Mark Unno, Shin Buddhist priest

I always wondered about the expressions “diamond-like faith” and “diamond-like wisdom.” My early impressions of Buddhist awakening were that of fluidity, suppleness, entering into the deep flow of oneness, the open space of emptiness as a dynamic realization. But as I studied under the tutelage of great Buddhist masters, I began to sense a deep tranquility, an immovable point of profound silence that I could feel deep in their gaze and in their presence. As I learned to open to their gaze and hold and be held in the immovable point of silence, my mind, my heart, and my body began to open to the even deeper and more profound unfolding of great compassion, in which I was illuminated, embraced, enveloped, and dissolved into the great ocean of light of boundless compassion. The immovable still point cut through all illusions, only to then serve as an opening to a world suffused with great gentleness.

The day after the election, I was teaching a course on Zen and Pure Land Buddhism, but instead of diving into the readings for that week, I asked the students if they would like to share their thoughts in the wake of what had just happened. The ten students who had gathered for this intimate seminar were mature beyond their years and shared their perspectives in an even, thoughtful manner, even as they were aware of difficult emotions flowing just beneath the surface of our discussion. My role was the help provide a safe space, held open, deeply centered. As we continued to go around, each sharing in turn, one of the youngest student’s eyes became watery, and her cheeks began to flush. And then, deep sobs began to emerge. The class fell silent, and as I said that it was all right to let it out, her anguish came out in waves as she covered her face. The students were calm, openly accepting of the student and of all their classmates. There was an experienced student who had studied with me for two years, and I sensed an impulse rise within her. I said to her, “Would you like to go over and give her a hug.” “I was just thinking about it,” she replied. 

Although relatively experienced as a student, she herself was still so young, and yet, she walked around to the other side and gently held the sobbing student with deep tenderness, like a bodhisattva . . .

As Shunryu Suzuki Roshi taught, “Even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way.” In these words, one can sense his “diamond like faith,” from which his “diamond-like wisdom” emerges, then giving way to his gentle gaze, filled with great compassion, coming from the heart of the universe herself.

As we make this difficult journey, not just in this moment, but in every moment of life and death, our very suffering turns out to be the face of compassion, “feeling together,” so that our shared suffering reveals to us the unbreakable bonds of great compassion.

Namu Amida Butsu

Perry Garfinkel, author

Taoism suggests that we sentient beings, and all of Nature, are interconnected, part of a larger whole, and that everyone and everything experience a natural process of change. 

“Be the change you want to see in the world,” as Gandhi put it. But what do we do when we did the work on personal change, campaign hard for our candidate, yet the world we wanted to see change in the direction we wanted it to change doesn’t?

This is the conundrum that those who voted for Kamala Harris face today and into the next four years.

This too shall pass. That’s what my father used to say when bad things happen and we get stuck in that moment of disappointment, sadness, fear and anxiety. As a kid, it was hard to hear and take in. I’m a stubborn person; what can I say? Then I heard it differently when I studied Buddhism. Years later it struck me in Mumbai, when I interviewed the late teacher S.N. Goenka, who planted the seed of Buddhism into the fertile minds of future Western Vipassana teachers like Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg and others. 

He summed it up in that familiar incantation. “Impermanence, impermanence, impermanence,” he said, his big thick hands emphasizing the words, words that reverberated through my being. 

Later in another interview at Plum Village, in the south of France, the late Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh suggested we “don’t just do something – just sit there.”

Again, I stubbornly resisted, thinking, “Well, then, nothing will change, much less me.”

Again, I was wrong.  Sitting and time do in fact heal all wounds. We don’t forget; we don’t even necessarily forgive – we adjust. The skin forms a scab and eventually all traces of the wound disappear. Maybe if we look closely, only we can see the teeny weeny remains of a scar. I learned not to look so closely. As my mother often said of my impatience, “A watched pot never boils.”

Is there anything we can do or say that will change the present moment? Yes: wait a minute. Or four years. In the meanwhile, we take time, we be patient. We rebuild belief, which may have been rattled. This disappointment and pain will pass. We focus on the good in Man-and-Woman-kind. In ourselves. We trust the process of change, societally, politically, personally. 

We practice metta: cultivating lovingkindness, stretching our attention to seeing the positive and the happiness in others. Even in our perceived enemies, our opponents, in those who attempt to obstruct or sabotage our own happiness, our own forward progress. 

