Clif Cannon
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Elizabeth, thank you for making the best choice for you. Sounds heartfelt. And, yes the “getting it right” thought-streams are definitely alive in this exercise. We’ll get more chances to practice, and welcome back.
Hi Rosie. Thanks for sharing this. Yes, it’s interesting how we can get pulled right back into the “am I doing this “right” mode” and it becoming performative in some way. Great awareness. I felt some of the same – I DO want to get an “A”! haha
My biggest insight in giving meditation instruction this time is that I need to “take my seat” before starting to give instruction. This provides a stable foundation for me, and whatever might arise with me and/or students(s), and also can energetically and physically model taking one’s seat for students. Bringing a calm, sane, presence is one of the things I need to bring as a teacher to be effective and allow the best chance for students to experience meditation. Although I have led meditation and given instructions many times, I felt I was “suddenly” on the spot. It was a good reminder to ground and settle myself, before I can reliably and effectively give instruction and hold the “field” for students.
Hi Octavio. Thank you for your note, and transparency (smile). Yes, in many ways (like many oppressed and suppressed groups, including Buddhists, at times) lineage is not only not acknowledged, but intentionally erased. There is little or no trace to be easily revealed, and so we must find the threads ourselves. In the case of gay/queer people, we arise, and have done so across millennia, in every civilization. So, of course there is a long lineage that we are undeniably connected with. While I was studying at Upaya (a tradition that added “matriarchs” to the Zen lineage, by the way) a teacher was sharing a lineage story, and framed it along the lines of “this, or something close to it may have happened.” I smiled, in modern day we might say “don’t let the facts ruin a good (teaching) story.” My view is we need to amend and repair lapses or gaps in our lineage (we can surely imagine that there have been gay figures in Buddhist history, even though it has not been widely reported). Thanks for sharing your thoughts and heart, and listening to mine. 🙏🦄
Erin, thank you for sharing your discernment (this “being with the Question”). I was lost until I realized I could (must) claim my lineage and that I was free to claim and define my lineage (Queer is a foundational part of this human experience for me) – and for each of us what must be our courageous choice. Joseph Campbell said “the privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” This has always resonated with me, long before I understood what it meant. And, I connect it with the Buddha’s teaching of authentic experience. Not taking the Buddha’s or anyone else’s word for it – what is true for you/me. 🙏
🙏❤️ Love this, thank you – the web of our lineage and stories inter-web and inter-are – how could we separate (or why would we want to?). I love that you’ve brought in authors within your lineage. Thank you.
Jo,
Thanks for sharing – I love your naming the unknown/shadow parts of our lineages. We often have a “family narrative” that reinforces us as the “good people” I know that my family have (despite strong evidence of adjacency if not outright complicity in atrocities). It seems a cautionary reminder to keep front and center – most people (?) believe they are the Good Guys, we can all fall into that trap. By naming it as you have done, we remember humility in our path and actions as we take our “warrior’s seat.”
I smiled at (“I’ll just pick the good ones.”). I love that idea and have embraced it – I want the best of the best and the “good ones” in my lineage in the sense that they inspire, teach, and exemplify something to me, even though, they are all too incredibly human and fallible. When I asked what to do about the failings of the human teacher in the face of failings in their own behavior, I was reminded to “look to the Teachings” (not the person). Thanks for sharing. 🙏
Jake,
I love the intimacy of, and you’re knowing of and that you are a part of, your family lineage. This is powerful and really comes through. Thank you for sharing. 🙏
Susan,
I love how you brought the richness and depth of food and its metaphor into our journey “The food is good if cooked with heart and pleasure.” How true this is in every aspect of our lives. 🙏
Lauren,
I LOVE the expansiveness of your lineage. I had a similar experience that my lineage was supposed to be and look a certain way, otherwise it wasn’t “legit” (by whose standards I don’t know, but some “expert” or “Big Teacher” haha). I too expanded my lineage to include those that were on my Path, who shared knowledge, and wisdom. Where I have found the most reliable lineage is through Queer Dharma and my Buddhist teachers (though there are few queer Buddhist teachers). Thank you for sharing.
Lineage is such an interesting question. Is it “locating” me in a constellation of bloodlines, giving me an identity within a clan across centuries, telling me where I do or do not belong, and, can I choose my lineage, or is it a caste from which one cannot escape? Maybe all of these. And, maybe lineage is an extension and reflection of the Path that I claim, Teachers (formal and informal), and direct experience. At it’s essence “lineage” is something we must claim, overcome, and weave together, for ourselves.
Like all People (because we are Human), I have an interesting and complex history of relations by blood – Oklahoma Sooners and Sodbusters, all whites in a racist “sundown town”, and Tulsa and the Greenwood massacre. I am also, it is true, a direct bloodline descendant and member of the Cherokee tribe, tracing in all 10 directions. When acknowledging historical lineage, one must encompass all its complexities – beautiful and atrocious. As the great-grandchild, and grandchild of the white Oklahomans, I am in line with those who embraced and supported racism in its worst expression. As the grandchild of a Cherokee, I am part of the lineage of the earliest indigenous peoples in America, and certainly as a white-presenting person, a product of colonial white expansionism.
