Beloved Community
The unfolding, intergenerational vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (…and Thich Naht Hanh)
This week, 55 years ago (Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968) one of the greatest men to have ever walked the earth was fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was visiting Memphis briefly to support a sanitation workers’ strike and as he stepped out for dinner a bullet struck him in the jaw, severing his spinal cord. Martin Luther King Jr. was pronounced dead upon arriving shortly thereafter at the St. Joseph’s hospital. He was 39 years old.
In the months leading to his assassination, King had become increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality within the United States. As such, he organized the Poor People’s Campaign to focus on this issue more directly. It was in relation to this effort that he had come to Memphis. Not one to merely wax poetic about far fletched dreams, of which he had many, MLK always engaged. He put his own life on the line for what he knew was right, many times. In Memphis he showed up to support poorly treated African American sanitation workers. On March 28th, a workers’ protest march “For Justice and Jobs” led by King sadly ended in violence and the tragic death of an African American teenager. After the march he had to leave Memphis but felt his work there was undone so vowed to return in early April to lead another demonstration. He did return. On April 3, King gave his infamous “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech which seemed to foreshadow his own death. Indeed, the next day he was murdered. MLK was not merely a man of prayer. He was a man of courage and direct action.
Last week I shared some painful observations regarding how, as a father who lives between two drastically different cultural worlds (half the year being spent living in a rural coal mining town in Western Colorado and the other half living in a rural village in Northern Thailand), such events like the ongoing gun violence in America is viewed from abroad. As America prides itself (it is written on U.S. dollars “In God We Trust” after all) in its Christian values, we explored a bit of how faith is actively executed within a Buddhist country and cross examined that loosely with what “thoughts and prayers” typically entail. In a nutshell, what I have seen, not just in Thailand, but throughout the Buddhist world is not mere magical thinking but executed efforts to empower prayer via tangible action. Increasingly, as the son of a preacher man who has grown up very closely to the American evangelical church, I have few examples to offer from my experience with this particular religious institution regarding showing up for Americas greatest needs with similar gusto. Thoughts and prayers, yes. But reparations? Hmm…
A former student of mine reached out to me a few days ago regarding my observations. He grew up in Nashville, where the recent school shootings took place. He used to play hide and seek and other games with his friends as a child within the Covenant School when it was empty. Needless to say, this unfortunate event has brought great sadness to him and his community. He reached out to me to point out rightly that although there has indeed been a disheartening decline in recent years regarding the type of engaged Christianity that Jesus himself promoted, there are still some who not only recognize the need to pray for the suffering of others but to activate faith more directly, which includes challenging ones own set views of history and their place in it and as such adjusting ones lot in life accordingly for the benefit of others.
I am grateful for my former student/friend for taking the time to share with me his views. I, like so many amongst us in these emotionally charged times, can easily create perceptions, dogmas, views, etc. that, if I am not careful, become fixed, rigid, generally unhelpful, and occasionally dangerous. He rightly sensed this developing in me from within the subtle undertones of last week’s offering and skillfully offered me a wider view, reminding me that even though they may be hard to see, especially in mainstream media feeds, there are hardworking Christians amongst us dedicated to non-violence, racial equality, environmental protection, addressing economic inequality, etc. There are even those who are working to make appropriate reparations, etc.
In reflecting over this since our conversation I am reminded of a remarkable friendship Martin Luther King had developed with the late Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Naht Hanh whom he himself nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and their shared vision of, what King referred to as a “Beloved Community”. King believed that a community of love, justice and solidarity could, and indeed would eventually be actualized. Which is why he unceasingly engaged directly in the noble quest for the realization of said dream. He found in Thich Naht Hanh, a citizen of the country we were then at war with to be a dear brother, a fellow citizen of Earth engaged in a similar struggle and knew that were he to invite his views to sit beside his, they would both be all the wiser for it, more able to help the world at large.
Thich Naht Hanh, a Zen (from the Linji tradition) monk who was exiled from his native home in Vietnam for opposing the war there in 1966 also believed in the power of community. He referred to it in Buddhist terms as Sangha, but both King and Thay (as he is lovingly referred to) recognized the similar view of a togetherness and together they forged an unlikely, cross-cultural, interracial, inter-faith friendship that generated a wave of powerful moral reckoning and global spiritual development that we are only now beginning to realize the full impact of. Like MLK, who recognized that christians needed to be actively engaged with society, that it wasn’t enough to merely live in a world of idealistic “thoughts and prayers” Thich Naht Hanh reformed Vietnamese Buddhism, recognizing that in that faith was also a growing dormancy and, by using the tragedy of war as a catalyst for peace and not yet more war, went on to initiate what he termed Engaged Buddhism, which suggests that practitioners of Buddhism must be directly involved not only with ones own individual matters but so too with matters pertaining to society at large as well as environmental ones. Eventually, Thay organized a group of social workers called Tiep Heim (The Order of Interbeing) who vowed to 14 “mindfulness trainings” which served as a guide for how to engage directly with the world skillfully, nonviolently and in a harmonious way with a diverse group of people carrying with them myriad views.
