hope can be a hinderance.”
“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact your work will be apparently worthless and achieve no result at all, if not perhaps at times bring about its opposite. As you get used to this, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness and the truth of the work itself.”
~ Thomas Merton
Yet actions do make a difference. I am the guy you see at protests that brings spray bottles of liquid antacid and water. I am the guy who makes sure that there is day care at the organizing meeting. I am the guy handing out water and protein bars on the march. I am the guy who lets other voices do the talking. These actions spring directly from my experiences of sitting still and just being a human. To take the small actions that make a difference. Without the hope that any of these will hasten the fall of late capitalism.
Mindful resistance, is to act knowing that anger is a great motivating feeling, but that it burns bright, and burns out. That “for the benefit of all”, is not just a slogan, but a stance in the world. A central place from which to feel and act. To be resilient and supple in the face of tyranny and fear, is hard work. It requires a motive beyond anger and hate. It can be achieved. For me, the work of sitting, breathing, and looking deeply into what makes me human, is vital to the struggle ahead.
Yet actions do make a difference. I am the guy you see at protests that brings spray bottles of liquid antacid and water. I am the guy who makes sure that there is day care at the organizing meeting. I am the guy handing out water and protein bars on the march. I am the guy who lets other voices do the talking. These actions spring directly from my experiences of sitting still and just being a human. To take the small actions that make a difference. Without the hope that any of these will hasten the fall of late capitalism.
Mindful resistance, is to act knowing that anger is a great motivating feeling, but that it burns bright, and burns out. That “for the benefit of all”, is not just a slogan, but a stance in the world. A central place from which to feel and act. To be resilient and supple in the face of tyranny and fear, is hard work. It requires a motive beyond anger and hate. It can be achieved. For me, the work of sitting, breathing, and looking deeply into what makes me human, is vital to the struggle ahead.
“Do not worry if the Right Action is not yet clear to you. Wait in the unknowing with mindfulness and a clear heart. Soon the right time will come and you will know to stand up. I will meet you there.”
Corlin