Perry Garfinkel is the author of “Becoming Gandhi: My Experiment Living the Mahatma’s 6 Moral Truths in Immoral Times” (Sounds True) and national best-seller “Buddha or Bust: In Search of Truth, Meaning, Happiness and the Man Who Found Them All” (Crown Harmony).

Mushim Patricia Ikeda, teacher at East Bay Meditation Center

“So even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way.” This quote from Shunryu Suzuki Roshi was the first thing I saw on my mobile phone when I woke up this morning in my home in Oakland, California after a good night’s sleep. Today is the day after the November 5, 2024 U.S. General Election and Donald Trump has been elected president for a second time. The message came from my friend, Buddhist teacher and scholar Mark Unno.  To Mark’s message, I replied: ”I was hoping for better but I’m not surprised. And I’m extremely happy to be on the path with you. Nembutsu time!”
 
The Trump supporter to whom I am closest is a tradesman hired by my landlord for several decades, who does excellent work and who is a warm and friendly person devoted to their family. And Project 2025’s 900 page “Mandate for Leadership” from the Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and racial equity,  has been posted on the Internet, freely accessible to all, since its publication in 2023. It is highly organized and ready to be implemented. Because of this, I completely empathize with people who are in shock and grief, but although I share the grief, I am not in shock. The political organizing and base building that brought the U.S. to this point in our election history has been going on in plain sight. 

“So even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way.” What is that Way? I would gently propose that as individuals, as communities, as collectives, as families, we find that Way and we make our plan and we carry it out. We support one another to be mindful, to be loving, to be boldly compassionate, and to be focused, strategic, inclusive and wise. 

Waging Nonviolence says, and I agree: “Democracy is a verb.” Please join me in doing democracy. I renew my Bodhisattva Vows every single morning, and I’ve got your back. 

Guo Gu, Chan teacher

After the 2024 presidential election results, some people feel distraught, while others feel pleased. Our perceptions of victory and defeat, good and bad, relief and trauma depend on how we want things to go. When things go our way, we’re happy; when they don’t, we’re unhappy. Of course, it is natural to feel this way, but this means that our happiness is completely contingent on outside forces. Is this the way we want to live? 

The Buddha has said that “whatever we imagine things to be, they will turn out to be different” (e.g., Dvayatānupassanā-sutta) and that “whatever that arises will cease” (e.g., Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta). There is no true stability outside us or in our minds. Genuine refuge lies where rising and ceasing ceases. Rising and ceasing refers to the conditioning that fuels our selfing and othering. When rising and ceasing ceases, that is awakening.

Dharma practice exists at the junctures of life, amidst causes and conditions. It is the process of ceasing the rising and ceasing. This practice is what Chan (Zen) calls wonderment. 

Chan master Hongzhi (1091-1157), the founder of the silent illumination practice, has said that 

Wonder exists in experiencing whatever manifests before you, and practice must go beyond the present time. Adapt to conditions and merge with awakening, then you will not be obstructed by the myriad dust motes (The Extended Discourse Record of Chan Master Hongzhi, T. no. 2001, 48:74b1-2).

Wonderment does not refer to the self-referential calculations and schemes we use to control ourselves, others, or the environment. It exists when we engage with the world without fixed overlays and expectations—without rising and ceasing. When this happens, causes and conditions are wondrous. Each moment is a new beginning—this is the wisdom of emptiness; each beginning already embodies countless possibilities—this is truth of compassion. 

The practice of wonderment is to work with causes and conditions: exposing, embracing, transforming, and letting go. If we face and embrace whatever arises, we will have the wisdom to make changes and adjustments; if we resist whatever arises, we suffer, and divisiveness takes over. In emptiness, we must do what needs to be done and can be done, allowing things to take whatever form that emerges. Meanwhile,  

Moment to moment, mind does not encounter things; step-by-step, no traces are left on the path. This is called being able to carry on the family affair [of the buddhas]. To be thoroughly penetrating like this is something you have to become intimate with (T. no. 2001, 48: 74b2-4).

In the midst of engaging with the world, we don’t make a thing out of everything. As soon as we reify whatever it is that is “stuck,” there will be no possibilities. This is what Hongzhi meant by “moment to moment, mind does not encounter things.” 