Notably, the first and eighth Mindfulness Trainings speak directly to the danger of possessing fixed views and the importance of caring for community (AKA Sangha or as MLK would call it, Beloved Community). They state as follows:
-The First Mindfulness Training: Openness
Aware of the suffering created by fanaticism and intolerance, we are determined not to be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even Buddhist ones. We are committed to seeing the Buddhist teachings as a guiding means that help us learn to look deeply and develop understanding and compassion. They are not doctrines to fight, kill, or die for. We understand that fanaticism in its many forms is the result of perceiving things in a dualistic or discriminative manner. We will train ourselves to look at everything with openness and the insight of interbeing in order to transform dogmatism and violence in ourselves and the world.
-The Eighth Mindfulness Training: True Community and Communication
Aware that lack of communication always brings separation and suffering, we are committed to training ourselves in the practice of compassionate listening and loving speech. Knowing that true community is rooted in inclusiveness and in the concrete practice of the harmony of views, thinking and speech, we will practice to share our understanding and experiences with members in our community in order to arrive at collective insight.
We are determined to learn to listen deeply without judging or reacting, and refrain from uttering words that can create discord or cause the community to break. Whenever difficulties arise, we will remain in our Sangha and practice looking deeply into ourselves and others to recognize all the causes and conditions, including our own habit energies, that have brought about the difficulties. We will take responsibility for all the ways we may have contributed to the conflict and keep communication open. We will not behave as a victim but be active in finding ways to reconcile and resolve all conflicts however small.
Both TNH and MLK recognized that neither the Buddha’s teachings nor the teachings of the Christ could fully be activated in an isolated chamber, they had to be lived directly, in community. In times like these, the building of a “Beloved Community” can seem but an impossible dream. Ironically, now, within the same week in which we remember the tragic shooting of MLK, within same state where he was shot, in the same state where the recent school shootings took place, two black democratic members of the Tennessee House of Representatives have been undemocratically expelled for supporting gun reform, in an act that was clearly racially motivated. One recalls the noble cry of Rodney Glen King (May 1, 1992), who instead of raging against his oppressors (four Los Angeles cops whose savage beatings broke his bones, punctured his skull, shattered his teeth, etc.), in what would have been an understandable fury after being so unnecessarily harmed, famously asked the world, “Can’t we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?” Yet we must continue both the work of MLK and TNH. No one said it would be easy. Most things that matter never are.
It has not been an easy journey for me these past ten years, intimately intwining my western raised views in with the radically different views held by my Thai wife and our community here. Many are the days in which I feel I am losing my bearings due to the overwhelm that comes with unfamiliarity and change. Occasionally I slip into the childlike fear-based reactions that result from insecurities and judge the dominant culture here, suggesting “they” (the other) are doing things wrong, that somehow my way of communicating, of eating, of praying, of shitting, having fun, etc. is somehow superior to theirs. Yet over time, with patience and consistency I am learning that it isn’t that one way is necessarily better than the other, but it is certain than when I learn of more ways than merely the ones I was raised to know, I am better for it. And when I share my own observations regarding how to live with my Thai hosts, with humility and courtesy, not with a tone that suggests some form of superiority, it is generally well received. What usually emerges is friendship and with that, a third way of doing things that is often times much more beneficial than “their” way or “mine”.
Community, as has here been discussed before is indeed rather hard to maintain. But so too is hatred and fear, isolation, and ignorance. It seems to me that the antidote to much of the ongoing insanity prevailing nowadays, whether it is an inability to connect with neighbors or in halls of congress, or increasingly even with our own selves, is literally staring us in the face. Our enemies are not our enemies. They are extensions of a shared struggle that belongs to all of us and everyone has been experiencing this struggle from different vantages for a long time. Whether from the East, from the West, born into wealth or into poverty, whether descending from slaves or from slave owners, the story has been tragic, not told very well and has resulted in but more tragedy, of which we all now find ourselves clumsily attempting to navigate through using the same tools that got us into this mess in the first place. It behooves us therefore to sit together, to really sit together, share some tea, a smoke, a meal, whatever and listen to each other’s tale, for your brother’s tale is also yours. This ought not suggest “oneness” nor should it oversimplify the horrific injustices of colonization, etc. But until we recognize the wounds in our fellow brothers and sisters and see in them a reflection of us, we won’t be able to enter the Beloved Community MLK spoke of. We need each other. We cannot do this alone.
May Peace Prevail On Earth.
This weeks Song of The Week: Childish Gambino - This Is America
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=KENDRICK+LAMAR+THIS+IS+AMERICA+YOUTUBE&atb=v337-1&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DVYOjWnS4cMY