Several Branching Streams teachers sent messages to their sanghas on the day of the November 5 election, and the day after – messages to remind us of the support of sangha and our kinship with all beings.
Eden Kevin Heffernan, guiding teacher of Richmond (VA) Zen, sent on Election Day:
“Whatever may happen today and the following weeks, and well, really, the rest of your life on this vast wild Earth — home, I will remind you now of an outrageous and impossible array of beings, like anteaters, fruit bats, snow leopards, kangaroos, orangutans, amberwing dragonflies, honeybees, garden spiders, magnolias, Venus flytraps, jasmine, Beluga whales, bioluminescent squid, and yes, bioluminescent fungi that play a role in the Wood Wide Web, the network supporting, among other beings, coast redwoods, the forest giants that grow to over 250 ft in height and live two millennia — know that you are as large and deep and ancient as a coast redwood, with your deeply rooted ancestry exponentially branching behind you, your IRL internetwork of kinships and communities, gut microbiomes, living stone infrastructure of bone and bioelectrical mesh of flesh that lights up with sights, sounds, smells, textures, tastes, memories and dreams of this and worlds past, present, and future.”
“When we forget or ignore this kinship, we suffer and cause others to suffer isolation and alienation. When we turn toward and embrace our wholeness, the whole of our wild life, we lighten up and relieve others of their painful delusion of separation. And we can, perhaps, do this with nothing more than a smile. Kinship calls us to kindness.”
This morning, soon after I learned the results of the presidential election, a member of Brooklyn Zen Center shared this message from their co-guiding teacher Sarah Emerson:
“Beloved Sangha,
Here’s what I want to say as a Dharma teacher and as a human being to you this morning:
Keep Healing
Keep uprooting the deep tendrils of domination culture and oppression in ourselves and in society, keep challenging powers that seek to dominate and dehumanize, keep looking closely at what our truest values really are, and keep in the forefront of our awareness and actions how we are all inextricably connected.
Notice what’s happening in your hearts, and bring the full force of all the love you have received and all the love you have to offer and hone it in on any division you find, and illuminate it with the light of the Dharma.
This absolutely does not mean we shouldn’t be angry (I’m really angry), or despairing, or numb or fearful. These and many other feelings are all legitimate responses to violence. And the question we can ask ourselves is how we can feel into the support of one another, feel the ground of the Sangha, and illuminate our anger, fear, despair, numbness, and anything else with the light of how we’re ALL in this together. Let the Dharma be our collective compass to finding a different way forward than more division and more despair and more violence.
There is a lot coming, and a lot already here, that we will need to be ready and able to show up for.
Don’t give up Bodhisattvas!
Every ounce of love we drop into this mess matters.”
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel posted in her newsletter on Substack, “To Have and To Hold Each Other. Our shared suffering is less than one degree from each other. Our shared liberation must be the same. No matter who won this 2024 presidential election, twenty-four years into a new millennium, there is something that we all must do more than ever. We must keep faith in those around us. We must relish and cherish the relationships of family and friends no matter their human flaws. It doesn’t mean we have to suffer other’s suffering but the way to our liberation is to forge, with our heat, all that is broken in this country into a kind of freedom we never imagined we had the power to shape. I say this because it is only us that we have and only us who will need to stand at the doors to protect our free communities, free spaces, free loved ones, and more—not as protectors of people only but protectors of what has always been sacred and that is life itself. We must value all life even in the middle of all life not being valued.” To read her entire message, go to the link above.
On another note, San Antonio Zen Center writes, “It is with great gratitude that we officially install our new guiding teacher, Rev. Karen De Cotis, at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 16. We will also celebrate and offer reflections on the 20-year anniversary of the San Antonio Zen Center.”
Their message includes these words of Thich Nhat Hanh: “Each moment is a chance for us to make peace with the world, to make peace possible for the world, to make happiness possible for the world.
Norman Fischer, founding teacher of Everyday Zen Foundation, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, will be reading twice this week, today (Wednesday) and Saturday, from his new book of poetry, Through a Window. The readings will take place in the New York area and will also be streamed on Zoom.
Wednesday’s reading, from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. PT, with Farnoosh Fathi and Ryan Lee Wong, will also include a conversation on Zen, poetics, and Eihei Dogen’s “grandmotherly” mind. On Saturday, Norman will share the podium with the New York Neo-Futurists, an ensemble whose high-energy work fuses elements of poetry, game, and performance art.” [It may be too late to register to view this event online.]
On Saturday, November 9 from 2 to 5:30 PT, Norman will participate in a reading, “Norman Fischer and the New York Neo-Futurists.” You can Join on Zoom.
Today, Norman sent this message to the Everyday Zen sangha:
“An invitation to pay close attention to your life your breath your daily tasks and relationships, not to be baited into confusion and despair. You are alive in a world that’s everywhere alive, pay attention to this. And to kindness. And watch the government and society in which you live just as carefully, listening for the rhythm underneath the jagged melody. Build counter-movements and strengthen counter-movements that already exist. Every day.” To see the rest of Norman’s message, click here. He ends with a poem:
Day after day.
Would that words knew how, what to feel
To do
Would that the heart on the sleeve
Turn inside out with the terrible news clean fabric
Soldier on, those parts of the body in whose darkness
Sanity resides Kindness as natural as wind
Blows through to some shaft of light
In which the truth scrolls show scraps and clear hints
Of what’s to come
That’s never as imagined
Humans have their many foibles fear elicits
But the body marches forward ever
Forward and round and round
This too passes
And passing refreshes
Every new moment’s a promise That being human matters
On a green and greening earth… And the trees hold steady
May our teachers’ words inspire us to continue our practice, love and encourage one another, and stand up for what we most care about.