One thing that the international audience should bear in mind, which was not addressed in the HuffPo report, is that the reception of socially-progressive words of His Holiness among general international audiences and what kind of reception such words would receive among Tibetan society in general, and the Tibetan Buddhist patriarchal clerical culture in particular, are for all practical purposes two completely different entities. For the vast majority of Tibetan male clergy, the idea of looking for a female reincarnation of any Tibetan lama successor is still utterly inconceivable, and to this day, is rarely practiced. That is, when a senior Tibetan Buddhist male lama dies and his students and clergy start looking around for successors among 1-2 year old babies, they rarely look around at girl babies for prospects.

In other words, the only way these statements of HHDL, which he has been making for several decades now in response to this question from international audiences, would have any real credibility in Tibetan society is if HHDL leaves instructions both orally and in writing to look among girls for his successor. Even with such written instructions, as in the case of the present Karmapa's succession, much controversy can ensue.

But even if this step was implemented, the logistical ecclesiastical infrastructure of HHDL's own monastic system has thus far incorporated few reforms to integrate women clergy in positions of parity and equality, let alone leadership. This can be readily observed during public religious ceremonies, where female devotees are still seated behind instead of alongside men, and female religious leaders are not seated alongside male abbots; attention to women by administrative offices of male Buddhist clergy compared to men; and distribution of other resources such as education and capital resources in Tibetan Buddhist religious and civil society. (His Holiness often takes steps to include representation of women religious leaders in international functions, but such moves are not often seen in Tibetan ceremonies in India, where they would be considered radical if not scandalous.)

But we also need to view the situation of Tibetan Buddhism in its proper perspective. If we look across the landscape of all of the traditions of Buddhism, we will find that the situation of women in Tibetan Buddhism is neither the best nor the worst case scenario, and that all of the traditions need social reform in order to credibly uphold the teachings of equanimity and awakening taught by the Buddha to both genders in the four-fold sangha he established 2500 years ago.

Furthermore, a culture of feminist sensibilities has barely begun to awaken among Tibetan Buddhist clergy, male or female. Gendered and in some cases male chauvanistic dogmas are still taught, without any contemporary reflexive discourse questioning the suitability of such scriptural presentations as religious praxis. True, such discourse is now quite well-established in international academia among religious scholars of Buddhism, but there is little evidence that even the structures for continuing dialogue on such matters are yet in place in Tibetan society, let alone engaged in regularly. His Holiness's own socialized perspectives on gender suggesting a preponderance of compassionate sentiment among women compared to men might serve as a good example of the nascent status feminist discussions of religion hold in Tibetan society. On the other hand, HHDL was citing his own empirical experience, based on his own sociocultural experience from an older generation, in a culture where gender roles remain heavily socialized. (Moreover, as a founding patron of the Mind and Life Institute, if scientific evidence indeed can be found to support HH's claims, none of us can blame His Holiness for not trying to find it!)

Neverthless, great strides have in fact been made with respect to gender in Tibetan Buddhist social culture. The traditional educational qualification of Geshe (akin or a master's degree or doctorate but without the dissertation or broader general education in world history, humanities, etc. that academia's doctoral degree entails) is now available to women, and several nunneries now offer this kind of training. Similarly, nearly a decade ago, His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, the head of the 800 year-old Drukpa lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, took the radical step of using his senior position to elevate the social position of Buddhist nuns by establishing a monastic community for them as one of his own principal monastic seats, and training the nuns personally in practices and for roles formerly only open to monks. Moreover, the Tibetan Women's Association has evolved tremendously since it's founding in 1959 to advance women's welfare and development in Tibetan society.

With these developments in mind, when we evaluate female-friendly statements from senior Tibetan Buddhist religious leaders, to understand properly the reality of the contexts such statements represent in Tibetan Buddhism, we have to ask what actions are being taken, if any, alongside verbal statements; if such statements are being made to Tibetan audiences of male religious leaders in addition to international audiences; and what kind of discourse is going on in Tibetan society, if any, to eliminate prevailing dogma and customs of discrimination of women in Tibetan Buddhist social culture.

Whatever the answers to these questions, there is no doubt that every statement by His Holiness the Dalai Lama promoting women's issues is generally a good thing for everybody. Furthermore, we should never forget the traumatic disruption that the exiled Tibetan community has resiliently endured in its attempts to preserve its unique cultural traditions over the past 50 years outside of Tibet. As I have written in the past, when we consider the very real concerns for preserving this ancient and precious religious culture from extinction, Tibetan society quite naturally prioritizes efforts to conserve and secure what has existed in the past. This otherwise noble effort constitutes a very significant inertial resistance to efforts for reform, including those respecting gender. Given this profound disadvantage, when we compare Tibetan Buddhism to other world religions and spiritual traditions, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama's statements on women to those of other leaders, I think it is reasonable to assess Tibetan Buddhism and His Holiness as yielding outstanding performance (albeit with plenty of room for long-overdue reform). Therefore, we can legitimately rejoice alongside others when we see that His Holiness the Dalai Lama continues to receive honorary degrees from universities all over the world recognizing the outstanding performance of Tibetan Buddhism and her leaders, despite enduring a continuing history of unfathomable challenges at home in Tibet and around the world in exile.

Image sourced by Flickr: On the stage, HH the Dalai Lama, with HH Karmapa, senior male clergy, monks, nuns [nuns NOT shown in photo-we might wonder why not?], during Kalachakra for World Peace ceremony, Washington D.C., USA; licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

New York: Penguin, 2013

US: $27.95, CA: $29.50

I have to confess that I committed an error of critical thinking in conceiving this review: I came up with my thesis before I read the book.