However, along with, maybe in spite of, this, I came to my Queer Lineage. My uncle, Butch, was gay, and estranged from his (my) immediate family. He is one of my ancestors, not only by blood, but more importantly to me as a part of my queer lineage. I met him only once or twice in my life that I recall, he died of AIDS in the early 90’s. We didn’t have an in person relationship. But it was in my coming out journey that I realized that I felt I was missing something – a connection, a “through-line” of experience and lineage of my own queer life. Lineage then, becomes a process of “identifying the line” and of “choosing.”
Of course, I had and have now many queer lineage holders before I reclaimed Butch (James Baldwin, E.M. Forester, Oscar Wilde, Marsha P.Johnson, Stonewall activists, to name a few). I claimed my lineage for myself, for my family, and for society, and as importantly, I claim my lineage FOR my lineage. My grandparents didn’t know what to do with Butch as a young gay boy in racist and conservative Oklahoma, a story that parallels my experience. This caused a break in my lineage. He was estranged, though I say that “another word for ‘estranged’ is ‘escaped.'” (Butch claimed his lineage and life in San Francisco, CA, in the 1970s and 1980s the center of gay life at that time.). And, I had experienced my own estrangement, from myself, and from my family, and lineage. I had to both define and claim my lineage. Queer (gay, lesbian, bi, etc.) people arise in every culture and civilization since time immemorial. I was not a cast off bead without context, but a pearl in the long lineage of queer history, culture and connection. There is no way of eliminating this lineage. The lineage is there to be claimed. In claiming my queer lineage, in spite of the predominant heteronormative standards of the world I make an audacious, and risky choice. A choice of personal and social imperative. Claiming lineage is always this way, for it requires definition and choice. In all cases, choosing lineage (whether of one’s bloodline or not) involves courage. A conscious decision.
Buddhism, an integral part of my lineage, led me to discover that my Queer Lineage and Queer Dharma, and my Buddhist Lineage and Buddhist Dharma “inter-are.” To live my Dharma is to live my life through my lineage – in all of its complexities, difficulties, and beauty. This includes of course living my authentic expression and sexuality. All of these transmissions that were truly beneficial have been through ‘warm hand to warm hand,” “loving heart to loving heart,” and “warm touch to warm touch” transmission. Ultimately, my lineage supports and requires, expression through me – and I through it.
On reflection of the reading, and the clear question – where have I experienced both nihilism and eternalism – it seems perfectly human that we must, almost as an imperative, explore both, because consciously or not, we have experienced them both.
Nihilism for me has often shown up with a cloud of depression, a hurt, an attempt to roust myself from some state of being – an intense state of dissatisfaction and frustration (external and small self view) – “F*ck it, it really doesn’t matter. NONE of this matters!” (dramatic arm gesture to sky). Though this might be framed as exasperation or “what’s the point?” when things get hard, there can also be the side of nihilism that says “it doesn’t matter (no heaven/hell, Goddess or Gods, peoples’ opinions, conditions, etc., to answer to) – “go for it.” Nihilism for me, ultimately seems shallow and tinny. It can be fickle. There’s not much there, there. But then, I suppose, that’s nihilism. There is no “there” there. This can be very disappointing, “am I Good?” am I Bad?” is there no purpose to being here?
I was born queer into a Southern Baptist family, and was introduced to eternalism as the first agenda item of New Life, along with the Set of Rules by which to play the game to win (eternal salvation). I knew I was queer (“more Basic Badnes points for you”) from a young age, and realized that this theory simply did not make sense. As Pema says “there is no great babysitter in the sky”(GBS), no ground to fall onto, and certainly not some old white guy up in the sky. Along with The Rules, there were foundational beliefs of The Game, the most relevant one here which was “you are basically bad” and that I should spend my life appealing to the GBS that I could be Good, if only I would be given lots of chances to fail and repent and ask again and again – ugh! exhausting and manipulative. And, I could smell the falsities rotting beneath the church pew. It took me awhile, cycling through the pendulum swings of Southern Baptist, Catholicism, Espiscopalianism – “here’s the way, to getting out of your own basic badness.” (Oh, and “please tithe” so we can help you pull yourself from your own basic badness).
I remember hearing about Basic Goodness for the first time in Shambhala – it shocked me. “Wait, wait, what?!” I hadn’t realized how deeply the ingrained beliefs that I knew (or would say) were not even “mine” (basic badness). It rocked my world, and somehow rang deeply, richly True. It was energy releasing.
I believe there is something of us humans as we rise day to day, make plans for a future, and drive forward, that wants to believe “I” may live on. It still pokes its head up for me occasionally. But, as I pick the earthworm up off the pavement of my rainy walk and place it in the grass, and hear the raindrops falling on my jacket, and feel my sock rubbing against my ankle, I realize that I will dissolve and cross to the Other Shore (Gone beyond) and that none of it matters, and that it all does matter, deeply.
Hi Anita.
Thank you for your reflection, the visual of the two sides of a river resonates – which leads us to the “middle” of the river and swimming, floundering, floating along (row row row your boat gently down the stream” (smile)). I find nihilism and externalism to be the pendulum that has swung to often through my Life. Thank you.