The Buddhist in the jury box

The Buddhist in the jury box

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 07:42 AM PST




We're sometimes told that one key to an ethical lifestyle is to not take anything personally. That sounds like a good idea but practically speaking, your honor, I object.


State your:
Area of Residence
Occupation
Marital Status
Spouse's Occupation
Occupations of Adult Children
Previous Experience as a Juror

I studied the instructions posted on the courtroom wall. The judge said, "Pass the microphone to Juror Number 11."

I told him where I lived, and then I said, "I'm a Buddhist priest."

***

I like to think of myself as a good citizen, but let me come clean: I haven't been upholding my civic duty for the last few years. When you are a full-time caregiver of children under school age, you are exempted from jury service. After that, you have to dodge and deceive to exempt yourself, and that's what I've done for the last five years, vexed by the question of after-school childcare.

Then, as we expect of our civil society, the court came breathing down my neck with a high-dollar penalty. So I showed up at the criminal justice center downtown for a day of jury service. I hadn't found a way to manage an unforeseen absence at home, but I did have an epiphany. I realized I could tell the truth about myself, and that alone might disqualify me from participation in our system of justice. Truth, you see, is the ultimate defense. It's the defense of having no defense.

Maybe doing good would do me some good, I bargained.

It was 11:30 a.m. before I landed in a big courtroom with 40 other potential jurors, a charming judge, and two sides in a criminal case expected to last up to eight days. The judge warned us that with the late start, we might be required to come back an extra day before jury selection could be completed, and I began calculating the collateral impact at home.

Before anything could begin, we had to break for a 90-minute lunch.

You might think that a 90-minute lunch break is absurd given the overcrowded state of our judicial system. I would have agreed until I saw that it took nearly 30 minutes just to get an elevator down to the first floor. Loaded up, our elevator cab had descended only two of 15 floors before it was stopped and commandeered by peace officers.

There was a scene on the landing before us: a cursing woman with her elderly mother, making a screaming ruckus, encircled by a half-dozen bailiffs trying to corral them into the elevator. One of the officers said, "Wait! Here's her son" and a boy who looked to be no more than 12 walked through the stiffened crowd, his arm around an even younger girl who was shaking with sobs.

The floor emptied and I took refuge on a cold bench where I sat down and cried my eyes out.

***

When the juror interviews began after lunch I was surprised at how diverse we were: a couple of computer guys, a CFO, a real estate agent, an insurance adjuster, a retired teacher, a secretary, a daycare worker, assorted entrepreneurs, sales and marketing types, a therapist, and a guy who said – as though it was the most obvious thing under the sun – "I'm a steel splitter." The judge parried with each, teasing out the hidden biases.

And then he got to me. He was quiet after I told him my occupation and I thought, "He knows I'm a goner. He won't waste a question."

"There will be people in this courtroom who don't share your lifestyle," the judge said.

I laughed.

"I mean, they don't live the way you do," he continued.

I said, "I doubt that."

He searched for a way to poke my sensibilities.

"There might be a witness, for example, who has blue hair. Can you be open-minded about that?"

I sat there, the only person among the 40 in the room without a hairdo, coiffed or colored, without a shred of style, without cosmetics, without an iPhone, the only one who looked different than anyone else, the only one who'd spent the lunch break crying for a nameless shamble of a no-count family shoved onto an elevator going down.

"Absolutely," I said.

***

"Juror Number 11 thank you for your service, you're dismissed."

My truth telling was vindicated. I was relieved, not surprised or offended, but I still took it personally. I've never found a way to take things other than personally. When you realize that everything everywhere is personal, it changes you. Under the blue hair, we're all one big red broken heart: riven by crimes for which there is no defense and never enough tears.

This is the first in an installment of weekly Wednesday Stories, personal accounts of the shared truth in our complicated lives.

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Life: All's well that ends well

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 07:21 AM PST

But is it ever really over???

In the end, my paper, and the panel on Comparative Approaches to Meditation as a whole, was a great success. A publishing rep offered me a free book, the latest one out by Anthony De Mello, about the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. A journal editor approached us about potentially devoting an issue of his journal to our panel. And we had a very nice audience. What more could I ask for?

A job!? Ha. Well. The advice from my friend Brian, who will likely end up with a job this year, was to really have your ducks in a row well in advance, and he did. And I didn't. And that's okay. I was mostly focused on the presentation and making sure that went well. Next year, for sure, I'll get the job. In the meantime there are many options: hopefully doing some more work/study/travel stuff with Ven. Yifa (here's a nice article about one of her books) in the summer, looking into teaching for the Antioch study abroad program, publishing, getting my Pali in great shape, and, most importantly, finishing a great thesis.