In my defense, I’ve read a fair chunk of the rest of Pollan’s ouvre, and I had read some other reviews of Cooked, so I had a fairly good idea of what to expect from it. But the thesis crystallized for me when my fiancée, Sarah, who had claimed dibs on reading it, mentioned Pollan’s discussion of Sylvester Graham:

[T]he American minister and nutritional reformer Sylvester Graham...blamed white flour for many [of] the ills of modern life [and] fervently extolled the virtues of coarse dark breads... To remove the precious health-giving fraction of bran from wheat was to “put asunder what God had joined together”—a fall from dietary grace for which modern man was paying with his troubled, sluggish digestion. (Cooked, 260)

Absent the overt references to God in that paragraph, Pollan may as well be describing his own project, raising the question: even if it’s not named as such, how far removed, really, are religious concerns from his work? Graham was part of a larger food and hygiene movement in the 19^th century that explicitly linked a proper, wholesome diet with morally upright living and proper religious devotion. How one ate was a major part, both physically and spiritually, of disciplining oneself in order to cultivate correct habits and a correct worldview, which in turn involved recognizing that nature—and its foods in particular—had an intelligible, intrinsic, divinely appointed order.[1]

Despite being a liberal American Jew, Pollan’s underlying sensibilities are in many ways deeply Puritan. He is also deeply steeped in a particular sort of virtue ethic. His entire body of work—especially Cooked, in which Pollan apprentices himself to a series of culinary masters—can be read as a process of shaping an unreflective reader, mired in a miasma of modernity, into a deliberating thinker and moral actor. Pollan wants to cultivate his reader into a certain sort of person.

Even more deeply Puritan is an underlying anxiety in his work: the fear that the pleasure of a recreational pursuit itself is not enough to justify it. Fun for fun’s sake is suspect: there has to be a “serious” purpose to it for it to be truly worthwhile.

It's true that Pollan explicitly declares himself roundly in favor of pleasure, decrying “nutritionism” and food science as more concerned with health than pleasure. But two factors complicate his superficially “pleasure-positive” stance. First, he seems less than open to what Alasdair MacIntyre refers to as the “polymorphous character” of pleasure. (After Virtue, 63) Consider, for example, his “Microwave Night” experiment, wherein each member of his family chooses a microwavable entrée in the frozen food case:

The dishes all tasted better on the first bite—when you might be tempted to think, Hey, not half bad!—than on the second or third, when those words would be unlikely to cross your mind. (198)

Foods that Pollan doesn’t find pleasurable are thus not truly or intrinsically pleasurable to anyone—much, indeed, as food that has been processed in ways of which Pollan disapproves is no longer “food” but rather an “edible foodlike substance.” (10) Experiencing something as pleasurable is not enough—a truly pleasurable food takes certain forms, is made in certain ways, and is consumed in certain ways.

Now, I have to admit that, were I to try “microwave night,” I would probably come to the same conclusions as Pollan does. I am, after all, a self-confessed food snob—but, unlike him, I know better than to universalize my tastes. Who’s to say that the immediate pleasures of microwaved food are less pleasurable, to someone who isn’t a food hobbyist, than foodie-approved acquired tastes like strong cheeses, preserved lemons, and hoppy craft beer?

The second factor that complicates Pollan’s stated pro-pleasure stance is that there always seems to be a correlation between that which is truly pleasurable and that which is practically or morally good. Consider the meal he places in direct contrast with Microwave Night:

I had braised [duck] with red wine and sweet spices in my new terra-cotta pot…By the time the sweet smells of allspice, juniper, and clove began to fill the house, Isaac and Judith had gravitated to the kitchen; I never had to call them to dinner. (200)

This is food porn, pure and simple—and I mean that as a compliment. For me, it’s nearly as pleasurable to read as the dish must have been to eat. But Pollan can’t leave it at that. There has to be a moral to the story:

For the first time all day, it felt like we were all on the same page, and though it would be overstating things to credit that feeling entirely to the delicious braise, it would also be wrong to think that eating from the same pot, this weeknight communion of the casserole, had nothing to do with it, either. (200-201)

Conversely, something which isn’t a true pleasure, on Pollan’s view, must also be practically or morally destructive in some way. So, for example, not only is microwaved food un-pleasurable—apparently, it’s destructive, as well, and not just nutritionally. The mechanism and form of the dinners themselves are divisive:

Very little about this meal was shared; the single serving portions served to disconnect us from one another, nearly as much as from the origins of this food, which, beyond the familiar logos, we could only guess at. Microwave Night was a notably individualistic experience, marked by centrifugal energies, a certain opaqueness, and, after it was all over, a remarkable quantity of trash. (200)[2]

The food activists of the 19^th century also distinguished true and false pleasures. One of the main aims of proper diet was to encourage proper sexual behavior. As John Harvey Kellogg wrote in Plain Facts for Old and Young:

The science of physiology teaches that our very thoughts are born of what we eat. A man that lives on pork, fine-flour bread, rich pies and cakes, and condiments, drinks tea and coffee, and uses tobacco, might as well try to fly as to be chaste in thought. He will accomplish wonders if he remains physically chaste; but to be mentally virtuous would be impossible for him without a miracle of grace. (391, 1882 edition)

This quotation is part of a section on how to discourage masturbation. Here, too, an immediately apparent pleasure is contrasted with a greater, long-term, truer pleasure—that of right conduct and virtuous living. While the true pleasure is associated with social order and good health, the immediate, false pleasure is associated with catastrophic effects on physical health—Kellogg links masturbation to, among other things, impotence (363), consumption (365), and insanity (370).