Remember that every moment is a new beginning. The truth is that possibilities are endless when we don’t make anything into a thing. So have an open mind, and always try our best to help everyone. Just do what needs to be done and what can be done without attachments to having and lacking, winning and losing, self and others. This is compassion in action, the meaning of “no traces are left on the path.” 

Causes and conditions are wondrous. Each moment is a new beginning. Actively exposing, embracing, transforming, and letting go of whatever we face, new possibilities will arise—beyond “whatever we imagine things to be.”

Joanna Hardy, Insight Meditation teacher

Akaya Windwood

Let us give ourselves and those around us time to grieve and mourn. Let us reach out and care for the most vulnerable among us. The path forward is (and has always been) through love and community. We will get there. I know we will.

My heart to yours.

Originally published on Facebook.

Anu Gupta

Ben Connelly, Zen teacher

Walking home from morning meditation, the streets shrouded in mist, I touch my sadness, anger, and fear, open to the anguish of the world, and find connection there. I value compassion, mutual support, creativity, and non-violence, so I turn towards cultivating compassion, mutual support, creativity, and non-violence.

Originally published on Facebook.

Trudy Goodman, Vipassana teacher

Dan Zigmond, Zen teacher

Meditation is the practice of paying attention, of refusing to look away. For a few moments, we commit ourselves to being completely present, to seeing the world exactly as it is. On a day like today, there is often an instinct to run off – to flee to Canada or India, to hide out in some remote hermitage or temple, to remove ourselves from a situation here and now that is so hard to accept. Yet our practice is to do the opposite of that. Our practice is to seek refuge in engagement rather than escape. We remain present in the suffering of ourselves and others and do what we can to relieve it. We acknowledge the reality of this moment and then start working to improve it. I don’t mean to suggest this is easy. It isn’t. But we have it within ourselves to do difficult things. And in my experience everything in life gets easier with practice. Even this.

Rhonda Magee, Mindfulness teacher and law professor

Good morning, dear friends.

So, Trump won. And the Trumpism part of who “we” are has, in a way, it seems, prevailed. (At least in a sense, for now….remember: nothing is either as permanent or real as it seems.) This is a tough day for many of us. The winds blowing across the golden West Coast of these United States bring a change that many of us did not choose. And yet, here it is.

Let the tears fall, if they may. Let the heartbreak be acknowledged and felt, if you feel it. I am here with you, feeling the whole range. Let’s wrap our arms around our hearts, and feel what we feel. Sadness. Anxiety. Fear. And disappointment.

On the other hand, some of us (or even, some unseen part of ourselves? Do we really know?) are celebrating, whether quietly or openly. Or, you may be among families and workplaces where celebrating is the order of this day. Their stories will be heard. Your stories will be heard. Feelings of happiness and pride will be in the air, too, mixing with grief and despair.

So, let the morning coffee brew.

Let’s reflect on what we can now see more clearly; yes, the majority believe, it seems, in a future guided by Trumpism. And so many of us believe, still, in a future guided by a different wind, one that moves us to greater empathy and care, to building bridges and knowing that we are already enough, and that everyone already belongs.

Notwithstanding the uncertainty, the “what will happen to our most vulnerable beloveds?”…. We *must* keep shining our light.

Because in a real sense, everything is just as it was yesterday morning. And the day before, and the day before that.

We are who we are, this full range of things, this rainbow. And while we cannot control the weather, we can acknowledge and bring forth the ever-present sun. Still. Here.

So….. we breathe. We love. We will do what we can to shine light in this beautiful world, just as it is.
Breathing, loving, and letting it be.

Originally published on Facebook.

James Ishmael Ford,

James Ishmael Ford, Zen priest and Unitarian Universalist minister

I feel the evil of our age into my bones and marrow. Fortunately I found some guidance from Shinran Shonin. “Passions obstruct my eyes and I cannot see him; Nevertheless, great compassion is untiring and illumines me always.” I know I just need to follow that illumination, dim as it feels in the moment..

Originally published on Facebook

Karen Maezen Miller, Zen teacher

For you, by name

So many people who are hated, hunted, and terrified will be more terrified tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. They come to me and say what do I do? And I make a place for them, and I listen.

Eight years ago after another shattering election, I said to all of you, “Give me your name. Give me the names of those who are afraid, you and anyone else. Give me the names and I will say the names as I pray.” Please now just write names in the comments. I will say a service, a chant, for compassion and safety and dedicate it to everyone you tell me to include.

It’s not much.

One of my favorite books among many favorites is the children’s picture book, “Miss Rumphius.” The story lives in me.

In the book, a young girl named Alice is asked what she will do when she grows up, and she answers:

“When I grow up I will go to faraway places and come home to live by the sea.”

“That is all very well, little Alice, ” her aunt says, “but there is a third thing you must do.”

“What is that?”

“You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”

“All right,” I say.

But I do not know yet what that can be.

The wind is picking up. The leaves are falling. The garden needs tending. I am hurting. You are hurting. So many are hurting. There is beautiful work to do.

Originally published on Facebook.

Joan Halifax, Zen teacher

i refuse to be defeated by ignorance
we can call out the multiple causes and conditions
there are so many
and right now, we have to come alongside a lot of anger and anguish
and then foster healthy solidarity to do what we can to mitigate the suffering that so many are facing and will face
and at the same time, remembering rebecca solnit’s, a paradise built in hell…
take these lessons and apply them wide-eyed and open handed
and one more thing, i myself refuse to play the fear card right now
how we choose to go forward will make a difference

Originally published on Facebook.

Rebecca Solnit

They want you to feel powerless and to surrender and to let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving. You may need to grieve or scream or take time off, but you have a role no matter what, and right now good friends and good principles are worth gathering in. Remember what you love. Remember what loves you. Remember in this tide of hate what love is. The pain you feel is because of what you love. The Wobblies used to say don’t mourn, organize, but you can do both at once and you don’t have to organize right away in this moment of furious mourning.

You can be heartbroken or furious or both at once; you can scream in your car or on a cliff; you can also get up tomorrow and water the flowerpots and call someone who’s upset and check your equipment for going onward. A lot of us are going to come under direct attack, and a lot of us are going to resist by building solidarity and sanctuary. Gather up your resources, the metaphysical ones that are heart and soul and care, as well as the practical ones.

People kept the faith in the dictatorships of South America in the 1970s and 1980s, in the East Bloc countries and the USSR, women are protesting right now in Iran and people there are writing poetry. There is no alternative to persevering, and that does not require you to feel good. You can keep walking whether it’s sunny or raining. Take care of yourself and remember that taking care of something else is an important part of taking care of yourself, because you are interwoven with the ten trillion things in this single garment of destiny that has been stained and torn, but is still being woven and mended and washed.

Originally published on Facebook.

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Zen teacher

One of the largest rituals this country engages in is casting votes, to make our marks, to say something. We may cast a vote, not only for oneself, but, for those who are ill or incarcerated, for those who are illiterate, for those who have lost interest. We do this knowing that the outcome of voting is actually something we cannot really see in an instant. We cannot see the results today or tomorrow. Because the outcome of the ritual is not only about who won and who loss. It is about our coming together every four years; our desires expressed, a chance to return love and honor to those who fought for the participation of all in this ritual. And yet, this ritual induces false security for some and doubt and fear for others.

Our fear that things will get worse, tends to lead to things getting worse. When driven by fear we fall to those who prey on our terror, rage, pain, loneliness, and need for salvation. Our collective fear today is whether or not anyone can live as who they are in this country or in the world, despite being right, middle, or left on the political continuum or off the linear political path all together. Our fear is whether or not our own strategy will eventually work even though it has failed many times. 

A week before this election, I spotted a large Silverado truck and a huge blue flag with red stars mounted in the back. The flag said, “Kamala sucks.” I had my eye on the truck but lost track of it as I headed to a doctor’s appointment. I wasn’t feeling very well. Although hatred is not a human right, it is a human flaw. Soon the driver was alongside me honking his horn. He started towards my car and made a great effort to forced me off the road with his truck. It must have been the thrill of his day because it’s very difficult to find a black woman alone driving anywhere in New Mexico. He thought he had scored in a game in which he was as invisible as me. He may have been telling me that I suck too. But this life that I am living is in the hands of something that wants me here, something more powerful than him. My life is also in the hands of my ancestors. This he did not know. He did not know his ancestors were also with him.

