from Resurgence No. 225 July/August 2004

ACTIVISM IS A SPIRITUAL PATH
by MICHAEL BROWNSTEIN

What does meditation have to do with McDonald’s and Monsanto?

I’VE BEEN A Buddhist for many years, and I am also an activist, committed to overturning the profit-driven monoculture which is destroying our health, our Earth, and our soul. How are these two forms of awareness–awareness of what’s taking place in the outside world, and awareness of our internal processes–related? Can each aid the other in creating a sane, sustainable and just world?

Let’s look at activism in terms of the negative emotions generated–indignation and rage, but also frustration, sorrow, resignation. These are negative emotions because of the effect they have on us, the people who experience them. Not on the object of our emotions, whether it be the World Trade Organization, Monsanto, or George Bush. Negative emotions are reactive. Their only impact is on us. What difference does it make to Monsanto that you’re seething with indignation at something it has done or said? What difference does it make to the Pacific Lumber Company when you come upon a clear-cut old-growth forest in California and feel devastated?

Staying present with our emotions–anger, for example–means remaining aware of what we’re experiencing without becoming lost in reactivity. It means liberating the energy generated by anger from the object that calls it forth. In other words, it is a form of meditation. Then, the possibility exists to work with the situation from a place of clarity, rather than be submerged in confusion.

So, the first revolutionary act–or fact–about meditation is that it puts you in touch with what you’re feeling and thinking at this very moment. It puts you in touch with presence. Then you realise that you are the source of your emotions–not Monsanto or McDonald’s. This does not imply that we shouldn’t have these responses, but that we have to use them rather than be used by them. And the only way to do that is to become aware of their nature.

There are many misconceptions about meditation. Actually, meditation is simple, because there’s no particular goal. There’s nothing much to do. When you meditate you are not required to erase all thought, or see the clear light, or have a big revelation about the meaning of life. All you have to do is relax and sit with a straight spine so that your breath is unimpeded. Breathe slowly, following the breath with your attention. Notice any thoughts or emotions or sensations which arise. Try not to chase after them or reject them–but if you do, that’s not a problem as long as you remain aware of what you’re doing.

The problem comes from lack of awareness, from unconscious fixation and attachment, not from the thoughts or emotions themselves. As long as you’re alive, you’ll have thoughts and emotions. But as soon as you identify them without resistance, they dissolve. Just be aware–without forcing anything, without keeping score–of what your mind is doing, of where your attention is going. That’s meditation.

But being simple doesn’t mean it’s easy, because meditation involves dismantling habitual patterns which are very stubborn. That’s why it’s a practice, something we return to throughout our lives. Maybe while meditating you notice the sounds in the room, or how long a few minutes actually are, or that the voice in your head is going non-stop.

But sooner or later you also realise that what’s enabling you to notice these things is a witness inside you, looking on from a place of neutral observation. A witness that’s never upset, never afraid, never bored, never angry, but that also is never joyful or triumphant or serene. A witness that simply notices everything. In fact, that is simply present. This witness is called awareness, and it’s usually obscured by our emotions: happy/sad, excited/ depressed, loving/hating, desiring/rejecting,
approving/ disapproving, proud/ashamed, envious/generous–all of which depend for their existence on our reactivity to outside objects and conditions: our attachment, aversion, and indifference.

But the awareness underneath that reactivity is vast, luminous, and beyond thought, with no beginning or end. It’s unchanging, unmoving, and indescribable, completely out of category. Except that when we know where to look for it we‚Äôre able to experience it, because it’s the basic nature of every mind on the planet, the minds of all sentient beings. Every one of us has an open spirit not motivated by fear or greed, in spite of how out of touch with it we may be. Every one of us knows the right thing to do. Every one of us has the capacity to be compassionate and connected.

This does not mean, by the way, that we should disregard how people actually act toward us, and become doormats or passive victims. That’s when the warrior quality within you arises. Once you’ve liberated yourself from reactivity, once you’re able to separate yourself from your emotions and watch them come and go like clouds in the sky, you discover your fearlessness.

By realising that you are the source of whatever is happening, you begin to take conscious control of your life. And you find the right way to handle George Bush–because underneath his greed and arrogance, he’s certainly not conscious. Looking at the depth of his confusion, we see that in addition to fighting battles, our path as activists involves bringing others to awareness. Political awareness and the awareness of nature of mind are the same. Once people become aware of what they’re doing, most of them will not continue to destroy local cultures, or disregard the dangers of global warming, or sell monstrous weaponry to each another.