Clearly, Pollan is more grounded in actual evidence than Kellogg was (though Kellogg’s ideas about masturbation were fairly widely accepted when he was writing.) But he betrays the same underlying belief that truly pleasurable things must also be healthy, and vice versa. This bespeaks certain assumptions about virtue, right conduct, and natural order—assumptions that are deeply rooted in religiosity, even if a particular religious tradition is not invoked.

Underlying all this is the assumption that a good person will come to realize that only those things that are salutary and wholesome are truly pleasurable. What’s more, as Emily Rapp notes on Role/Reboot, we as a society often associate being a truly good person with being healthy. But this doesn’t reflect how the world actually works. Many of us experience as genuinely pleasurable things that we know damn well aren’t good for us or for society, and we experience as genuinely unpleasant things that we know equally well are very good for us and for society. Furthermore, a great deal of the things we find pleasant or unpleasant turn out, practically speaking, to be neutral.

To be fair, in my critique, I appear to have fallen into something of the same trap that Pollan has. After perhaps my 20^th snide comment about something in Cooked that annoyed me, Sarah asked if I would please shut up and allow her to enjoy her food porn.

This is an entirely reasonable request. I only wish Pollan would heed it.

On Saturday, May 25^th, my seminary – Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary graduated 19 students who had been involved in and will continue to be involved in pastoral, teaching, administrative, and Christian counseling ministries.  These students included 8 women and 11 men who ranged in ages from early/mid-twenties all the way up to fifties or even sixties, thus showing that ministry is for every age.  God never thinks anyone is too old or too young to serve Him.   He chooses based on the heart and motivations of the people who have heard His call – sometimes gently in the night, sometimes in loud and clear ways, sometimes in times of uncertainty, and sometimes through the words of a trusted friend or family member who encourages them to keep pursuing Christ.

As I think about the men and women I graduated with, I know that each of them has made important contributions to others whether they have been recognized for it or not.  On Saturday, I received my Certificate in Theological Studies (having completed 30 hours at the graduate level), and so I realize that I am just at the very beginning of my journey.  I do not have the same education or graduate standing as the other 18 who walked the stage with me, and yet, I know that in so many ways all of us (whether we received the certificate, MA, or MDiv) are still growing and learning in community and in Scripture.

One of our classmates was not present because he already had arrived back to Ethiopia where he continues to lead a church and teach at a local Bible college.  Another one of my classmates was originally from Ecuador and had to learn command of a new language (English) while at the same time becoming adjusted to a completely different field.  Having done her undergrad in biology, she is a scientist by nature; yet, she has felt the call of God in her life to see how science relates to peace and has a burning passion for immigrant justice and reform.  The rest of the students were from Canada or the U.S., and yet, I know that each one had their unique struggles and also unique joys throughout their one, two, or three year stints in seminary.  Each one of them obeyed the Lord’s voice to leave whatever they were doing and to move to Indiana.

The most meaningful thing to me about the graduation celebrations was the commissioning that took place on Friday night.  Each student who was leaving the community had a blessing written and read by a fellow peer, professor, staff member, or someone else who was a part of the community.  Following this time of sharing, all graduates were invited to the stage where a candle was lit and a hymn sung.  During the singing of the hymn, one of the graduate’s candles extinguished.  There was a slight moment of awkwardness that ensued, but it ended very quickly because another student walked over to her and tipped his candle so that hers would be relighted.  When I saw this, I thought to myself, this is what being a graduate and a Christian in general is really all about.  God has given each graduate unique skills – some of us have skills in listening well, in being critical thinkers, in engaging with technology, in helping people who have disabilities, in writing, in researching, in teaching, or in learning languages.  All of us have improved upon our skills while in seminary as well as learned new ones.   Those who are gifted with languages were challenged to learn Greek and Hebrew for the first time, those who were gifted at writing poetry and fiction were challenged to learn how to write graduate level research projects and theses, those who were good at finagling technology had to learn to create sophisticated Powerpoint presentations.  While in the classroom, it is a good idea to work hard at writing and reading well, to pour your effort into a paper so that you can receive a good grade.  Yet, learning does not stop after one walks the stage.  In fact, it is only just beginning.

We are called to take these new skills out into the world and to be stretched and challenged by our ministry opportunities.  We are called to put the theory into practice.  No amount of research and writing truly prepares a person for handling their first crisis, their first burn-out, or their first sudden illness.  Yet, education does prepare their hearts to be open-minded and receptive and to become teachable.  As Henri Nouwen and Jean Vanier say quite often, our “real” teachers are not so much the people who are in the academy, but the “least of these” – sometimes even the person who is non-verbal and is so childlike.

Our class is not only called to light the candles of those around us, but we are also called to light each other’s candles.  We have formed and shaped each other in various ways – through intense conversations at lunch about the meaning of life, through Karl Barth reading groups, through class discussions, through ultimate Frisbee, through games nights, and through going to church together.  Now, we are also called on to help each other when we begin to struggle.  To be a built in support network when we become burnt out in our ministries and to keep reminding each other of the call we once received when we feel that God chose the wrong person and are ready to give up.

