Ryk Groetchen

Showing Up

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We hear this phrase a lot: just show up. It seems to make a lot of sense. If everyone shows up, we have a party. Hurray. If no one shows up, no party. Boo. In the West we’ve grown up to think of ourselves as unique, individual beings that are also somewhat interchangeable. We all have all of the qualities, and it’s a matter of developing those qualities equally. A good community will simply be a collective of balanced individuals who each have worked hard to bring forth all of the qualities.

We will all show up equally for each event. We do everything together! We sit zazen together! We demonstrate together! We feed the hungry together! We clean the temple together! In this model, it’s easy to see what people need to work on, and who’s doing the work.

Someone with a crooked posture should give their attention to sitting up straight. Someone who naturally sits up straight should focus more on kind action. If we show up, and work together in this way, it seems like eventually everyone’s qualities will balance out and we’ll have a strong community. And if someone is not showing up, they’re obviously not doing the work, right?

But what if this model is kind of backwards?

Story time!

Let’s look at three different teachers’ ways of asking students to show up. Their different approaches to working with students might inspire us look deeper into the methods of our own teachers, and think about our own practice in a new light.

First, let’s get to know these two students a little better.

The student with crooked posture has the aspiration to have a straight posture, and yet they were born in a body that is naturally crooked. Their insecurity about their crooked body has nurtured a natural instinct to be kind, and they don’t have to work hard to spread the seeds of kindness in the world. They accept the kindness the world offers them, and focus on the struggle in their body.

The student with the naturally straight posture does not struggle physically on the cushion. Their mind, however, is highly attuned to moral conceptions regarding right and wrong in the world. Their foundational experience is the body at rest, and their aspiration is to right the wrongs of the world through engaged action. Because of the anger and dissatisfaction in their mind, their actions often spread the seeds of conflict.

Let’s observe how three different teachers work with these two students, and how they encourage them to show up. We don’t have to say whether this teacher is good or that teacher is bad, because we will observe their actions, and make our own choice.

Disclaimer: (trust me, some will need to hear this stated explicitly. You know who you are. And if not, you should!). These vignettes are based on archetypes: they do not represent real students or teachers, and students and teachers will not been seen as fitting into to any of these archetypal roles completely. And the directions suggested here are not prescriptive, just as koans are not life instructions. They are simply useful characterizations with which to describe and observe certain aspects of practice.

The first teacher encourages their students’ aspirations through their deep respect for form.

Meeting the crooked student, they encourage their aspiration to be straight. They encourage the student to show up by sitting zazen diligently, and learning from their pursuit of their aspiration. Since their self-conscious instinct is that they need to straighten up, and the teacher is confirming that instinct, they work hard, and you can always see them showing up. The student struggles for years and years, and seems like a diligent student, and yet, no matter how long they practice to be straight, for them, crooked is straight.

Since the student is spending so much time showing up on the cushion, they are not out intersecting with the world in the kind ways that naturally flow from their heart.

One day, they force their body into a straight posture. In doing so, the naturally crooked student has worked their way into an unsustainable situation, that takes all of their energy to maintain, and they have no energy left over to share their natural gifts of kind action with the community. The teacher, from their perspective of deep understanding of form, commends them for their diligent practice, not recognizing the sacrifice they have made. They have attained the form of practice, yet in doing so had to abandon their true nature. Using all of their effort to maintain the form, and having been affirmed by their teacher for doing so, they lose sight of their natural gifts of kind action.

The same teacher recognizes the aspiration of the student with straight posture to kind action, and encourages them to show up by devoting themselves to engaged practice, involving themselves in all manner of interactions to create peace in the world. The student has already attained good posture, so the teacher instructs them in the eightfold path and answers all of their questions about right action and right intention. Yet, because the student’s mind is confused, they continue to spread the seeds of conflict through their attempts at right action.

In showing up for the world, and the forms of engaged practice, they experience conflicts. Focused fully on their intention, they don’t recognize when those conflicts are caused by their own actions. Not having a way to restore balance, and not recognizing that they are moving away from their natural center, the student’s physical practice suffers, eroding their natural straightness, and robbing them of the energy to practice in the world.

The second teacher encourages each student to consider the nature of emptiness. They see each student equally, and advise each with the same encouragement. They understand that the forms are just forms to create space to focus on emptiness.

This teacher gives the same advice to both students: “The way is vast. Understand yourself, and you will understand the way. ” Each time the students question the teacher, they are given this same admonition.

The first student, taking for granted their tendency to be kind, instead engages their self-conscious instinct–they focus on their aspiration to be straight. In showing up faithfully for zazen, the student abandons interactions which engage their kind instincts, (which result in spreading the seeds of kindness in the world), in favor of their aspiration, which results in diligent practice directed toward straightness.

The second student, taking for granted their tendency to be straight, instead indulges their self-conscious instinct–they focus on their aspiration to change the world for the better, and show up by engaging in good works. The student ignores their straight posture and instead focuses on action to make things better, and in doing so, they spread the seeds of their anger in the world.