NOW LET’S LOOK at the struggle for social justice, a sustainable economy, and ecological balance from the perspective of who we are as people. We see that the things that motivate us to become activists are baseline human qualities such as compassion, inclusiveness, and fair play. Deep inside we sense that the universe is good, otherwise why take the trouble to work for change?

Activism is as much about rediscovering our sanity and trust–our sense of belonging–as it is about righting perceived wrongs. The fact is that if we’re looking for goodness or fairness in others, we’re looking for what’s inside ourselves. Otherwise, how could we recognise it?

We’re looking for what we all share. Once we understand that, the larger goal becomes how to wake our brothers and sisters from their self-destructive sleep. In fighting for a just and sustainable global culture, we’re also uncovering a globalisation of the spirit. That’s because everything is connected: my body and your body and Earth’s body, my spirit and your spirit and Earth’s spirit, my mind and your mind and Earth’s mind. And also my body and society’s body, my mind and society’s mind, my spirit and my culture’s spirit.

In fact, it’s only from ignorance of interrelatedness that people succumb to selfish behaviour, to cruelty and cynicism. No matter how many act in this manner, and for no matter how long, by definition they’re isolated individuals. Destroying the Amazon rainforest, for example, in order to plant genetically modified soybeans: such colossal short-sightedness comes down to a lack of awareness that my body and mind are connected to Earth’s body and mind. We can’t have one without the other. We can’t focus solely on our own physical well-being, going to yoga classes and eating organic food, while the earthly and social bodies continue to suffer. Otherwise, we’re living in a cocoon of self-involvement, oblivious to the greater life around us.

Those of us who are spiritually involved must also have the courage to engage the world’s confusion, demonstrating the commitment that comes from political awareness. We must risk activating our compassion. Without this engagement, our ‘personal growth’ will remain sterile and dry, and the status quo will only perpetuate itself. We cannot forsake our brothers and sisters who are needlessly suffering. Such behaviour ultimately is not spiritual, because it betrays a lack of connection. The warrior acts without becoming lost in attachment or reactivity, but nevertheless he or she does act.

BY THE SAME token, the problem is not only ‘out there’: it is also ‘in here.’ It’s not only about agribusiness or pharmaceuticals or neoliberalism: it’s also about self-awareness. That is, the problem is at once personal and planetary.

In addition to scrutinising the policies of the World Bank, we ourselves bear looking at. Not from a judgemental place, but through disinterested awareness–that is, through the discipline of meditation. Everything we’re engaged in now, from community-supported agriculture to grassroots media to green politics, is part of a global process. New forms of relating to each other are emerging from the dying dinosaur realm of competitive isolation.

But we can’t forget that all of us have created this world. We’re doing this to ourselves. We’re all products of the same claustrophobic mindset. Consensus reality comes from a shared field of perception. To change it, we have to look at our own beliefs and assumptions in addition to looking at the acts of others. If we don’t deal with what could be called the spiritual dimension of activism, if we don’t examine the role of the ego, we’re simply running away from the total reality.

After all, judgement of others never really gets anywhere. It’s been going on for thousands of years. The names change but the mechanism of blaming and accusing remains the same. Our distrust of others stems from the compulsion to defend our identity as a kind of private property, whereas true revolution is courageous because it involves surrender of ego. It’s not only about rearranging wealth. It’s also about entering common ground.

For example, would terror and bloodshed between Palestinians and Israelis continue if, like Australian aborigines, they believed that no one owns the land but they all belong to the land? How would they relate to each other if they saw all land as holy? ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’ is a function of judgemental mind, which goes round and round. Unless we understand the source of the problem, how can we hope to solve it?

Not to surrender to distraction, denial, and suspicion, not to degenerate into cruelty and manipulation, means coming to know and accept ourselves, no longer living in fear and isolation, but in community. It means watching ourselves from a place of non-judgement: human community as well as Earth community. It means making friends with our awareness, staying in touch with it, being present in body, speech, and mind, here and now. It means seeing activism as a spiritual path.