The graduating class of 2012-2013 also donated a Peace Pole to the seminary.  The peace pole – which is in various locations around the world, reminds us of Christ’s call for us to be peacemakers in this world and has planks which have many different languages inscribed on them – thus showing a global reality.  I have a collection of peace pole pictures – having taken them at Mennonite universities, outside of Mennonite churches, and even a random one I found in downtown Palestine.  As Anabaptists, I feel this is an appropriate gift to the seminary, but I also feel it is an appropriate reminder for all Christians.  Everyone who walks through the doors of AMBS – whether for Pastor’s week, for continuing education, for a certificate, or for a degree, should be charged with the duty to take what they learned and apply it in their work towards peace and social justice.

I congratulate the class of 2012-2013 for their hard work, their perseverance, their maturity, and their sense of call over the past 2 or 3 years that they have been at the seminary and I continue to pray that God will use them for whatever purposes She has in mind.

I leave you now with a song by Chris Rice (Go Light Your World): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtIIFJIxdUw

Pope Paul VI said in "Nostra Aetate", Declaration On the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, 1965, “In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship.”

As a catholic, I share my heritage with all those who work, through love and compassion and charity for our fellow humanity. Whether they acknowledge the God of Abraham or simply the Ubuntu that makes us all open to others and affirming of others, we are all a part of each other.

This challenge is nowhere more pronounced than with respect to the religious other. The famous Orientalist Bernard Lewis notes that most of the medieval polemics involving Christians and Muslims usually involved comparing the theory of one religion with the practice of the other religion. The same practice continues to the present day and, Muslims and Christians are not the only ones who are guilty of this mental crime. Just as it is easier to be a saint in a cave than to be a saint amongst people, it is also much easier to be a saint amongst people who are like oneself than to be a saint amongst people who are different from oneself. This was the problem that set me to the current route - A practicing Muslim studying Christian Theology at a Christian Seminary.

I reckon that is easy to make claims about brotherhood and humanity but it is much difficult to live them. Thus I have asked myself repeatedly, have I ever tried to live this maxim? So why study in a seminary. When I started the program believed that it would help me become a better person and a better Muslim. The time that I have spent at the seminary has indeed made me more conscious of the humanness of other people, and that indeed is the message of Islam and Christianity. This point is beautifully summarized by Ali the cousin of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), “Every man is your brother. He is either your brother in faith or your brother in humanity.” To be someone’s brother means that one has some idea about what it means to walk in their shoes. I believe that the path to finding this brotherhood is the path to peace. This is what I aspire to do and why I am at Luther. One has to overcome oneself to find peace, the road to peace of the inner and outer variety comes from within; I am usually reminded of the following verse from the Bible, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)

Essentially, the Pickens County School Board, touchy over religion in public places as a result of a few lawsuits that the county council has faced over prayer before their meetings, had excluded a prayer from the proceedings at the graduation for Liberty High's seniors. The valedictorian, though, decided to go against his pre-approved remarks, and instead lead students in the Lord's Prayer. There were cheers in the audience, cheers for what was seen as bravery in the face of oppression. Cheers for his courage.

Watching this proceeding has gotten me thinking back to my high school graduation. I said the prayer there myself. But I've been thinking about the place where I attended school. I was in a small cohort of the school's International Baccalaureate program, and many of my friends were of different faiths. There were Muslims, atheists, Christians of various stripes, Hindus, Jains...a mixed lot, religiously and culturally. But outside that IB cohort, there was a broader student population, predominantly Christian and culturally committed to that faith. And I've been thinking, in light of the events in Liberty, about our own valedictorian.

He was a smart young man, naturally. One did not become valedictorian at my high school be being dumb. But I also remember him as someone who was kinder than most, and gentle. He was a Jain, and while I did not know much about Jainism in high school, I knew that it was a religion which practiced strict vegetarianism. To do no violence, to incur no damage to one's soul as a result of the hurt we occasion on other living things, this was what I knew about Jainism. And this young man practiced that carefully. I remember he was gentle.

And I wonder, at that graduation ceremony. If my friend had spoken about his faith, if he had taught us anything about Jainism, about how it had motivated him and mattered to him, about how it had been part of his family and part of his upbringing, about how it mattered within his life, that would have been a true courage. Truly courageous, because he knew he could not rely on a crowd of his fellow-students rising up with him and reciting the tenets of the Jain faith. In fact, truly courageous, because who knows what might have happened sharing a foreign faith amidst a crowd culturally and religiously distinct? Perhaps the cheers would have been jeers. Perhaps.

When I think of the Lord's Prayer, I think of Christ's words as he introduced the prayer in the first place. The following is Matthew 6:1-15, NRSV:

‘Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

‘So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.^*

‘And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.^*

‘When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

‘Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Beware. The text says beware.

I don't mean to launch any sort of attack on the young man in Liberty. Perhaps he did feel hurt. Perhaps even oppressed. But the prayer he prayed, the prayer he led his classmates in reciting, Christ begins that prayer by saying, simply: beware. Beware of doing this in public. This act, these acts of prayer and piety, are meant for our souls, are meant for our internal lives, are meant to shape who we are and what we are. They are not meant for anything else, and doing them in public changes what they can mean. What is more, they can shape what we mean by them. The prayer ceases to be an instrument of communion with God, and becomes an instrument of political power.

