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Engaged Buddhist Art by Kenji Liu

Bay Area artist Kenji Liu has just released this gorgeous new poster for sale, and the only reason I haven’t already ordered one is that I’m planning to hit up his table at this Sunday’s Buddhist Peace Fellowship event.  (What’s Up With Engaged Buddhism?  Part 1: Who Gets To Speak?  with David Loy, Donald Rothberg, Alka Arora, Jen-Mei Wu, Kenji, and me. If you’re around Oakland, CA, you should come!)

Lemme tell you why I find this piece so fly and powerful.

One, the aesthetics speak to me.  Just look at those colors!  They resonate with me on a very different level than the muted, earthy greens, browns, and whites that I often see at US meditation centers.  (Though, to be fair, I’ve mostly seen Zen, Insight, and a couple of Shambhala ones.)  As Kenji puts it, this print employs “more traditional Tibetan Buddhist colors and symbols and gives them new context.”  The graphics, too, are bold yet nuanced.  (Love the expression on the Buddha’s face.)  The Buddha is a woman of color with a bullhorn in her lap.  The Dharmacakra is a hubcap!  This is a world I live in!

Then, once the art has my attention, it educates me.  Although I have an immediate visceral reaction against the cop and capitalist, the way Kenji visually includes them as possible “guardians of the Buddha’s teachings” challenges me to reconsider them as part of the total scene.  As he writes,

Can we simultaneously act to stop the suffering caused by corporate capitalism and police/state violence, while remembering that they too are Buddhas-in-the-making?

Whether I agree with the statement or not, at least it’s a statement I can understand, and that feels incredibly relevant and important to my life and political work.  And if that weren’t enough, Kenji’s explanation of some of the symbology he uses in the thangka (the blue skin of the medicine Buddha; the mudras; the traditional placement of the guardian figures) also educates me (fairly ignorant when it comes to thangkas) about Buddhist art and iconography.  Philosophy as art; art as philosophy.

One final word to the wise, folks: this print is limited-edition.  So if you’re feelin it, I recommend you cop one quickly!  :)

Bay Area artist Kenji Liu has just released this gorgeous new poster for sale, and the only reason I haven’t already ordered one is that I’m planning to hit up his table at this Sunday’s Buddhist Peace Fellowship event.  (What’s Up With Engaged Buddhism?  Part 1: Who Gets To Speak?  with David Loy, Donald Rothberg, Alka Arora, Jen-Mei Wu, Kenji, and...

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Icelanders “reaping the benefits of anger”

Paul Taggart/Bloomberg. "Icelandic Anger Brings Debt Relief"

Curious what folks think about this take on Iceland’s economic recovery, and how it was precipitated by

Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer for the country’s economic and financial collapse.

Given the positive outcome, would you be more inclined to physically pressure your government if, let’s say, your country were similarly foisting the burden of the housing bubble onto working-class people, rather than financial institutions?  Is there context and nuance that you feel the article is leaving out?

Curious what folks think about this take on Iceland’s economic recovery, and how it was precipitated by Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer for the country’s economic and financial collapse. Given the positive outcome, would you be more inclined to physically pressure your government if, let’s say, your...

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Help Defend “Occupy The Farm” in Albany, CA

Remember the recent land re-occupation here in the Bay? It’s recently come under attack by police. Re-posting Movement Generation‘s update on the current status, including what we can do all across the country — and beyond — to support.