PROMETHEA #32
Written by Alan Moore
Art and cover by J.H. Williams III
ABC. In a series that pushed the boundaries of mainstream comics to the edge, this unbelievable final issue goes a little bit further! Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III deliver the most gloriously experimental issue of PROMETHEA yet, in which the reader takes an incredible trip through the magical cosmos with Promethea as a guide.
But there’s more! While other comics allow the reader only one way to read a book, this issue gives you several options – one of which is assembling its 32 pages into a giant double-sided poster. Once the poster has been assembled, the pages form two lovely images (one on each side) that are only discernible as a complete entity! Final issue.
On sale Feb 9 o 32 pg (no ads), FC, $3.95 US

PROMETHEA #32 VARIANT EDITION
Written by Alan Moore
Art and cover by J.H. Williams III
ABC. In celebration of the final issue of PROMETHEA, America’s Best Comics is pleased to offer something truly unique: a variant version of issue #32 printed completely on two 27″ x 40″ posters! Each page of this groundbreaking issue comes together to form these two posters in which the entire story can be read in multiple ways. Just as important, the posters reveal two hidden images from the book that are only visible in poster format – something completely new to comics!
In addition, the PROMETHEA #32 VARIANT EDITION comes with a lovely saddle-stitched, 48-page companion book that collects each and every PROMETHEA cover illustrated by J.H. Williams. And as a bonus, each book will be signed by Moore and Williams! Retailers please note: This edition is limited to 1,000 units; orders may be allocated. A limited number of unsigned copies of the PROMETHEA COVER COLLECTION will be offered for sale at a later date.
On sale Feb 9 o Two 27″ x 40″ full-color posters
and 48-pg. comic, FC, $49.95 US

“A Window on the Mind” by Susan Blackmore
New Scientist, 13 November 2004 p 36: box within cover story “The Intoxication Instinct”

Note: This is the original version, and was slightly edited for publication.

Psychedelic drugs provide some of the best evidence we have that the mind is the brain; that our thoughts, beliefs, and perceptions are created by chemistry. Take a drug, particularly a hallucinogen, and any of these can change, and even our innermost selves can be quite transformed. This means these drugs can be scary, and need to be taken with great care and respect, for they can potentially reveal some of the deepest secrets about our minds and consciousness.

A century ago, long before prohibition, the groundwork of a science of intoxication was already being laid down, and the American psychologist, William James, experimented with the anaesthetic, nitrous oxide or “laughing gas.” Our normal rational consciousness, he said, is just one special type of consciousness, while all around it, “parted from it by the filmiest of screens” are other entirely different forms of consciousness, always available if only the requisite stimulus is applied.

Other experimenters meticulously described the effects of inhaling ether, chloroform or cannabis, and the strange distortions of time, perception, and sense of humour this induced. More curiously, they also described changes in belief, and even in philosophy. For example, nitrous oxide has the curious capacity to change materialist scientists into idealists. Its discoverer, Sir Humphrey Davy, bravely took the drug himself as an experiment in 1799 and ended up exclaiming that “Nothing exists but thoughts.” Others made similar observations and found their views profoundly shifted by even brief encounters with the other side of that filmy screen.

This raises the peculiar question of whether what James’s called “our normal rational consciousness” is necessarily the best for understanding the world. After all, if one’s view of the world can change so dramatically with the aid of a simple molecule like nitrous oxide, how can we be sure that our normal brain chemistry is the one most suited to doing science and philosophy? What if evolution had taken a slightly different turn and we had ended up with brain chemistry less inclined to make us believe in God or the afterlife. Or what if our actual brain chemistry evolved to help us survive and reproduce at the cost of giving us false beliefs about the world? If so, it is possible that mind-altering drugs might in fact give us a better, not worse, insight than we have in our so-called normal state.

Take the common experience of losing our separate self, or becoming one with the universe. This may seem, to some, like mystical nonsense, but in fact it fits far better with a scientific understanding of the world than our normal dualist view. Most of us feel, most of the time, that we are some kind of separate self who inhabits our body like a driver in a car or a pilot in a plane. We speak about “my body” and even “my brain” as though “I” were something separate from them both. Throughout history many people have believed in a soul or spirit that can leave the body and even survive after death. Yet science has long known that this cannot be so. There is no observer inside the brain who has our experiences, and no space in the brain from where an inner self can control it. There is just a brain that is made of exactly the same kind of stuff as the world around it. In other words, we really are one with the universe.

This means that the psychedelic sense of self may actually be truer than the common dualist view. So although our normal state is better for surviving and reproducing, it may not always be best for understanding who and what we are. Perhaps we could even have sciences carried out in some of these intoxicated states. This was just what psychologist, Charles Tart, suggested in 1972, in the prestigious journal Science. He likened different states of consciousness to different paradigms in science and proposed the creation of “state specific sciences”; new sciences which would be done by scientists working in altered states and communicating their findings to others in those states. These new sciences might only have limited application but this makes the point that our normal state, constrained as it is by the particular chemistry evolution has given us, may not be the only way to try to understand the universe.