And I wonder if a young man, like my friend, was in that graduating audience. Perhaps a young Jain, celebrating his success, attempting to pass through to the next phase of his life with his head held high and his soul intact. And suddenly classmates are on their feet, loudly cheering, loudly saying words that he cannot say and words he does not even know. And those cheers sound a little like jeers, a little bit like a community closing its ranks against him.

And as a Christian, I weep for him, and weep that from this day forward, his memory of what Christ means will be one of exclusion and hurt, a memory of how Christians, those who are supposed to be Christ, cared so little for his accomplishment that they saw fit to ruin it.

I want Christians to be bold in their faith. As a Christian, I believe...I believe in God the Father Almighty, whose image is on you and me. I believe in Christ, God-with-us, who lived and died and rose and will come again. I believe in the communion of saints that will endure. I believe in all of these things, and do not want Christians to sacrifice our faith for any reason. But I want us to live it better. To practice it better. To pray in our hearts, and if we must pray on a street corner, to pray for the wholeness of the world, in such a way that all of God's children, Christian or not, are held as valuable images of God's heart and proofs of God's presence.

(Image Credit: "The Lord's Prayer" by natalvanjjn. Attribution via Creative Commons.)

To many in rural white Christian America, this is the site of deep fear and anger, bewilderment and loss of control.

That this site of inter-religious cooperation is the spark point of deep prejudice and anger for others tells me that our country is strapped by a sense in some that their nation is changing and passing them by and morphing into a nation that is not theirs.  America looks, feels, and sounds different than it ought to in their minds.  And this causes a deep anxiety.  It is bewildering and certainly unsettling.

I saw this last week in Manchester, TN.  The American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) invited U.S. Attorney for Eastern Tennessee, Bill Killian and FBI agent Kenneth Moore to talk about how hate crimes against Muslims violate civil rights. Over 1,000 protestors showed up under the pretense of protecting their constitutional right to free speech and keeping the government off their backs and out of their lives.  Islam and Muslims, from what I could gather by listening to the splattering of insults, taunts and jeering, were of second concern to a notion of civic and political “freedom.”

When I pulled up to the Manchester Coffee County Conference center (the same “How to wink at a Muslim” Coffee County), flags abounded, white plastic signs waved in the wind bellowing key words such as “free speech;” “protect the constitution,” and “ ‘Obolish’ communism.” A new rendition of the UK’s WWII adage appeared on t-shirts: “Keep Calm and Eat Pork.” The meeting was at capacity, hundreds of other protesters waited outside barred from entering by scores of police.

The meeting, to no surprise, was a mixed bag. The protestors’ most angry eruption occurred when Killian mentioned U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.  For two hours, the crowd badgered the speakers attempting to communicate to the audience about civil rights and hate crimes in America; when AMAC representatives got up to speak about American Muslims, the threats and standing-up-shoutings were directed both at the IRS and at fantastic images of Islam and how all refugees were welfare kings and queens. This sort of hate is uncontrollable, and it is as logical as an angry father at his kid’s sports game. It is as much for the shouter’s egotism as it is for his neighbor’s snide enjoyment.

Hate like this is political, socio-economic and religious in nature. It arises out of a fear stemming from a bewilderment and confusion about the world and one’s role in it. It seems to me that folk who express this sort of hate do not know what they are doing or saying – they can’t, really. To understand the meaning and thus impact of this sort of hate would necessitate an internal change stemming from empathy of the other’s situation. This sort of hate has very little to do with empathy or even attempting to understand the other.

So often, these sorts of emotions arise out of a deep fear that someone is going to take away your community, your livelihood and your sense of self. The crowd’s rambunctiousness was first to assert their worldview. Their second point, it seems to me, was to assert their worldview over and against what they viewed as evil, as other. But there was little effort spent in actually contextualizing or understanding this other – stereotypes are like this: narcissistic, anxious types of things that are by nature unstable. That’s why violence often erupts to instill normalcy based on the stereotypical status quo. It seems to me that whenever power uses drastic force to reify the status quo, the narrative it puts in place is inherently fictitious. And so, this sort of hate is calling for a return to an America that is slowly being exposed as false, oppressive and hateful.

What these protesters at the Manchester event were calling for had less to do with any notion of free speech or some deep meaning of democracy or the Constitution. It has everything to do with a certain hierarchy of social, economic, political and religious power.

When someone shouts that Muslims are threatening their way of life, what they mean is that they feel that Muslims are “encroaching” on their way of life, that their status quo is being agitated.

The foremost challenge for the interfaith movement is a challenge that rarely gets discussed with full honesty in American religious discourse.  Issues of racism, sexism, homophobia and classism plague the interfaith community as much as the rest of society. In thinking about interfaith activism, it is important that I ask how I understand social and political power in interfaith meetings. So when we engage others who maintain differing theological claims about how the world ought to be, conflict will surely arise and ways of life will collide. This is why interfaith dialogue is so needed – to engage in exchange and constructive activity between these differing worldviews.

We have to create interfaith encounters in environments that disarm and disable violent discourse. We have to also meet people where they are – and this will inevitably involve the reality of confronting racism, sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia and the like in our own communities. In some theoretical sense, I can understand how this crowd became so angry. Fear and ignorance are powerful enough to make us hate our brothers and sisters. This crowd, then, can be approached with a sort of logical understanding that their anger might be seen as justified, but not right; as comprehensible, but not true.

