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"Meditation is not just about techniques and exercises to reduce stress and increase efficiency. It is about responsibility to awaken positive energy in the world. To uphold Dharma is to know our responsibility as serious meditation practitioners. We no longer can just care about ourselves. We are responsible for the whole." - Dena Merriam - Future of Dharma in America gathering
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The Future of Dharma in America
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Bottom Row L-R Anuradha Choudhry, Monique Schubert, Swami Omkarananda, Carolyn Rivers, Dena Merriam, Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, Ven. Chang Ji, Marianne Marstrand, Richard Lenson Top Row Standing L-R Pastor Naron Tillman, Swami Atmarupananda, Jana Long, Henk Brandt, Acarya Mangalananda, Sraddhalu Ranade, Gopal Patel, Robert Toth, Ven. Tenzin Tsephel, Perusha Hickson, Sensei Shugen Arnold, Jampal Namgyal, Zarko Andricevic, Alfred Tolle, Yuko Tolle, Melvin McLeod, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
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The Future of Dharma in America retreat was organized by the Contemplative Alliance with support from Kalliopeia Foundation. It was a three day program that assembled 27 participants from various contemplative traditions, primarily the Buddhist and Vedic traditions. The meeting was held at a Buddhist retreat center founded by Venerable Tarthang Rinpoche, an older Tibetan lama, well regarded among all the lineages of Tibetan Buddhism for his tremendous undertaking in printing and publishing the Kangyur, a major Buddhist canon comprising 108 volumes. The retreat center was nestled in the redwood forests and allowed for a secluded, often misty, setting for the discussions to take place.
This contemplative reflection was initiated to explore how to reclaim essential teachings of Dharma and re-focus the growing meditation movement on the transformation of self and society for the benefit of the Earth community. As meditation and other spiritual practices have moved into the mainstream, a new and lucrative industry has arisen around the teaching and promotion of these practices, bringing a commercialization, secularization and dilution that gives cause for concern. While this has enabled esoteric practices to become accessible to the general public, providing much benefit, the larger spiritual context is in many cases lost. The level of awareness and transformation that could emerge from these esoteric practices rooted in their spiritual context, is exactly what the planet needs right now as we are facing increasing ecological, social, economic and political dysfunction. The growing practice of spiritual technologies is likely to help evolve a more spiritually attuned collective that can contain the higher spiritual energy and vision needed for this evolutionary process. Spiritual practices are designed to foster this attunement.
Suitably, the opening theme was ‘Spiritual Practice in America Today’. Under this theme, questions and sentiments pertaining to the growing distaste for organized religion and whether the transition from one type of spiritual practice to another is a temporary phenomenon or a permanent change, were brought up. So much is now available on the internet and this is creating a much more diverse spiritual landscape – which has positive and negative outcomes. The lack of guidance and discernment can actually harm people.
Swami Atmarupananda, a senior teacher of many decades from the Ramakrishna Order, said that the essential truths are unchanging but the external expressions of these truths change. He added that this tasting of many practices has a downside. It can lead to the loss of the roots of a tradition, which is a danger, and then students will not reap the full benefit. But he also said that by offering techniques of practice to students many of them would eventually come to a point where they would want to go deeper, beyond the techniques.
Sraddhalu Ranade of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram said that an individual who holds the living experience of their tradition is able to offer a transmission from this deeper understanding even if one does not explicitly state this. Traditions do evolve in their outer form, but the essence, the inner reality, does not change. Many variations can emerge and whether these variations hold the essence will depend on the vessel.
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Gopal Patel was one of our young leader delegates. He is part of the Bhumi Project, a Hindu environmental program bringing together the Hindu community around climate change, and he has also spent time living at a Hindu center on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He expressed that young people need access to spiritual practices, even if they are not able to commit fully due to various life circumstances. He believes that a deeper commitment will ensue and we need to be able to allow for things to happen in their own time and look at the long term. Carolyn Rivers, who heads up the Sophia Institute in Charleston, South Carolina, agrees that people are yearning for something that religion is not giving them. She feels that the inter-spiritual movement is hopeful, and therefore she continues to bring presenters from different traditions and thinking to the Charleston community. Her work there over the years has prepared the ground for more openness and brought new perspectives to a community that was primarily conservative Christian.