Since Tart’s pioneering work on mapping altered states, most of the psychedelic drugs have become prohibited and research has largely been stifled. While the cultures that have used these drugs for millennia treat them with great respect, and control them with elaborate rituals and traditions, our culture gives over their control to criminals and tries to deny their amazing mind-revealing capacities. Perhaps one day, when prohibition is finally abandoned, scientists may once again take up the promise offered by those tiny little chemicals that can tell us who and what we are.

From the Los Angeles Times

These Unseen Wounds Cut Deep

A mental health crisis is emerging, with one in six returning soldiers afflicted, experts say.
By Esther Schrader
Times Staff Writer

November 14, 2004

WASHINGTON–Matt LaBranche got the tattoos at a seedy place down the street from the Army hospital here where he was a patient in the psychiatric ward.

The pain of the needle felt good to the 40-year-old former Army sergeant, whose memories of his nine months as a machine-gunner in Iraq had left him, he said, “feeling dead inside.” LaBranche’s back is now covered in images, the largest the dark outline of a sword. Drawn from his neck to the small of his back, it is emblazoned with the words LaBranche says encapsulate the war’s effect on him: “I’ve come to bring you hell.”

In soldiers like LaBranche–their bodies whole but their psyches deeply wounded–a crisis is unfolding, mental health experts say. One out of six soldiers returning from Iraq is suffering the effects of post-traumatic stress–and as more come home, that number is widely expected to grow.

The Pentagon, which did not anticipate the extent of the problem, is scrambling to find resources to address it.

A study by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research found that 15.6% of Marines and 17.1% of soldiers surveyed after they returned from Iraq suffered major depression, generalized anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder — a debilitating, sometimes lifelong change in the brain’s chemistry that can include flashbacks, sleep disorders, panic attacks, violent outbursts, acute anxiety and emotional numbness.

Army and Veterans Administration mental health experts say there is reason to believe the war’s ultimate psychological fallout will worsen. The Army survey of 6,200 soldiers and Marines included only troops willing to report their problems. The study did not look at reservists, who tend to suffer a higher rate of psychological injury than career Marines and soldiers. And the soldiers in the study served in the early months of the war, when tours were shorter and before the Iraqi insurgency took shape.

“The bad news is that the study underestimated the prevalence of what we are going to see down the road,” said Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, a professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at Dartmouth Medical School who is executive director of the VA’s National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Since the study was completed, Friedman said: “The complexion of the war has changed into a grueling counterinsurgency. And that may be very important in terms of the potential toxicity of this combat experience.”

Mental health professionals say they fear the system is not moving fast enough to treat the trauma. They say slowness to recognize what was happening to Vietnam veterans contributed to the psychological devastation from that war.

More than 30% of Vietnam veterans eventually suffered from the condition that more than a decade later was given the name post-traumatic stress disorder. But since their distress was not clinically understood until long after the war ended, most went for years without meaningful treatment.

“When we missed the boat with the Vietnam vets, we didn’t get another chance,” said Jerry Clark, director of the veterans clinic in Alexandria, Va. “When they left the service, they went away not for a month or two but for 10 years. And they came back addicted, incarcerated and all these things. We can’t miss the boat again. It is imperative.”

Experts on post-traumatic stress disorder say it should come as no surprise that some of the soldiers in Iraq are fighting mental illness.

Combat stress disorders– named and renamed but strikingly alike — have ruined lives following every war in history. Homer’s Achilles may have suffered from some form of it. Combat stress was documented in the late 19th century after the Franco-Prussian War. After the Civil War, doctors called the condition “nostalgia,” or “soldiers heart.” In World War I, soldiers were said to suffer shell shock; in World War II and Korea, combat fatigue or battle fatigue.

But it wasn’t until 1985 that the American Psychiatric Assn. finally gave a name to the condition that had sent tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans into lives of homelessness, crime or despair.

A war like the one in Iraq — in which a child is as likely to die as a soldier and unseen enemies detonate bombs — presents ideal conditions for its rise.

Yet the Army initially sent far too few psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers to combat areas, an Army study released in the summer of 2003 found. Until this year, Congress had allocated no new funds to deal with the mental health effects of the war in Iraq. And when it did earmark money, the sum was minimal: $5 million in each of the next three years.

“We’re gearing ourselves up now and preparing ourselves to meet whatever the need is, but clearly this is something that could not be planned for,” said Dr. Alfonso Batres, a psychologist who heads the VA’s national office of readjustment counseling services.