Occupy the Farm: Take Back the Gill Tract! Call For Support   Photo by: Dave Id / Indybay.org On Earth Day 2012, Occupy the Farm: Take Back the Tract launched with an ongoing mass act of moral obedience – farming. People from all walks of life, including families, elders, neighbors and students, occupied the last best agricultural soil in the urbanized East Bay, known as the Gill Tract. Trucks were waiting there with 10,000 seedlings, compost, hay, roto-tillers and tools. Public land currently administered by the University of California (UC), this farmland has dwindled to 10 acres as the UC has sold off and developed most of it. They’re now slating half the remaining parcel for sale to a developer for a supermarket & parking lot. Despite being a uniquely valuable public asset and a potentially equally valuable educational and research opportunity for the UC, the UC has thwarted attempts by community members to transform the site into a hands-on educational farm for decades.  Furthermore, the UC’s plans to privatize this unique public asset is only the latest in a string of privatization schemes. Over the last several decades, the UC has increasingly shifted use of the Gill Tract away from sustainable agriculture and towards biotechnology with funding from corporations such as oil & gas giant BP and transnational pharmaceuticals corporation Novartis.   Gopal Dayaneni (MG) during the Earth Day action to Take Back the Tract! Photo by: Dave Id / Indybay.org For too long, profit rather than community need, has driven land use in our cities. This has left tens of thousands of families without access to healthy fresh food or the ability to meet their own food needs, especially in working-class communities of color. Here in the SF Bay Area, we have all we need to both fight for and manifest our vision of a just, healthy food system and a more equitable world. We have the farmers, educators, activists, writers, and organized communities. Now is the time to take a stand and spark urban land reclamation for meeting our own needs everywhere. Currently, the University is taking police and legal action against the Farm. Now, more than ever, Occupy the Farm needs your support-not just to defend it in this moment, but to show our solidarity for the long-term vision to preserve this precious agricultural land for farming, and not development!   WAYS YOU CAN SUPPORT OCCUPY THE FARM Sign the online petition:  Show the UC Berkeley administration that you support the vision of Occupy the Farm – and call on them to stop police action so that the farmers may continue to farm!  Click here for the petition. If you are an organization or group that wants to support: Endorse the collective letter of support, being signed by organizations, alliances and groups nation-wide. To sign on, please emailoccupythefarmletter@gmail.com.   Show up & work hard: Everyone who believes that the best use of farmland is farming – please join in! Our work is our resistance, and the fruit of our labor creates our collective resilience. The Farm is located in Albany, on the corner of San Pablo Ave and Marin Ave. Take more land, wherever you live: Wherever community needs are not being fulfilled and traditional avenues of change have failed, take space at the required scale to meet these needs. Occupy. Make Productive. Contest the Title.    Stay updated: –Twitter: @OccupyFarm –Facebook: Occupy the Farm –Sign up for text message alerts if you’re local: Text “gilltractfarm” to 41411. –Email list: send a message toGillTractFarm@riseup.net with “listserve” in the subject line to be added to the email list. Donate to the Farm: Click here to find a link to their online donations page, as well as a current list of needed materials. Learn more: www.OccupyTheFarm.org

Remember the recent land re-occupation here in the Bay? It’s recently come under attack by police. Re-posting Movement Generation‘s update on the current status, including what we can do all across the country — and beyond — to support. Occupy the Farm: Take Back the Gill Tract! Call For Support   Photo by: Dave Id /...

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Temporary

via Kenji Liu on Facebook.

This made me smile.

In the image there appear to be eleven phases of the corpse, while, as far as I can tell, the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta describes nine.  (At least in this translation.)  Maybe there’s another version it’s referencing?

In any case, many Buddhists still continue this ancient practice of reflecting on the impermanence of the body.

 And again, bhikkhus, if a bhikkhu should see a body, one day dead, or two days dead, or three days dead, swollen, blue and festering, discarded in the charnel ground, he then compares it to his own body thus: “Truly this body is of the same nature, it will become like that and cannot escape from it.”

Thus he dwells perceiving again and again the body just as the body in himself… Thus, bhikkhus, this is also a way in which a bhikkhu dwells perceiving again and again the body as just the body.

And now it’s making its way into memes, and even onto t-shirts.

Somewhat relatedly, I’ve been hearing disabilities justice and nursing folks use the term “temporarily able bodied” instead of the more common “able bodied.”   Have you heard this phrase, too?  It strikes me as wise.  A reminder that most of us will lose our physical and/or mental faculties at some point, even before death.  (“old age, sickness, and …”)

via Kenji Liu on Facebook. This made me smile. In the image there appear to be eleven phases of the corpse, while, as far as I can tell, the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta describes nine.  (At least in this translation.)  Maybe there’s another version it’s referencing? In any case, many Buddhists still continue this ancient practice of reflecting on the...

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Righteous and ready to burn: 20 years after LA

[Editor's Note: Hi, folks, Katie here. I want to acknowledge that for many folks who commit their lives to peacemaking, the concept of an article dedicated to the anniversary of the LA riots might seem jarring.  We at Turning Wheel certainly welcome comments and feedback (fitting with our commenting guidelines) — in fact, the immediacy of online feedback and dialogue is one of the reasons we're excited to have this digital forum.  In addition, and to share some more context for this piece, I offer the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered at a high school three weeks before his assassination.

It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

We who work for peace and freedom for all beings must concern ourselves more with justice than with tranquility.  And in that spirit, I feel delighted and excited to host this reflection on here on Turning Wheel.  Hope you enjoy.  ~Katie]

It’s time to show the mothafuckin’ news how the streets feel /
Give ‘em a cup of this truth they need a refill…
Damn, that’s the life we live /
If a pig wanna shoot you than your life is his /
I guess the laws don’t know what bein’ righteous is
—By Any Means, Young Gully (2010)

Twenty years ago this weekend, after four cops were acquitted for the widely publicized assault of Rodney King, communities in LA united in anger. In under a week, thousands showed through physical expression of their anger that the Dream of the U.S. was not working. In that time 53 lives were taken and more than 3,000 fires caused about a billion dollars of damage, according to reports. But let’s be clear: two decades after LA went up in flames, the anger still bubbles barely beneath the surface and the US remains in crisis.

Every April, I spend time finding accounts and analyses of the 1992 rebellions. For the 20th anniversary, some LA-based news organizations have put together spotlight websites highlighting the events of 20 years ago and what has changed since. A few things stand out.

First, there’s a heavy focus on ways the Los Angeles Police Department has improved in the past two decades. There’s a similar focus on how “race relations” have improved.

[Editor's Note: Hi, folks, Katie here. I want to acknowledge that for many folks who commit their lives to peacemaking, the concept of an article dedicated to the anniversary of the LA riots might seem jarring.  We at Turning Wheel certainly welcome comments and feedback (fitting with our commenting guidelines) — in fact, the immediacy of online feedback and dialogue is one of...

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May Day Seattle: Hip Hop Rise & Decolonize

For many of us, the relationship between “Occupy” and “Decolonize” is still a live question. For one group in Seattle, the question is ALL The Way Live.

Bringing the cypher to the picket line, Seattle’s activists in Hip Hop Occupies To Decolonize infuse the militant dynamism of hip hop into their local movements: not just in superficial form, but in a deep spirit of creativity, collaboration, and resistance led by oppressed communities.  As they write on their web site:

From its genesis, Hip Hop has been a vehicle of expression and liberation for oppressed peoples. Disenfranchised youth in the development-torn 1970s Bronx responded to the economic violence imposed upon their neighborhoods through occupation. Youth occupied vacant buildings, walls, and subway trains with their art work. Entire communities occupied city streets and other publically owned spaces with massive parties and parks jams, powered by occupied electricity, siphoned from street lights. It was in these acts of occupation that the elements of Hip Hop, b-boy/b-girling, graffiti, DJing, and emceeing emerged and spread. Gangs were unified, communities were built, and a new globally recognized culture was founded.

Although since then, Hip Hop has experienced commoditization by corporate and capitalist interests, there still thrives a vast and rapidly growing network of artists of every gender, race, class, and age, who remain dedicated to its revolutionary roots. It is this sleeping giant that is awakening to energize and shape the recent occupation movement, and give voice to the voiceless. The struggle is “Bigger than Hip Hop,” but through this culture, we can galvanize, uplift, and provide collective vision for the future.

For many of us, the relationship between “Occupy” and “Decolonize” is still a live question. For one group in Seattle, the question is ALL The Way Live. Bringing the cypher to the picket line, Seattle’s activists in Hip Hop Occupies To Decolonize infuse the militant dynamism of hip hop into their local movements: not just in superficial form,...

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Karma of Confinement: Amazing Timeline On US “Freedom”

Check this out. (article by Jamilah King at Colorlines.)

Bay Area artist Evan Bissell has co-created an incredible interactive learning tool that shows how “freedom” for some in America has always come at the expense of others. “The Knotted Line” uses interactive, semi-hidden paintings and participatory text to wind through half a millenium of exclusion and confinement in the part of Turtle Island now called the United States.

On one level, The Knotted Line started as a personal exploration; how is it that in a society where freedom is the central political rhetoric, we have constantly confined large portions of our population? That discrepancy was something I couldn’t understand from a pretty young age, and it was definitely a spark of my politicization.

The amount of collaborative research going into this project is truly breathtaking, and the semi-obfuscation of the paintings provides an apt metaphor for the perseverance necessary to learn and reclaim histories that mainstream schooling does not teach us.  If we engaged Buddhists are to understand the collective karma of our society, tools like this (and this ain’t the only radical timeline out there!) are precious gifts, indeed.

Check this out. (article by Jamilah King at Colorlines.) Bay Area artist Evan Bissell has co-created an incredible interactive learning tool that shows how “freedom” for some in America has always come at the expense of others. “The Knotted Line” uses interactive, semi-hidden paintings and participatory text to wind through half a millenium of exclusion and...

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Submit to MOONROOT!

Heads up, folks!  If you don’t already know, MOONROOT is a gorgeous, uplifting, and deeply intentional collaborative project created by “womyn, genderqueer, and trans* folks of Asian descent.”  Their first zine was freaking rad and beautiful, and the deadline for submissions for issue #2 is coming up, April 29th.  If you self-identify in this community, jump on it!

WHO WE ARE:

MOONROOT is an ongoing collective project about race, gender, and bodies.  It is an evolving experiment in deep, loving community-building among self-identified womyn, trans*, and/or genderqueer persons of Asian descent (whether East Asian, South Asian, Pacific Islander, Southeast Asian, Central Asian, West Asian, hapa or mixed) living in diaspora, across borders and geographies. We believe that because our multiple and intersecting identities often render us invisible and misrepresented (even within our own communities), reclaiming our voices is a radical act of love and recognition.

Heads up, folks!  If you don’t already know, MOONROOT is a gorgeous, uplifting, and deeply intentional collaborative project created by “womyn, genderqueer, and trans* folks of Asian descent.”  Their first zine was freaking rad and beautiful, and the deadline for submissions for issue #2 is coming up, April 29th.  If you self-identify in this community, jump on...

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Land (Re)Occupation and the Second Precept: from Honduras to NorCal

Police confront farm workers over land takeover in Honduras last week. via LaPrensa.hn

Fair warning: I may become a broken record on the question of the second precept.

As part of the traditional ethical prescriptions for lay Buddhist practitioners, the second precept is usually presented as something like: “I undertake a training to refrain from taking that which is not given.”  Different teachers and sanghas have more succinct or expansive versions (the version from Thich Nhat Hanh’s community includes the elaboration, “I will prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on Earth.”), but the most basic idea remains the same.

Don’t steal.  It harms you; it harms others.

Someday I’d love to help anthologize a collection of art, essays, music, and other dope media to create conversation between the second precept and traditions of reclamation.   In a fundamentally exploitative and unjust economic system, based on ongoing genocide, colonization, slavery, and displacement of poor people, we must at least grapple with the idea that “property is theft.”  And this can’t help but influence and complicate our relationship to the second precept, right?

If we refrain from taking that which is not given, how can we reclaim that which is stolen from us?

As food for thought along these lines, I just wanted to highlight two examples of recent land takeovers: one big, one small.

Last week in Honduras, beginning on the International Peasant Day of Struggle, thousands of farm workers and their families launched a coordinated land takeover, seizing 12,000 hectares throughout the country.

Honduran farm workers occupy land in Valle de Sula. via LaPrensa.hn

And here in the East Bay, hundreds of people planted a renegade farm on arable land slated for “further housing and commercial development” by UC Berkeley.

Photo credit: Kevin Johnson for the SF Chronicle

[One activist] said Occupy the Farm was not linked to the Occupy Oakland protests, but “was philosophically inspired by it.” The movement, she added, was done in solidarity with the Brazilian Movimiento Sin Tierra (Landless Workers Movement) and La Via Campesina (the International Day of Peasant’s Struggles).

“We think it is the height of irony that a upscale national chain grocery store would be building on arable land where food can be grown here for the community,” she said.

Albany community activist Jackie Hermes-Fletcher said […] “We’ve spent 15 years trying to present solutions for this land, like an educational interpretive center, an urban farm, a neighborhood co-op, community garden or farmers’ market. [The renegade farm is] very dramatic and extremely fantastic.”

Happy Tuesday, y’all.

Fair warning: I may become a broken record on the question of the second precept. As part of the traditional ethical prescriptions for lay Buddhist practitioners, the second precept is usually presented as something like: “I undertake a training to refrain from taking that which is not given.”  Different teachers and sanghas have more succinct or expansive versions...

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New Face At Turning Wheel: Katie Loncke

(Transcript below the jump)

(Transcript below the jump) Hey, what’s up everybody, this is Katie Loncke, comin to you from Oakland, California.  I wanted to introduce myself: I’m the newest addition to Buddhist Peace Fellowship and Turning Wheel Media, and I wanted to introduce my new little corner of Turning Wheel: my blog called Liberation By Any Means Necessary.  That’s...

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In Dialogue with Ajahn Sulak Sivaraksa: I Will Not Kill, I Will Not Steal

What do the precepts of non-killing and non-stealing mean in our world filled with global violence and consumerism? Ajahn Sulak Sivaraksa, Thailand’s 79-year-old leader of socially engaged Buddhism, spoke on this question at a Buddhist Peace Fellowship event on March 24, 2012. A founder of the International Network of Socially Engaged Buddhists and a recipient of the Niwano Peace Prize and the Right Livelihood Award, Aj. Sulak spoke directly about the need to examine structural violence and the distortions of media as essential practices for Buddhists living in today’s world. Here at Turning Wheel Media, we are excited that our first multimedia offering is this video of Aj. Sulak’s engaging talk.

The video is broken up into 4 parts:

What do the precepts of non-killing and non-stealing mean in our world filled with global violence and consumerism? Ajahn Sulak Sivaraksa, Thailand’s 79-year-old leader of socially engaged Buddhism, spoke on this question at a Buddhist Peace Fellowship event on March 24, 2012. A founder of the International Network of Socially Engaged Buddhists and a recipient of the Niwano...

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Protected: Liberating the Magnolia

          In another lifetime I taught public grade school, my community composed of    teachers and students. Now I’m a professional gardener and most of my work life I’m knocking around with adults and mainly non-educators. Although I don’t regret the way life moved on, over the years I have felt more and more removed from what I once was so...