Manchester, Tennessee is another potent example of how the U.S.A. is not becoming increasingly secular but rather that religion and faith are becoming highly - and in sophisticated ways - integrated into people’s lives. Interfaith activists have a responsibility to understand how this hate has evolved, why it continues to turn out large numbers to such events as Manchester and how to deal with it effectively. To disregard it is to misunderstand faith in America and how we can build a peaceful and just interfaith community.

Kateri Tekakwitha, also popularly referred to as “Lily of the Mohawks”, was a Native American woman of both Algonquin and Iroquois ancestry. She was born in 1656 in a Mohawk community near present-day Auriesville, New York. Her mother was a Roman Catholic Algonquin woman, baptized by French missionaries, and her father was a Mohawk chief. When Kateri was four years of age, a smallpox epidemic swept through her village, killing both of her parents as well as her brother.  While she survived, she was left with noticeable scarring on her face and heavily damaged eyesight. In 1676, Jesuit Father Lamberville baptized her when she was approximately twenty years old, which is also when she took the name “Kateri”, a supposed Iroquois pronunciation of the name “Catherine”, in honor of Saint Catherine of Siena, the ascetic Italian tertiary from the fourteenth century.[2] This was a particularly unique act on behalf of Father Lamberville, given the common practice of “withholding baptism to Indians until the moment of death or until the Jesuits were certain no relapse was likely.”[3]  As a result of her Catholic baptism, Kateri experienced severe chastisement and harassment from her Mohawk community, particularly from her aunt and uncle whom she had lived with since the death of her parents.  In response, she fled in 1677 to the St. Francois Xavier Mission in Kahnawake, a territory of the Mohawk nation located in Quebec.

It was at the mission that Kateri began practices of bodily self-mortification and penances, and developed close relationships with two other Indian converts, Marie-Theresa Tegaiguenta and Marie Skarichions. She additionally undertook a vow of chastity, and one of her spiritual advisors, Father Cholenec, “presided over a ceremony in which she pledged perpetual virginity and gave herself to Christ as his wife”.[4] This particular form of devotion, a ceremonial marriage to Christ, was certainly not uncommon for Catholic nuns as well as penitent laywomen, as in fact Saint Catherine of Siena performed such a commitment, although this act was uncommon for Native American converts. Indeed, as noted by Elizabeth Abbott in her A History of Celibacy, “in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church, Kateri Tekakwitha had become the first Iroquois sacred virgin”.[5]  She died at the mission in 1680, at the young age of twenty-four, with her spiritual advisors Fathers Cholenec and Chauchetiere nearby. Kateri’s last uttered words professed her love for Jesus Christ.

The process towards Kateri’s beatification began in 1884 in Baltimore during a meeting of American Catholic bishops. In his book, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits, author Allan Greer notes that this group of bishops had joined at this time to work to establish the “church’s position in a predominantly Protestant society with pronounced anti-Papist traditions.”[6] Greer argues that it was through this effort that they eventually arrived at Kateri:

So began the search for an American saint that could symbolically root the church in American soil. By the time the bishops gathered at Baltimore, they had identified a perfect candidate: an innocent Indian from the distant colonial past, the embodiment of nature and the land, and the antithesis of immigration, urban grime, and industrial conflict.[7]

However, it was not until approximately half a century later that the first step in the process of canonization was completed. In accordance with this process, she was first declared “venerable” in 1943 by Pope Pius XII. After this, beatification was officially completed in 1980 following Pope John Paul II’s pronouncement that “her numerous unverified miracles [equaled] one certified miracle.”[8]

Greer further attributes central roles in the canonization campaign for Kateri to Father Clarence Walworth and his niece, Ellen (Nelly) Walworth. Nelly Walworth not only officially published Father Chauchetiere’s hagiographical manuscript of Kateri’s life, she also published her own biography of Kateri entitled The Life and Times of Kateri Tekakwitha. Although her text is non-hagiographical, and therefore written in a completely separate vein, and “native identity” appears to be of much greater concern, Greer notes that Walworth does express a simplified, primitivized image of “Indianness”: “Walworth’s heroine nevertheless carried markers of an essentialized Indian identity: pure otherness beyond the reach of historical progress.”[9]

In an apparent effort to express the sort of monumental, lasting effect that Walworth’s biography has had upon continued understandings of the saint, Greer offers his reader the historical significance of Kateri’s name as it is contemporarily known:

Nelly Walworth, anxious to eliminate the blatantly European ‘Catherine’ from her title, was using a Mohawk mispronunciation of an Italian saint’s name, linked to a French approximation of a Mohawk name, to clothe her heroine in an identity designed to look immaculately aboriginal. The gambit was a complete success; ever since, Tekakwitha/Catherine has been known around the world as ‘Kateri Tekakwitha’.[10]

Beyond the efforts of Father Clarence and Nelly Walworth, as well as the group of bishops that met in Baltimore in 1884, various disparate groups and individuals continued to work to accomplish canonization for Kateri. Jesuit Father Paolo Molinari, the Tekakwitha Conference, and the Blessed Kateri Committee are just a few of the groups that worked to promote the sainthood of Kateri.

The timing of the beginning of the process for Kateri’s “recognition,” the ending of the nineteenth century, was one that, Greer argues, supported the facilitation of this project. He suggests that this period of time in the United States was one in which a certain nostalgia or sentimentality was becoming popularized towards the “primitive” Native Americans, “associating them with nature and with the picturesque and the exotic.”[11] The rise of an “updated and Americanized” devotion to Kateri, Greer suggests, originates from a “primitivism” that not only serves to identify the “other,” but also to locate a reminiscent dimension of the self as within the emergent modernism of the time: “The ‘primitive’ was fascinating not because it negated modernity but because it gave definition through contrast to the progressive and the modern, while providing a focus for nostalgic fantasies generated by the anxieties inherent in modern life.”[12] The notion of “identity through contrast” will be discussed further in this article.