Our shared suffering is less than one degree from each other. Our shared liberation must be the same. No matter who won this 2024 presidential election, twenty-four years into a new millennium, there is something that we all must do more than ever. We must keep faith in those around us. We must relish and cherish the relationships of family and friends no matter their human flaws. It doesn’t mean we have to suffer other’s suffering but the way to our liberation is to forge, with our heat, all that is broken in this country into a kind of freedom we never imagined we had the power to shape. I say this because it is only us that we have and only us who will need to stand at the doors to protect our free communities, free spaces, free loved ones, and more—not as protectors of people only but protectors of what has always been sacred and that is life itself. We must value all life even in the middle of all life not being valued. 

Are we ready and capable of dismantling the distorted perceptions we have of each other that are now strangling us, personally and collectively? No matter what gender, what skin tone—and there are more than two genders and two tones—we must ask what is it that causes us to do or fear not doing what we know shouldn’t be done? How will we lift the noose from around our own necks so we can do the same for another?

If possible we will live in the difficult and in the more difficult and in the difficult after that not because we are becoming stronger but because we know that freedom is tied to what we create out of what sits at our feet. Freedom is to not long for what a president, alone, could never give us. Can we feel the freedom we already have despite things causing us to feel otherwise?

Can we change the ritual? Look into someone’s frightened or confused face today and say, “I got you. I got you.” Saying it out loud is one way but saying it in your heart silently is also a way to access innate empathy, recognize the world’s grief, for the sake of everyone’s wellbeing. Can this be our sacred campaign forever? 

Lama Karma Yeshe Chödrön, in the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism

Ignorance, hatred, and greed, are adventitious to mind’s loving, powerful, wisdom nature
Uproot them, and there is Buddha

Originally published on Facebook.

Norman Fischer, Zen teacher

Would that words knew how, what to feel
To do
Would that the heart on the sleeve
Turn inside out with the terrible news clean fabric
Soldier on, those parts of the body in whose darkness
Sanity resides
Kindness as natural as wind
Blows through to some shaft of light
In which the truth scrolls show scraps and clear hints
Of what’s to come
That’s never as imagined
Humans have their many foibles fear elicits
But the body marches forward ever
Forward and round and round
This too passes
And passing refreshes
Every new moment’s a promise
That being human matters
On a green and greening earth…
And the trees hold steady

An invitation to pay close attention to your life your breath your daily tasks and relationships, not to be baited into confusion and despair. You are alive in a world that’s everywhere alive, pay attention to this. And to kindness. And watch the government and society in which you live just as carefully, listening for the rhythm underneath the jagged melody. Build counter-movements and strengthen counter-movements that already exist. Every day. Day after day. There have been many cruel and misguided governments. They last as long as they last. People carry on, help one another out. I feel special sympathy for the many groups, trans people, gay people, people of color, disabled people, women, for whom this presidency and government feels like a personal attack. Special help and support for them. The worst is the expected disregard for the environment and strong support of the fossil fuel industry. But the government doesn’t control everything and many forces are in motion to do the right thing for the earth, we can hope for and agitate for that. Getting a rise out of its enemies is the great delight of the MAGA movement. But that’s a trivial thing. No use cooperating with it, there are other things to do and it is undignified to allow one’s self to be destabilized by the gloating of the gloaters. Let them gloat if they like. Pay attention to what matters. Know how to take care of yourself and your friends. 

How a person makes a decision is a mystery, but it seems clear that tens of millions of people who voted for Trump were not voting for the Trump the Democrats know. They didn’t vote to further restrict women’s reproductive rights, or usher in a fascist racist homophobic sexist regime. They voted for protection, fairer economics, a narrower focus on them and their problems. Let’s hope the Trump they decided on is closer to what we get than the Trump the Democrats know. We won’t know until it unfolds.

Lisa Ernst, Insight Meditation teacher

Taking Time to Pause with What’s Here

There is much well meaning advice going around about how to deal with this moment. Encouragement to not be afraid, to keep going and to stay away from despair. “Pick yourself back up immediately and press on.” But when we lose a loved one, most of us know we need time to grieve, to let our heart feel what it feels. For many of us, this is no different. Take your time, bring some compassion to your own heart, allow the sadness or fear as a felt sense and not a mistake. The spiritual principles and practices of boundless compassion, kindness and non-separation are still with us, but sometimes we need to stop, put it all down and just honor what’s in our hearts before going forward.

Originally published on Facebook.

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