Last year, 1,100 troops who had fought in Iraq or Afghanistan came to VA clinics seeking help for symptoms of depression or post-traumatic stress; this year, the number grew tenfold. In all, 23% of Iraq veterans treated at VA facilities have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“And this is first-year data,” Batres said. “Our experience is that over time that will increase.”

In the red brick buildings of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the “psych patients,” as they are known, mingle, sometimes uncomfortably, with those who have lost limbs and organs.

One soldier being treated at Walter Reed, who spoke on condition of anonymity, walks the hospital campus in the bloodied combat boots of a friend he watched bleed to death.

Another Iraq veteran in treatment at Walter Reed, Army 1st Lt. Jullian Philip Goodrum, drives most mornings to nearby Silver Spring, Md., seeking the solitude of movies and the solace of friends.

He leaves early to avoid traffic — the crush of cars makes him jumpy. On more than one occasion, he has imagined snipers with their sights on him in the streets. Diesel fumes cause flashbacks. He keeps a vial of medication in his pocket and pops a pill when he gets nervous.

“You question — outside of dealing with your psych injury, which will affect you from one degree or another throughout your life — you also question yourself,” Goodrum said. “I trained. I was an excellent soldier, a strong character. How could my mind dysfunction?”

When it began to become clear that what the Pentagon initially believed would be a rapid, clear-cut war had transmuted into a drawn-out counterinsurgency, the Army began pushing to reach and treat distressed soldiers sooner.

The number of mental health professionals deployed near frontline positions in Iraq has been increased. Suicide prevention programs are given to soldiers in the field. According to the Pentagon, 31 U.S. troops have killed themselves in Iraq.

At more than 200 storefront clinics known as Vet Centers — created in 1979 to reach out to Vietnam veterans — the VA has increased the number of group therapy sessions and staff. Three months ago, the VA hired 50 Iraq war veterans to help serve as advocates at the clinics.

Officials acknowledge that is only a start. The Government Accountability Office found in a study released in September that the VA lacked the information it needed to determine whether it could meet an increased demand for services.

“Predicting which veterans will seek VA care and at which facilities is inherently uncertain,” the report concluded, “particularly given that the symptoms of PTSD may not appear for years.”

The Army and the VA are also trying to catalog and research the mental health effects of this war better than they have in the past. In addition to the Walter Reed study, several more are tracking soldiers from before their deployment to Iraq through their combat experiences and into the future.

If Iraq veterans can be helped sooner, they may fare better than those who fought in Vietnam, mental health experts say. And they note that the nation, although divided on the Iraq war, is more united in caring for the needs of returning soldiers than it was in the Vietnam era. And in the last decade, new techniques have proved effective in treating stress disorders, among them cognitive-behavioral therapy and drugs like Zoloft and Paxil.

Whether people like Matt LaBranche seek and receive treatment will determine how deep an effect the stress of the war in Iraq ultimately has on U.S. society.

Before the war, LaBranche was living in Saco, Maine, with his wife and children and had no history of mental illness.

He deployed to Iraq with a National Guard transportation company based in Bangor. He came home a different person.

Just three days after he was discharged from Walter Reed, he was arrested for threatening his former wife. When he goes to court Dec. 9, he could be looking at jail time.

He lies on a couch at his brother’s house most days now, struggling with the image of the Iraqi woman who died in his arms after he shot her, and the children he says caught some of his bullets. His speech is pocked with obscenities.

On a recent outing with friends, he became so enraged when he saw a Muslim family that he had to take medication to calm down.

He is seeing a therapist, but only once every two weeks.

“I’m taking enough drugs to sedate an elephant, and I still wake up dreaming about it,” LaBranche said. “I wish I had just freaking died over there.”

COURTESY J. FEINS AND M. SIMMONS

John Zorn: “Magick”

Cat. #8006
Released Oct 2004
cd time – 30:08
US Price: $15.00

Further explorations into the worlds of Magick and Alchemy, here featuring the long awaited premiere recording of Zorn’s new string quartet. Necronomicon is a transcendent five movement work of unparalleled ensemble virtuosity and formal beauty, brilliantly played by the Crowley Quartet. Also included is an astounding piece of witchcraft and sorcery for two bass clarinets, one of the most difficult yet written for the instrument, performed with passion and precision by two of the greatest players in the world.

Personnel:
Tim Smith: Bass Clarinet
Mike Lowenstern: Bass Clarinet

Crowley Quartet
Jennifer Choi: Violin
Fred Sherry: Cello
Jesse Mills: Violin
Richard O’Neill: Viola