But for now... One more day in the big apple.

Students enjoy lunch at a Jewish school in Washington Heights.

A corner of Central Park and Harlem

The Reservoir

The Guggenheim

Pure Land of Bhaishajyaguru, the Medicine Buddha, Yuan Dynasty c. 1319, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Diana, from the roof of the early 20th Century Madison Square Garden, again at the MET.

Traffic on 5th.

Rhythm

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 07:46 AM PST

I'm feeling off my stride. I judge that I'm at my best as a writer when I have a rhythm going, and these past few months have been more than usually fragmented--and that's a word I find myself coming back to a lot in recent days. I have been traveling, yes, a couple of times; but more than that, I've had a number of bumps in the road, not unwelcome bumps, but certainly distractions.

This past weekend's training is a good example. I was thoroughly engaged for several weeks before the actual event in the various tasks involved in simply getting ready for it; and there is, too, for me, a kind of emotional preparation that causes my attention to stray from its comfortably familiar paths. Which is all to the good, don't get me wrong. I find it invaluable to be on the edge of my capabilities, because that's where I learn. At the same time, I value the stability of days and weeks in which I can find the rhythm again and build on it. Once lost, it's hard to find again.

Another distraction has been the preparation for the publication of my new book, which will be out shortly, though the publication date is not until January, 2010. Anyone who has published a book without the support of the commercial publishing system will know that along with the many tasks involved in getting it ready to go to press, the book will rapidly be swallowed up into vast void of printed matter unless the author him- or herself takes on the responsibility of promoting it. I have already devoted long hours to brainstorming and planning my own version of a public relations campaign--not because I have any illusions about making a lot of money, or indeed any money. Even my commercially-published books, some by major publishers, have generated no more income than a church mouse might need to survive. No, it's because I really do want to reach out to readers who might be interested in what I have to say. Writing, for me, is about communication, which doesn't happen until a reader sits down with a book and cracks it open.

So I have been getting some speaking and reading gigs lined up, and am making plans to reach out to my online contacts--and that includes you, my friends! Be forewarned!--to let them know when the happy event occurs. (If you have any ideas, please let me know...) It's a time-consuming and yet quite interestingly creative distraction, which takes me out of my writer's chair and makes me think about what it takes to be... a salesman!

The PR business will continue to require my time and attention for a good while to come, but I will be freed up of other major distractions for the foreseeable future--aside from Thanksgiving, of course, and Christmas, and the New Year. Oh, and the continuing health care debate!--so I'm promising myself and others to be a better blogger in the coming days. I have been negligent in visiting my neighborhood, and am looking forward to being more neighborly again. And getting back into the rhythm.


Briefest on the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 06:18 AM PST

I posted a longer version of this once before. Sadly that one has been taken down, probably kept too much of the show for legal purposes...

Episode ten of season one, is, to my mind, one of the finest shows of a truly great series.

It just seems right to post it again, if this shorter version, today while many thoughts go to conflicts past and present and what happens to the veterans.

This one is for you, Dad...


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For Today

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 08:21 AM PST

I wonder if there's anyone hiding in my bushes today.  I have a line of tall, scraggly bushes that divide my land from an empty lot owned by the state of Virginia.  And, here in Apollo, the military veterans find places to sleep, and store their possessions, in various places around town. I have had all [...]


A Small Call for Justice in Rhode Island

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 04:43 AM PST


I just sent the following letter to the editor to the Providence Journal. If you live in the state, I hope you will consider similar notes to various venues...


I was profoundly saddened to learn of Governor Carcieri's veto of H 5294, which would have allowed domestic partners to claim the bodies of their loved ones. The bill was the legislature's response to the Kafkaesque nightmare Mark Goldberg endured trying to claim the body of his partner of seventeen years.

Apparently the governor gave three reasons. First, the definition for a domestic partner provided in the bill was a year of cohabitation, together with evidence of financial interdependence, such as a shared credit card or mortgage. He found this not rigorous enough. I read that and thought of people who get drunk in Las Vegas, meet and marry, who then have more rights than a couple who gave each other their lives for seventeen years. The governor said if the legislature wants a domestic partnership law, they should have a straight-ahead bill. And then he added what seems to be the real reason for this heartless act, his abhorrence of the gay and lesbian citizens of this state asking for civil rights, and his fear that any slight act of decency will feed the rising call for marriage equality.

