Finding What Social Action to Take

Last updated on: January 19, 2015 at 4:08 pm by Domyo Burk

Finding What Social Action to Take 2015-01-19T16:08:40-08:00 Domyo Burk

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I felt vaguely ill at ease as I went to meet my friend in the nearest coffee shop. My dis-ease had nothing to do with her – I was simply aware of being in a state of dissatisfaction with respect to my life and zen practice around questions of social action and responsibility. Doubts had arisen, and my confidence was shaken.

However, after many years of zen practice I have started to embrace and even look forward to such times, because they mean something new is happening in my life. They indicate that I need to learn and grow. The discomfort is a sign that delusions I have previously been unable to identify or deal with could be showing their faces to the light of day. So my dis-ease was an opportunity, although it didn’t feel very good.

My friend and I talked of various things, including my questions and discomfort. I confessed I felt I wasn’t doing enough to help alleviate suffering in the world and that I didn’t know what to do about it. My building sense of imperative was inspiring but also stressful because of the rather baffling and overwhelming decisions in front of me: What to do? Which of all of the myriad causes should I choose? Where to begin?

My friend then shared her own challenges around living in a subsidized building in downtown Portland for people who might otherwise be homeless. It housed a fairly high proportion of drug addicts, drug dealers, and other lonely and desperate folks. The atmosphere could be very chaotic and negative at times.

In one of the pauses in the conversation, I blurted out, “What about starting a meditation group for the homeless?” As I gave voice to the idea, I realized it was one that had occurred to me before, but I never felt up to doing it. I was worried that my limited experience as an idealistic little white, middle-class woman would make my offering more silly and insulting than anything. But since I had last had the idea, my own Zen practice had matured and I had started to function as a Zen teacher. Plus, I now had a fellow Zen practitioner and friend who had recently experienced losing everything, staying in homeless shelters, and trying to practice Zen through all of it. Bingo! My friend thought it sounded like a good idea, and we brainstormed about it for a while.

I felt something opening up before me. A Zen teacher and activist had recently advised me to practice patience when looking for a way to be more socially engaged, and now that practice was paying off. Actively holding the question, “What should I do?” without demanding an immediate answer had allowed me to recognize an opportunity that filled me with excitement and hope. At the same time, considering the plan also settled my mind and heart. Here was a “next thing” that I could focus on, instead of playing around with abstractions in my mind.

After some weeks of contemplation I have decided to start by volunteering with an existing program that serves the homeless and people at risk and in transitional housing. It will let me get used to working with these folks, get familiar with the kinds of services available to them, and maybe even get some feedback and ideas from them about my crazy plan for a meditation group.

I plan to write about my experiences on this blog for several reasons. First, it motivates me to keep moving forward! (At some point someone will ask me, “Weren’t you going to do some volunteering?”) Second, I want to share the challenges I face in really getting up off my butt and doing something. (Ideals and ideas meet reality.) Third, I want to explore how this particular kind of in-person action informs, challenges, and supports the two other aspects of social engagement I’ve identified for myself: wisdom and compassion. Anyway, I re-categorized my blog posts today and realized there were quite a few I could place in the wisdom and compassion categories, but only one belonged in the action category. Time to do something!

Care to share your experience of enacting your compassion in-person, up-close, in tangible (or challenging) ways?

Photo by Franco Folini

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