Ven. Tezin Tsephel is a new member to the Contemplative Alliance. She is an American born Tibetan Buddhist nun who works editing writings and books for Sravasti Abbey in Washington State, in a monastic Dharma community under the direction of Ven. Thubten Chodron, a well-known and respected woman teacher who took her monastic ordination about 40 years ago. Residents of Sravasti Abbey live a simple monastic lifestyle training western Buddhist nuns. The founder Ven. Thubten Chodron offers an extensive array of classical Buddhist teachings for free on their website. Ven. Tsephel said about the secular and traditional that there is room for all of it and that people can benefit from even a simple practice. She feels it is important to include ethics in the teaching of meditation as this is a stable source of happiness.
Monique Schubert is a devotee of Amma, the hugging saint of South India. She is an African American yoga teacher who no longer prefers to teach in yoga studios that limit her ability to bring in the deeper spiritual dimensions of yoga, though when she teaches yoga in high schools she speaks of yoga as a science and does not include mantra or chanting. She sees the tremendous value of teaching yoga in schools, often to young people who would not readily seek this out. By having the opportunity to learn a little yoga in school, they may take an interest and pursue it outside the school setting.
Alfred Tolle, who worked for Google and has his own committed meditation practice, reminded us of the importance of intention. He felt some companies approach mindfulness at the conceptual level and avoid going deeply into meditation practice - the attitude that mindfulness could help create a more successful life. Such an attitude forcuses on outer achievement rather than inner realization.
Ven. Tsephel and Dena Merriam discussed setting the intention and goal for the meeting. Ven. Tsephel was new to the work of the Contemplative Alliance having replaced Ven. Thubten Chodron who was originally invited but could not join. Ven. Tsephel asked if we as a group could sit and set the intention for our gathering in order to guide the outcome of this reflection. What was our real motivation for coming together? Marianne offered that she wanted us to reflect on what we have lost as a society and culture.
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How can we, as a diverse spiritual community, going beyond ‘spiritual practices,’ come back to simply reminding each other of humanness, sacredness of all life and shared love for our Earth? Shugen Geoffrey Arnold indicated that the intention is ongoing, sharing a story of Wendell Berry who does not go out to his field and say, ‘Listen up, this is what I want from you.” Instead he says, “What do you need?”
Infusing the Secular with the Sacred - Reaching Young People Today
Young people today are the ones most likely to be turned off by religion, by institutions, doctrines and belief systems. Having grown up in an age of quick communications and the ‘3 minute meditation app’ they also may be less likely to gravitate to a more disciplined and challenging form of sadhana. Yet the 3 minute app does bring benefit and can be the beginning of a deeper search. How do we bring something of the sacred into this secularized and diluted form of spiritual practice? Clearly there is a need to support young people however possible at this time and the question was posed to the room, how best to do this. This session was led by a young Buddhist teacher, Dungse Jampal Namgyel, who grew up in a Buddhist family. Dungse Namgyel has studied in Tibetan Buddhist communities in India as well as in the West. He now runs a practice center north of Boulder where he engages a community of young practitioners on a regular basis.
Dungse Jampal shared that millennials have excessive access to knowledge. There is also a skepticism toward religion and government. There is so much information that no one knows what to do. He said there is much longing for a path, a direction and a community. Millennials want to be engaged and have their voices heard. “Many I meet want to live a good life, are seeking a sense of community and want to save the environment, but it’s not always clear to them what to do.”
Gopal Patel of the Bhumi Project spoke of his experience as a resident of a Hindu center on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. “What are millennials dealing with? They are dealing with a lot of depression and disconnection.” At the Bhakti Center, “younger people come seeking discipline and structure. The center offers them satsangs, seva and sadhana. Young people don’t want peace, they want love. Our center tries to be loving to everybody.” Dungse Jampal shared that many are struggling and suffer from anxiety about the future of the world and this was one reason it was important to have gatherings where young people can come together to sit and meditate or just connect as friends.
Other key issues that young people face came from Monique Schubert, an African American yoga teacher working in schools, and Pastor Naron Tillman, an African American pastor who also teaches yoga, working with young people in Brooklyn. They mentioned the feeling of disconnection among young people, depression, loneliness and fear, even self-loathing. Many young people they were working with faced enormous obstacles, coming from broken homes and living in neighborhoods faced with poverty, drugs, gun violence and racism. Navigating daily life and feeling somewhat balanced is a great feat in such circumstances. Both offered examples of transformation in the lives of young people who had the opportunity to practice yoga and noticed the increase in self-esteem, self-worth and joy that ensued.