Frankly, I hope the governor's casual act of cruelty will indeed fire not only those already committed to the enactment of civil marriage reform within our state, but also show those who have been up to now indifferent or even uncomfortable with the call to marriage equality, to see what is really going on. Which is an ongoing effort on the part of those who seek to maintain the status quo, to block any move toward civil rights for our gay and lesbian citizens. This is a concerted effort to drive them back into the shadows. Shadows where they are not really citizens of this nation. Shadows where they are not really human beings.

I write as a working parish minister. I've witnessed the wounds that follow this harsh treatment of people who are just like everyone else, except in the object of their affections. These are our neighbors, these are our friends, these are our children. And I see no justification for this sort of shabby treatment, of which the governor's veto being only the most recent example. Absolutely, society is not served by creating or perpetuating a class of people who do not enjoy the rights the rest of us do. This is so sad. This is so cruel. This is so unnecessary.

I look forward to the day when we achieve full civil rights for BGLT people and when this nightmare of injustice becomes a matter for history books.

Standing on the side of love.





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Message to Children

Posted: 11 Nov 2009 04:36 AM PST

When you were born, you were loved.  Your heart was golden, and those that created you were joyous of your arrival But, your parents became weary soon after * Forgive them * It was not that your light faded.  It was not that your heart was no longer golden It was because their light faded, and they became burdened by their [...]


Conflict

Posted: 10 Nov 2009 12:12 PM PST

"Endgame", I have discovered, is a popular title that covers everything from science fiction video games to the movie I recorded on PBS and watched yesterday--the one that tells the story of the last days of apartheid in South Africa. It's part historical docudrama and part political thriller--and both parts are excellent. I learned a lot about the personal risks men took to join the secret talks that led to the end of that dreadful era in African history. Nelson Mandela--imprisoned and isolated, of course, in the time that these events unfolded--is central to the story as a symbol, but peripheral to the real action. The main players were Professor Willie Esterhuyse (superbly played by William Hurt), Thabo Mbeki (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Michael Young (Clarke Peters), the go-between who got the whole ball rolling--these two characters no less superbly played. (Knowing more about the vital role he played in ending apartheid, I was surprised and saddened to recall Mbeki's later denial, as President of South Africa, of the scientific facts about AIDS--a stubborn and astounding assertion of ignorance that proved so tragically costly to so many lives.)

What I'm interested in this morning is not so much a movie review--it was excellent, engrossing, moving, written and directed with extraordinary attention to detail. I'm actually more interested in the model the story offered for the resolution of conflict. If two sides as bitterly separated as the National Party government of apartheid South Africa(NP) and the African National Congress (ANC) could end a system so deeply rooted in the national consciousness, anything is possible. I learned that the model was the inspiration for the truce between the Irish Republican Army and the British Government and other, subsequent conflicts between intransigent enemies; and that it is serving again in the form of (assuredly secret) talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

The key, as manifested in "Endgame", is the prompting of an infinitely patient third party, and the slow development of a relationship of growing trust between two men--in this instance, Mbeki and Esterhuyse. There were others, surely, working in the wings to make this possible, but the fate of a nation turned eventually on the shaking of two hands, one black, one white, after countless round-table meetings that seemed at first to offer no hope of reconciliation between two sides so radically far apart.

It comes down to this: men (and now, of course, finally, increasingly, women,) sitting across the table from each other, can come to terms. There is a common interest in accommodation. There are lives to be spared, mutual advantages to be gained in cooperation. There is usually nothing to be gained in the persistence of enmity and conflict. It's a matter of eroding away the mutual suspicion and mistrust, and replacing them, through hours and days and months and years, if necessary, with the kind of trust that permits the opening of dialog and eventually agreement.

I am not naive enough to believe that the heritage of centuries of racism and injustice were dispelled by a single handshake. But the event opened the door that needed to be opened, and cleared the way for such progress as has been made in the years that followed. "Endgame" inspired the hope that we can learn to live together in an increasingly small world, if we can all learn to take responsibility for who we are and be uncompromisingly accountable for our actions. The resolution required that each man look deeply into the shadow of his own reactive patterns--Esterhuyse to recognize the racism rooted in his own South African soul, Mbeki to acknowledge his reverse hatred and the urge to violence it inspired--each man embodying the side he represented.

If I refuse to recognize who I am and the shadows I project on those I disagree with, I will never be able to see clearly who they are, and the shadows they project on me. Connection happens when those barriers between men fall, and connection is the path theat leads toward mutual tolerance and perhaps, eventually, agreement.