The Begging Bowl

Buddhist monks, in practicing their call to holiness, rely upon the alms of the lay faithful to provide them with food, clothes, and other needs. Often, these alms come in exchange for spiritual services the monks perform for the laity such as weddings and funerals. The posture a monk observes when receiving alms is holding the empty bowl in hand so that the almsgiver may place the alms in the bowl. However, when a monk turns the begging bowl upside down, rendering the possibility of giving alms impossible, the monk is withdrawing consent from the the spiritual practice of the community.

In Burma, the upside down bowl became a powerful symbolic action in response to the military junta's repression of the pro-democracy movement. In a devoutly Buddhist country, the withdrawal of the monk's begging bowl represents the denunciation of the systemic violence and oppression of the country's military leaders.

09 April 2008

a way?

How tedious we have become. Grasping blindly into the dark for something to hold on to, something that will resist and hold strong as the current beats endlessly against us. We are lost, we cannot find our way.

We turn to...the church? Far off realities echo in the complacency of vast pulpits that (at one time?) were reserved for those who spoke words of peace and truth.

We turn to...the law? We urge the political machine to be wary of where they tread, but our appeals to torture and war as illegal and immoral fall on the deaf ears of the proud.

We turn to...the teachers? Words escape those who used to guide us and walk with us as we lit our own lights in the world, but now fear and insecurity lay waste to projects of the mind and freedom of discourse.

We turn to...the family? Disintegrated by a racist, sexist system of injustice that turns mother against son, father against daughter, sister against brother.

We turn to...the community? What are my neighbors names?

We turn to...ourselves? Our minds have been stolen from us and imaginations killed by drugs: those prescribed for the symptoms of a culture of death and those enjoyed by self-professed enlightened ones.

We turn to...violence? Brief sentiments of security, a sense of peace (absence of war) brought because our bombs and guns are bigger: how do we stay safe once we've killed all our enemies?

We turn to...God? An abandonment to something worse than all we have ever known: for it asks, no demands, of us a humility to the truth that we so desperately seek to hide. God, we turn to you.
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