The rest of the article is located here.

The image is from Claude Chauchetiere, S.J.

I live in the hustle and bustle of one of the world’s busiest cities. London is bursting at the seams with people. Sadly yet inevitably, where there are people, there is crime. I hear police sirens every day and I’m confronted with antisocial behaviour regularly. As such, I’m streetwise and sensible as I move around the city. Yet I also try (though often fail) to trust those around me.

Since I re-engaged with religion some years back, seeing my faith afresh through the lens of liberal Quakerism, the notion of trust has grown increasingly important to me. I hope to be considered trustworthy, as I attempt to live out Quaker testimonies to truth and integrity. But further, one of the first Quaker teachings I found truly compelling is the notion of ‘that of God’ in every one. If I long to recognise the divine, to see the good in every person, I can’t live in a state of suspicion, but must commit myself to trust.

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day here in London and I spent the day at my college – SOAS, University of London – working on my MA dissertation. Rather than the library, I like to sit in the postgraduate common room. It’s a mixed-use space with desks and comfy chairs, and during busy term time, you can be sure to find at least one person snoozing on the sofas. I prefer to sit there because I can have a cup of tea whilst I work. SOAS is home to a diverse student body studying people-centred subjects such as anthropology, international development, or like me, religions. In that space I feel a sense of community even amongst those whom I’ve never interacted with. As such, I come and go from the postgraduate common room, leaving my bag and my books lying unattended when I go to top-up my tea cup. I trust that my possessions will be safe; I trust the other students.

Yesterday’s beautiful sunny day was blighted by an incident which threatened to betray that trust. Or so I thought.

A mobile phone was left on one of the sofas. From behind me, two women discussed the case of the lost phone, eventually deciding to leave it where it was; the owner would surely return and find it there. They trusted that the phone would remain in its spot until its rightful owner returned. No sooner than they had left, I felt movement behind me. A young man swiftly headed towards the sofas, picked-up the phone, and exited. As he left the room, I stared at the back of his head and his distinctive bright blue shirt feeling that I ought to call after him, to ask where he was taking the lost phone. Whether due to slow reactions or a subconscious trust that he would do the right thing and hand the phone to lost property, I said nothing and let him leave.

Sure enough, my worst fears were enacted as the phone’s owner returned to the common room, searching the sofa in vain. Her phone had been switched off; never a good sign as anyone who has ever lost their phone will tell you. I was sure that if I saw an image of the man who had picked-up her phone I would be able to point him out; not because I saw his face, but because of his very bright blue shirt. But it wasn’t to be, for the security team confirmed that there are no cameras in that part of the building.

Trust in my fellow students, and my trust in the masses of people I encounter each day in London, is perhaps naïve. But incidents here in London over the past few weeks – the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby by supposed Muslim extremists, followed by a host of Islamophobic attacks supposedly by groups such as the English Defence League (EDL) – seem to highlight not my naivety in trusting humanity, rather the dangers of loss of trust, or further, of failing to trust in the first place. These incidents, whipped up a media frenzy, throwing out adjective-heavy headlines with proclamations of ‘evil’ and ‘monstrous’ and ‘barbaric’, condemn the British public to lives of fear and helplessness in the face of ‘enemy’ threats. Be afraid, these headlines imply, be afraid and trust no one.

Well, I refuse. I won’t live a life of fear, hiding behind closed doors or ranting about communities and individuals I’ve failed to understand. Such actions can only lead to more division and increased misunderstanding. Rather I will continue to trust, I will continue to be open and I will continue, as best I can, to seek ‘that of God’ in everyone; even in the most trying of circumstances.

As I left university yesterday, I spotted outside, looking around nervously, the man in the bright blue shirt. Approaching cautiously, I began my questioning. As soon as I had been able to mutter a few words, through the crowds appeared the owner of the missing phone. Somehow, blue-shirt-man had got the word to her, and the phone and its owner were reunited. My first instinct, the one which had trusted him to do the right thing, rather than the later fear of his dishonesty, had proven correct.

I know full well that truth and trust will not always prevail; unfortunately there is not a happy ending to every story. But yesterday there was. So to the man in the bright blue shirt: thank you for reminding me that my far-reaching trust is not naïve, but is absolutely necessary.

Image: Pedweb, Flickr Creative Commons

Introduction

Every year in the late spring, Buddhists all over the world celebrate Vesak, i.e., the birth, death, and enlightenment of Siddhārtha Gautama, who came to be known as Śākyamuni Buddha, the sage of the Śākya clan. It is a time of fasting and penance, intensive prayer and celebration, and renewal and fortification of one's contemplative practices. Buddha Jayanti is the celebration of the Buddha's enlightenment, where, through discerning the subtle impermanence and interdependence of all conditioned things, the Buddha completed his practice of extinguishing all his faults and their causes, and perfecting all of his qualities.

Although there is a prominent role in Buddhism for recollecting and celebrating the Buddha's divine and metaphysical nature, the relationship between the devotee and the Buddha is more that of apprentice and mentor than supplicant and sovereign. That is, the Buddha instructed his disciples that the way to practice what came to be known as Buddhism is not primarily through devotions, but by studying, actualizing, and exemplifying the instructions he taught on how to eliminate one's faults and perfect one's personality and related behavior, in order to make life most meaningful by benefiting others and oneself. This is done by training the mind and gaining mastery over it, rather than being enslaved by its impulses, compulsive reflexes, and self-cherishing desires.