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Also mentioned was the lack of positive mainstream entertainment or media. How can we offer young people a different image of the future or the possibility of living differently when they are exposed to the mass media? The current story sold to young people is very grim. We see a plethora of Hollywood films of apocalyptic themes with the Earth as a wasteland, depleted resources, zombie and robot invasions, or young people battling to the death for food. Such images leave impressions on the mind, planting seeds of hopelessness and despair. Other pressures facing young people include the cost of education and housing, lack of meaningful jobs, the disconnection from nature, the push to succeed materially and the cost of quality food. These make life difficult for most young people. It was clear from the conversation that spiritual teachers and centers need to do far more to support young practitioners. This includes making programs free or affordable as in the past, when a young person could go to live at a Dharma center and in exchange for work receive teachings and attend daily practice sessions.
Dungse Jampal asked each of the participants to come up with an issue young people face and suggest an activity that might address it and also real life practical suggestions for doing so. There were recommendations such as meditating under trees and being in nature and sharing the experience with a group. Hosting evenings with comedy so as to bring about a lot of laughter. Anne Tillery cited a millennial research project that was being tested in a Tibetan Buddhist community and a Hindu lineage community that focused on several ways of engaging young people: have teachers who represent the demographic, make the teachings available where millennials are, make use of digital and experiential gatherings, let engagement be self-directed, let young people meet together and finally, teach the practice of wholehearted commitment. Geoffrey Shugen Arnold commented, “we are evolving because we are evolving creatures. We have to respond to what is happening around us. How to continue the tradition which is the vehicle? The teaching has to take some form, but we must prevent it from becoming calcified. It must remain dynamic, alive and responsive to the present, although coming from deep in the past.”
Jana Long of Baltimore, a yoga teacher and master gardener, suggested involving more millennials in urban gardening and providing opportunities for them to learn about growing food. Food justice is an area of interest to many young people and examples were offered where young people are going back to the land and taking over farms their grandparents once farmed, but using methods of permaculture, biodynamic and regenerative agriculture. This is a phenomena that is growing and is inspired through a sense of passion for the land and nature as well as the wish to make nutritious and poison free food available to others. Young people are drawn to growing food naturally, whether in urban or rural environments, and many practices such as regenerative agriculture are finding a great following among young people. The connection to nature serves as a spiritual or contemplative practice.
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Dharma and the Use of Money: Managing the Business of Spreading Spiritual Practice
There is a long tradition of making offerings and donations to spiritual teachers and communities. In the East there has historically been support by the society for such communities. The ideals of these teachers and communities were simplicity and modesty. Today we live in a vastly different world where teachers need healthcare, iPads and iPhones and airplane tickets, etc. It is rare today to spread the teachings by foot travel and a begging bowl, and so the need to charge fees is understandable. On the other hand, some teachers have built empires making it quite a lucrative profession.
Melvin McLeod, who is a long time Buddhist and editor of Lion’s Roar Magazine based in Halifax, offered some insights with regard to money and religious organizations. “Too much and too little money is problematic. We must seek the middle way.” With regard to his work at Lion’s Roar he stated that they must have enough to fulfill the mission of the magazine while at the same time maintaining the integrity of the magazine and this has often compelled them to turn down well paid advertising in order to do so. Melvin brought up an important point, indicating that he did not feel many Dharma teachers were making a lot of money and felt that well trained western Buddhist teachers deserved to make a middle class living so that they don’t need to go off and be therapists or real estate salesman.
Shugen Geoffrey Arnold approached it from a balanced perspective saying that it comes back to intention. “How much do we need and how can we shift away from a fear based survival mentality to do be able to do that which we want to create.”
Alfred Tolle of Wisdom Together and the GNH Center, spoke of the emergence of new economic models such as the pay it forward movement and the local currency systems that are emerging around the globe. We know we are living in a financial system that is not sustainable and not good for the planet and yet we must do business together. Money is not good or bad. It should support creative relationship and not be used to take freedom from people.
