Spacious Solidarity Blog: Day 84

In January I went on a month-long solitary retreat. I wanted to absorb my cancer experience and hoped to get started on my book.

I wrote this then, while sat in a house on my own in the dead of winter in rural Maine. Surrounded by snow and the clear, blue sky by day, twinkling multi-coloured stars and planets at night.

I wrote this while full of inspiration and a conviction I still don’t understand. I wrote this in an ongoing creative endeavor to draw explicit and unapologetic links between dharma and social justice.

Links doesn’t even begin to describe what I feel this dynamic is about. It’s more like they are so closely infused with each other as to be completely inseparable. The bodhisattva is in fact a true social justice warrior, nothing more and nothing less.

No one is free until we are all free.

This is what I wrote on that snowy forest retreat, specifically about Black Lives Matter:

“In efforts to call attention and bring an end to centuries of violence against Black bodies, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement shines light on a disturbing example of how the klesa (afflictive mental state) of conceit can manifest on a collective level.

The movement’s key message is that Black lives matter just as much as anyone else’s. It recognises a historical and systemic undervaluing of Black lives and seeks to correct this through its activism.

But almost as soon as #blacklivesmatter was coined, two other hashtags began to circulate: #alllivesmatter and #bluelivesmatter (specifically referring to police).

Some people missed the point entirely and were interpreting the message Black Lives Matter to mean that other lives don’t matter as much. Without a nuanced understanding of the conditions that led to the BLM movement or due to outright racism, some were misinterpreting what activists are calling for and immediately making comparisons.

This ironically reveals the unconscious biases that underpin the very mental state by which one assumes that valuing one life automatically undervalues another. It is a false view based on an either/or identification with experience which simplifies things into this or that, rather than a both/and view which takes on board the complexities of reality.

The Black Lives Matter movement is about Black lives being just as important as any other lives, regardless of race. The movement takes it as a given that both Black lives and all other lives matter. That said, in the context of the current political and social moment, and until racism is eradicated, it is imperative to assert that Black lives matter.”

When I see or hear someone asserting that all lives matter I know I need to take a deep breath. Either they don’t understand what they’re saying or know how controversial the statement has become and simply don’t care.

Anger has always been my go-to emotion. It’s safe and warm and fills me up with a sense of righteous indignation. But I know better than to let myself go there these days. Instead I feel into the sense of how much work there is still left to do, my own and that of others.

And then I try and bring myself in. And I know I won’t always get it right, but I can’t simply stand by anymore without at least trying to let folks know the effect of their words.

There is a difference between intent and impact, and as a Buddhist I know it’s not good enough to just focus on intent. The context in which we think, speak and act matters.

Conceit is one of the more slippery, shadowy klesas. It doesn’t burn with the fire of anger, or pull on us with the weight of greed. It doesn’t curdle our stomachs like the green-eyed monster of jealousy, or leave us confused and stumbling around in the dark like ignorance.

Instead it whispers in our ears when we are least expecting it. Telling us all the different ways we are better or worse than others. And it’s not just about the stories it tells. It’s about the whole damn cultural cesspool we are swimming in and all the ways we’ve internalized those stories so that they play out through countless ways of thinking, feeling, speaking and acting every single day.

It’s time those of us who are white identified or white presenting start to, as one friend on Facebook put it, take off the blindfold of whiteness that perpetuates lies of separation and supremacy.

No one is separate and therefore it is impossible for any one person, or group of people, to be better than any other.

And yet we live in a world designed to divide and conquer. To tear us apart from the inside out by planting the seeds of the klesas deep in our hearts from day one.

It’s time to wake up.