What the Buddha Himself Said about How to Celebrate the Buddha

We find a clear picture of the Buddha's instructions about how to celebrate the Buddha and his instructions (the dharma) in a sermon he gave at the end of his life. In the Maha Parinibbana Suttanta from the Dīgha Nikāya, or long “Dialogues of the Buddha,” given at the end of Lord Buddha’s life approximately 2500 years ago, auspicious natural signs were observed. The Buddha, who in Buddhist cosmology is regarded as the seventh in a line of Buddhas stretching back aeons, each appearing in the vicinity of what is now the Kathmandu valley of Nepal, here directly addresses his attendant monk, the venerable Ananda:

The twin Sala trees are all one massive bloom with flowers out of season; all over the body of the Tathāgata these drop and sprinkle and scatter themselves, out of reverence for the successor of the Buddhas of old. And heavenly Mandarava flowers, too, and heavenly sandalwood powder come falling from the sky, and all over the body of the Tathāgata they descend and sprinkle and scatter themselves, out of reverence for the successor of the Buddhas of old. And heavenly music sounds in the sky, out of reverence for the successor of the Buddhas of old. And heavenly songs come wafted from the skies, out of reverence for the successor of the Buddhas of old!

Now it is not thus, Ananda, that the Tathāgatha is greatly honored, reverenced, venerated, held as sacred, or revered. But the brother or the sister, the devout man or the devout woman, who continually fulfills all the greater and the lesser duties, who is correct in life, walking according to the precepts-it is they who rightly honor, reverence, venerate, hold sacred, and revere the Tathāgata with the worthiest homage. Therefore, O Ananda, be ye constant in the fulfillment of the greater and the lesser duties, and be ye correct in the life, walking according to the precepts; thus Ananda, should it be taught.[1]

Thus the Buddha spoke to Venerable Ananda.

We too can honor Lord Buddha according to these, his own instructions, by affirming our commitment to practice the five moralities, also known as the pañca śīla: to avoid killing living beings, to avoid taking what is not given to us, to refrain from sexual misconduct, to avoid incorrect speech, and to avoid intoxicating our bodies and minds, which can lead to carelessness and mistakes.

Could we avoid killing insects, for example, by better removing and containing the food that lures them, and move them outside instead of killing them? And couldn’t we do a better job of eating vegetarian more often, or use free-range eggs or meat if we find vegetarianism itself too difficult to practice all of the time? Sure it costs more, but the money goes to pay for better care of animals and also the human workers who look after them! Is it really too inconvenient to attempt to reduce or eliminate our participation in the suffering of other precious living beings? Similarly, does it really benefit living beings to cheat on taxes and engage in other subtle ways of stealing?

Reviewing intimate relationship behavior, to ensure that no harmful physical and psychological acts are involved, is another way to practice the Buddha’s instructions which will make our lives happier, less complicated and less painful. Incorrect speech is also difficult to avoid, but how much better our interpersonal relationships could be if we would only practice a bit more mindfulness of our own speech and listening! It is hard in a society where liquor is central to avoid it, but there are many tasty substitutes to alcohol, and even good non-alcoholic beers nowadays. If we are deliberately seeking a dulled and cloudy mind, we might need to investigate why we think we need to avoid the interior of our own minds. With an incapacitated mind, all other harmful acts become easier to perform, which can cause many uncomfortable problems for ourselves and others. But not all intoxicants are drinks! We can reduce the toxic material we take in from TV, gossip, the internet, etc.

One can see that to practice the moralities effectively, we need to practice mindfulness, and to learn how to routinely reflect on the quality of our own acts of body, speech, and mind throughout daily life.

Precept of Śākyamuni Buddha

Guard well your speech,

Purify your mind.

Avoid all negativity of the body-

Purify the actions of all three.

Being able to do all this,

Is the path of the great sage.

 That is the precept of Tathāgatha Śākyamuni, the unattached, the fully enlightened one.[2]

Dedicating Celebrations for the Welfare of Others, and General Auspiciousness

Vesak celebrations, and nearly all Buddhist ceremonies at any time of year, conclude with prayers to dedicate the positive potential of the celebrations to the speedy success of student progress on the path to awakening and perfection, in order to most effectively and beneficially serve others. Such dedications are typically followed by general prayers for auspiciousness, such as the following:

O peerless King of the Śakyas together with your entourage,

You who have inconceivable qualities of wisdom, love, and power,

Please grant inspiration that our minds may move in the Dharma!...

Please grant inspiration that the precious Doctrine may spread, flourish, and remain for a long time!...

Please grant inspiration that teaching and practice may flourish in the host of Saṅgha communities!

Please grant inspiration that the might of the patrons of the Doctrine may increase!

Please grant inspiration that happiness may come for all sentient beings!

Please grant inspiration that all external and internal adverse conditions such as sickness, famine, and conflict may be pacified in every world![3]

Indeed, by enjoying this and all other State of Formation forum contributions, and our culture of mutual friendship and respect among our spiritual and religious traditions, may our precious intentions to benefit others not decrease, but increase evermore!

Photo of Swayambhu Stupa in Kathmandu, Nepal, by Dhilung Kirat from Santa Barbara, CA (Glowing Swayambhu Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons