Radical Feminism,
Gardening, and Prayer are featured.
In a way, especially with separatist Feminism, they each give a
sense of separatism. That seems strange in a culture of
nonduality or nonseparation. But it's not. Everything, when it is
truly seen, is like a rare mushroom that's been at your feet all
the while, but now you see it, and ... aha ... there it is.
Look upon anything, it is consciousness in a costume.
"This blog exists to challenge white heterosexual male
supremacy as an institutionalized ideology and a systematized set
of practices which are misogynistic, heterosexist, genocidal, and
ecocidal."
In Memory of the Great Mary Daly, Radical Elemental Feminist
(October 16, 1928 – January 3, 2010)
[this photograph of Mary Daly is from her website, linked to
below.]
I just found this out. I am shocked. This is where I found out
the news of Mary Daly's death.
Here's a link to her website: http://www.marydaly.net/
What follows is from here.
:(
Jan. 4th, 2010 at 12:11 PM
So, I have been away from eljay not because of impending birth,
but because I have my daughter's cold and it sucks, and I don't
have anything much of note to say.
But today I found out that Mary Daly died yesterday, and that
makes me sad.
"There are and will be those who think I have gone
overboard. Let them rest assured that this assessment is correct,
probably beyond their wildest imagination, and that I will
continue to do so. "
- Mary Daly, Outercourse
From the crop of radical feminists of the 1970s, she was
definitely my favorite. Her book Gyn/Ecology struck me as
delightfully witty, verbose, and angry when I was in high school;
she was the sort of feminist one would name-drop in conversations
about "man-hating" along with Andrea Dworkin, Catherine
MacKinnon, et al - she was not the politically correct
wishy-washy feminist of today. She was a separatist, she did not
hold truck with ideas like "unpacking privilege" (to
her a feminist was a feminist was a feminist, regardless of color
or income), and she held a lot of views that would get you
soundly booted from feminist these days. She was one of my
favorite non-fiction authors, thinkers, and someone I aspired to
one day meet. I did not get the chance.
While I don't know that she will be missed, she should be. We
lost one of our most lively female thinkers yesterday.
Karate, as you know, originated in Okinawa and spread to Japan.
Both countries noted for their farms and beautiful gardens. We
can learn a lot from gardening just like we can from Budo, or the
Martial Way.
In fact, there is an old saying on how Farming is Budo. Many of
the old karate-ka were farmers and knew the earth well. I don't
have a farm, but I do like to garden. This time of year I miss
being out in the dirt, pulling weeds, watering and, yes, I even
talk to my vegetables. Once, I swore a tomatoe talked to me...but
that was back in the 70's.
Well,
to stay on track. Gardening is Budo. It is about discovery,
calming the spirit and seeing directly into our true nature. Our
mind is like a garden. Stuff grows in it...even when we aren't
trying. If you just dug up the earth and left it, in a few days
the grass and weeds will begin to grow. When you plant vegetables
or flowers, they begin to grow.
No matter what, stuff grows in your garden. Just like your mind.
When you pay attention to it or not, stuff grows. Thoughts are
always growing in the mind. Some are intentional, some are just
random. Some are vegetables and flowers...some are weeds.
Regardless, your mind is always growing thoughts....and just like
a real garden it needs to be tended.
As I mentioned earlier, an untended garden grows weeds and grass.
An untended mind grows suffering, delusion, ignorance and anger.
Tend your garden by pulling the weeds and your vegetables will
grow strong and tall. Tend your mind by pulling the suffering at
its root and your bliss will grow. It is a matter of taking care
of your garden and your mind.
For myself, tending the mind is accomplished via Zazen and
mindfulness of everyday activity. Just being here. Zazen is the
weeding of the garden of my mind so my vegies (bliss, happiness,
compassion) can grow and give me food and life. Yes, we can learn
a lot from gardening. In many ways, Gardening is Budo. I miss my
garden...It's there, just waiting till the snow melts and the
ground thaws.
Jay Michaelson’s article, “Prayer and Nonduality”
(Tikkun Nov/Dec 2009) prompts me to share a little of my own
wrestling with this topic.
When I was 16 and a beginning student of Zen, I sat on the shore
of Cape Cod and disappeared. No body, no mind, no “me”
at all. When I returned I knew that whatever Reality is, it has
nothing to do with the isms that seek to define it. It is what
is: Ehyeh asher Ehyeh (to quote God in Exodus), the ceaseless
Is’ing of birth, death, and rebirth. To speak of God and
Creation was to speak of Ocean and Wave, the former greater than
but not other than the latter. Can the wave pray to the Ocean? I
didn’t think so. I stopped praying.
Then, decades later, I began to experience Shekhinah, the
presence of God as Divine Mother. I resisted the experience as
best I could, but I could not do so for long. So I began to speak
to Her and to hear Her speak to me. The trouble was that this
clearly dualistic encounter with the Divine violated everything I
knew to be true about the nondual nature of Reality.
I was no less Her; She was no less me; and yet we spoke. What She
taught me is that if God is All, God must be Other as well.
Nonduality when juxtaposed with duality is simply part of a
larger duality. True nonduality embraces the Other as well as the
One in a greater Reality for which there are no words.
So now I pray. What do I pray? There is little in Jewish liturgy
that speaks to me, but what little there is I use as mantra. I
chant single lines of Hebrew, the core wisdom of the liturgy, and
then I wait. What emerges from this waiting is a conversation: me
pouring my heart out to Her, and She mirroring my self back to me
in a way that allows me to see through the madness and move
beyond it. These are moments of ecstasy unmediated by ritual and
decorum. No rising or sitting; no responsive readings; no moments
of mumbled pseudo-silence. Just raw, uncensored speech; just
saying “Thou;” just hearing echoes of “I.” In
time the speech gives way to silence, the wave returns to the
Ocean. I am gone. God is all.
Unlike Jay I don’t pray to be transformed. There is no
static “me” at all. There is no transformation from one
fixed state to another, just ceaseless teshuvah, endless turning
from self to Self to self again and again and again. And with
each turning there is expansion: not a going round like a planet
in orbit around a sun, but a spiraling out like a galaxy. And
with each turn and return my heart of opened wider; I am (I
think) more loved and loving. I pray for nothing. The turning is
its own reward.
Can this happen in a formal synagogue service? Of course, but for
me it happens when I walk outside, the rhythm of my steps
matching the rhythm of my breath, dancing with the rhythm of
Life. Can it happen with our heads buried in a siddur (prayer
book), our mouths reciting ancient scripts? Of course, but for me
it happens in the far simpler chanting of single lines, the
uncensored wildness of unscripted speech, and the greater silence
that ultimately engulfs them both.
My thanks to Tikkun magazine for giving us yet another
opportunity to hear Jay’s wisdom.
[Tikkun is a wonderful magazine and I urge you all to
subscribe/support it. Jay also writes a column for The Forward,
another great publication. The magazine business is tough.
Subscriptions are its life-blood. Support those magazines you
cherish. And check out my column in Spirituality & Health,
another important publication worthy of your support.]
Well,
to stay on track. Gardening is Budo. It is about discovery,
calming the spirit and seeing directly into our true nature. Our
mind is like a garden. Stuff grows in it...even when we aren't
trying. If you just dug up the earth and left it, in a few days
the grass and weeds will begin to grow. When you plant vegetables
or flowers, they begin to grow.