The Awesome Responsibility of Freedom

Posted by Maia Duerr on 8:01 pm in Spirit | 2 comments

This week marks the intersection of two religious holidays that are all about freedom: Passover and Easter.

Passover, which began yesterday and continues for 8 days, commemorates the journey of the Jewish people from slavery into freedom. Over the years, I’ve gotten a feel for the spirit of freedom inherent in the holiday from some dear Jewish friends. Last year, I participated in a beautiful seder with Sharon Salzberg and Roshi Joan Halifax at Upaya Zen Center.

This article from Dr. James Hyman of the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning is a wonderful reminder of the power of ritual and its role in freedom. Here’s an excerpt:

As human beings we are entitled to be free, and we have a responsibility to help others be free.

That’s why we must begin by asking the central question of the evening: What does it mean to be free? At the Seder, the notion of freedom is about freedom from slavery – from the enslavement that the ancient Israelites experienced – and from enslavements today.

This ritual, repeated year after year, is designed to reinforce both the commitment to keep the value of freedom front and center to help remember that the past is a most critical factor in determining the future. Indeed, remembrance is the vehicle that enables us to be truly free. 

And then there’s Easter, coming up this Sunday. The day marks the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead three days after being crucified by those who could not recognize his divinity.

How interesting to consider Easter in that light — when we deny others of their divinity as well as their humanity, how do we take their life away? And how can we step into our humanity and divinity, so that we can walk out of the tomb of our suffering and oppression and into a space of liberation and love?

I just love the way that the reverberations of freedom from these two religious traditions come together in the beautiful voices of these two cantors at the Central Synagogue in New York City:

 

This week, may you remember both your humanity and divinity, and may you dwell in true freedom.

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How 12 Years of Zen Practice Changed My Life

Posted by Maia Duerr on 5:52 am in Spirit | 11 comments

Vast is the robe of liberation
A formless field of benefaction…

Every morning, this is what we chant at the end of a 40-minute period of zazen (sitting meditation). Every day, liberation is woven into my heart.

My Zen practice is especially present for me right now. For the past 10 days, I watched and supported as three cohorts of students in Upaya Zen Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Program made their way through various stages of this two-year training. One cohort presented their final projects and graduated. Another came for their second year and took vows to uphold Buddhist precepts, and a third group came to start the program and enter this stream of practice and service. In the midst of all this, three friends received ordination as novice Zen priests.

As I watched these powerful rites of passage, I thought about my own path and realized that this is my twelfth year of Zen practice.

In the spring of 2001, I moved to San Francisco Zen Center for eight months, marking the start of my journey in this particular tradition. Since then, I’ve had the good karma to live next door to Zen centers in San Francisco and here in Santa Fe for a number of years. I am deeply grateful to my teachers along this path.

Throughout those years I’ve learned a few pretty important things:

• Be wholehearted in everything.
• Don’t cut corners.
• Treat nothing like an object.
• Fluff your own cushion, clean up your own dishes. Don’t leave your mess for someone else.
• Stay with the pack! Nothing is more important than relationships and practicing to remember our interconnection with all beings.
• Heart and mind is one… there is no separation.

From the outside, Zen might look like a heady, isolated sort of practice. My experience has been completely the opposite. It’s helped me to become more embodied and to learn what intimacy truly is.

These 12 years have taught me the value of committing to a practice that has served as a vehicle for my own waking-up and liberation. (I’m very much still on the way there, this is by no means a done deal!)

I don’t think you have to be a Zen practitioner to do this – there are many pathways to self-insight. But I do know it helps to make a commitment, to dive deep into one thing and let it teach you about the nature of your mind and heart, and to remind you how connected we all are. It really can change your life.

If you’ve got an awareness practice, how has it changed your life? What gifts has it given to you? Please share in the comments below.

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I’d love to stay in touch with you! When you sign up for my mailing list, you’ll receive my monthly newsletter with reflections on life and liberation, as well as my e-book, “9 Keys to a Liberated Life.”

 

 

What in the World Are We Doing?

Posted by Maia Duerr on 1:04 pm in World We Live In | 0 comments

Last week I gave the dharma talk at Upaya Zen Center with that title — “What in the World Are We Doing?” If you’d like to listen, you can find it here in Upaya’s extensive podcast collection.

While I shared a lot of words in the talk, the message can be distilled down to something pretty simple:

In certain spiritual circles, we often hear people say something like, “I need to work on myself before I can work on the world.” Or, “I need to be peaceful in myself before I can work on peace in the world.”

While there is some truth to that, think of the privilege behind these sentiments. The fact that we even have the choice to wait before we act tells us how much privilege we live in. If we lived in a place like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where women and children are terrorized every day, we wouldn’t have the luxury to sit back and “work on ourselves.”

Heck, if we even lived in a different part of our own towns, if we had grown up in a different economic class, we’d be dealing with survival issues every day.

I believe we need to drop that idea that we have to get ourselves completely together on our meditation cushion before we deal with any of this.

That duality we set up between our personal practice and what’s going on in the world doesn’t serve us or the world.

That leads to one of my favorite quotes from the wonderful Buddhist teacher, Joanna Macy:

It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation.
Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up — release us from the bonds
of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature. For some of us, our love of the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened.

But here’s the kicker: the most important thing is that we act from a place that is utterly grounded in our spiritual practice, so that what we are generating in the world is not more layers of suffering, but an actual relief from suffering.

At the end of my dharma talk, I shared this 12-minute film from my days of working at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (and I’m even in about 5 seconds of it!). I love it because it perfectly captures what it means to bring our practice out into the world.

I hope it inspires you, and I’d love to hear — what in the world are you doing? Please leave a comment below.

By the way, the video doesn’t start until about 30 seconds in, so don’t panic if you don’t see anything for a while. Use that time to enjoy your breath : )

 

 

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