Sraddhalu offered thoughts on Sri Aurobindo’s views on money. Money is the visible form of a force to be used for the fulfillment of the Divine’s will or mission. Wealth must be reclaimed back to its divine purpose. We should not regard money as a personal possession but as something belonging to the Divine that we are entrusted with to care take of and use with wisdom. Money carries an energy.
Yuko Tolle added that there are “frequencies behind money. There can be an energy that takes the life force from us. It is not free.” Here we might think of money derived in unethical ways that cause harm to the planet or to people, exploitative means of getting money or the system that traps people into meaningless work for the sake of maintaining a materialistic lifestyle. She added that a frequency of gratitude can solve poverty. How often do we offer gratitude for the simplest things in life that are often the most essential? The water that flows from the tap - do we offer a simple thought of thanks each time we pour ourselves a glass of water?
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Zarko Andricevic, who is a senior student and teacher in the lineage of the late Master Sheng Yen, quoted his teacher who would say that it is useful to have money in your pocket or in the bank but not useful to have it in your mind. Again, he reminded us it is about intention and inner attitude. How we use the money. Are we able to differentiate needs and wants - do we see money as a means of fulfillment of our personal desires? Do we have an inner contentment? Zarko felt that attitudes change when there is an awareness of interconnection.
Jana Long noted that following the riots in Baltimore, money came flooding into Baltimore, but it was “being thrown at a situation without any real connection to it.” It comes back to the intention and the sense of focus on how the energy of money can be used for the good. How might the money that was given to Baltimore or even Haiti for example be used differently so that the effects are lasting?
Swami Omkarananda, of the Sivananda lineage, and director of the Catholic Worker House in Albuquerque shared, “We need to learn to allow money to flow through us to where it is needed.” Sraddhalu Ranade offered again a view of Sri Aurobindo that there is a perversion of attitude to think that to be spiritual one must live in poverty, ‘this is weakness and not of the Divine’. Again it comes back to understanding that we are trustees of the money and must use it for higher purposes.
Commercialization of spiritual practices is only one side effect of something that is fundamentally wrong at this time. An attitude of regarding life and the Earth as sacred is often missing. How do we come back to the view that everything is alive and that life itself is holy? As contemplatives or mystics we have come with the purpose to serve the Oneness of life. Have we incarnated on Earth to have a spiritual learning at the level of the soul or come to make lots of money?
There is a healthy balance that can be found when we can honestly step outside self-serving attitudes and find the ‘Middle Way’. Money is still the most common method of ‘agreements’ at this time so we must still use it as a means --- but we can operate from a place of knowing when enough is enough. There are genuine teachers and centers for spiritual practice that could benefit from support, support that would permit their work to be more effective, streamlined and reach more people -- allowing it to flow more fully into life. More and more spiritual centers are actively engaged in humanitarian work and funds raised by such groups can provide real support to people in need, especially if it is action motivated by love.
In a time when corruption is rampant and excess and greed is common it requires vigilance in behavior, a greater awareness and self-observation in all activities. If one’s spiritual activity is to have greater transformative power then an understanding of spiritual law and its subtleties is required. A teacher or practitioner who is able to be such a place of love, unencumbered by personal desire will have far greater ability to be of service and will be granted access to a universal energy that cannot be bought or sold but can be directed to life where it is needed.
Balance, intention, sufficiency, gratitude were the key words that emerged from the conversation on money.
Dena Merriam offered the closing words. “The reason we come together as a Contemplative Alliance is that we are a collective force and we can become a more potent force that can help influence the course of things. We know to work with thought forms, and we can see in the world now so many negative thought forms being emitted – abusive thoughts directed at groups of people and at the natural world. Thoughts reeking of anger and greed. Thought is energy and these negative thought forms are taking its toll on all of us. The only way I know to counter this destructive energy is through emitting positive, loving, compassionate thoughts and directing this energy to the places of need. Meditation is not just about techniques and exercises to reduce stress and increase efficiency. It is about responsibility to awaken positive energy in the world. To uphold Dharma is to know our responsibility as serious meditation practitioners. We no longer can just care about ourselves. We are responsible for the whole.”
The Global Peace Initiative of Women/
The Contemplative Alliance
301 East 57th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York 10022
www.gpiw.org
www.contemplativealliance.org
info@gpiw.org
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