The third teacher has a different relationship with form and emptiness. They see from where the student’s aspirations arise, and understand how those aspirations hide their gifts. They understand that the two students will better understand their own nature if they co-practice and observe one another mindfully, rather than just sharing the space. Each student’s natural inclinations will show something to the other, and they will slowly change one another over time.

The teacher understands that the crooked student will never be straight, and that they will, without much prompting, put just enough effort into being straight if they observe the straight student during zazen. The crooked student, whose actions in the world already spread the seeds of peace, knows naturally how to avoid harmful action. They are encouraged to keep showing up in the world, and to just come and sit zazen when they can. In observing the straight student’s posture, they are encouraged to be straight enough. Through their strong empathy, they will recognize the anger in the straight student’s mind and will consider ways to help them soften.

On the other hand, the straight student is encouraged to show up by devoting much time to the cushion, where they naturally inspire others, and spend less time sowing the seeds of conflict through their actions. The teacher encourages the straight student to tread lightly in the world, and observe the ways of the crooked student, whose kind choices are not ones that arise naturally in the straight student’s mind.

Over years of practice together, the straight student, with their strong discernment, learns to recognize kind action through observation, and because their posture is already straight, their time on the cushion is able to be well spent considering kindness, and their anger becomes transformed. They learn to have more respect for a student who, though appearing crooked, has cleared the mind.

The crooked student, having watched and considered the confusion and anger of the straight student, has learned to convey empathy in ways that the straight student can understand. Having a straight partner, they straighten just enough, without making it the focus of their aspirations.

End of story time!

How did that story land? Do we recognize anything about the role our aspirations have played in our practice? What do we observe about our practice spaces, our fellow students, our teachers? Do the ways students are being asked to show up reflect an understanding of their character? Are students being lectured about what kind action looks like, or are they being encouraged to observe it in others?

Sit, observe, study, and learn!

🛒

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You see an old man in the parking lot, losing control of his cart, and you’re right there, and your hand instinctively reaches out and stops the cart from rolling, and you pause, just long enough to show safety with your body, and say:

“it’s fine,”

and move on.

And then, a second later, you are standing across from a young woman screaming at her wailing child:

“chill tf out!”

And your body is frozen, except for the heart that pumps as if it is trying to put out a fire. Which it is.

And as you bear witness, you wish that it was this cart your hand could instinctively reach out and stop from rolling.

super weird arbitrary common sense neighborhoods

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I post a lot about politics on Facebook and my personal blog, and I have many strong and specific opinions. I also have joined many special interest groups on social media. It would never even occur to me to share my political opinions in these special interest groups, but I understand why some might.

I’m also neurodivergent, and I post a lot about that. Again, if I wanted to start a hyperlocal neurodivergence group, I feel empowered to do so, and wouldn’t consider posting in my local community group (though I might introduce myself there and invite folks to join my group if they like).

As a neurodivergent person, I have a lot of practice stepping on various boundaries that I did not understand intuitively. And, I understand a wide range of reactions to being reminded of a boundary.

Boundaries are social constructs, like gender and sexual preference. They may seem simple and obvious to some, but for others, it’s complicated, and the lines are not bold and defined. Social groups have a lot of unspoken codes that most people follow without necessarily even recognizing them until one of them is violated. When that happens, sometimes the group responds by adjusting the code to include the new behavior (again, often without even recognizing that it’s happening). Sometimes the group responds in a defensive way to reinforce the code.

People have a wide range of responses to being made aware of or reminded of a code. For some, they actually find it helpful, and they are able to contextualize the reminder as a frame for understanding the group’s character. For others, boundary reminders are always to be pushed back against, because boundaries are the enemy of freedom and a means of exclusion (which sometimes is actually the case).

As part of my particular neurodivergence, I experience something called Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD). Because I understand this, I can be accountable for my feelings when it arises. But before I understood it, I experienced a lot of defensiveness when I was reminded that I had crossed some boundary I hadn’t intuitively been aware of. Hearing the reminder, I would feel rejected, isolated, and judged from without, and ashamed, embarrassed, and frustrated from within, knowing that my intentions were good, but now feeling like I will never be seen and have my needs met by the community. And all of this can happen in a fraction of a second.

Until I learned to understand this phenomenon, I would often either become defensive, or just disappear so that I didn’t have to feel like my presence was a reminder of my shameful act. It’s a rough spiral if you don’t understand it.

Having unraveled this to a certain extent, I can feel and understand how people can experience a boundary reminder as a personal rebuke. It sucks to feel that way. It also sucks for the person exercising the boundary to receive the kind of response that a person who feels shamed can give.

Because nobody asked, here are some unsolicited helpful tips for people on both sides of this type of online boundary issue.

For the person reminding someone that their behavior/language/tone/content has overstepped a boundary:

  • Remember that the person may not be aware of the boundary in the first place. Although to many, coloring within the lines seems obvious and uncontroversial, these social constructs are not clear to everyone. Always lead with love. Is the person violating the boundary out of clear defiance and disregard, or are they expressing a valid sentiment in a forum that is not habituated to accepting and including that sentiment? Don’t take the codes for granted and assume the worst. If a person walks into your flower shop looking for disinfectant, don’t right away make them feel stupid for having come to the wrong place. Let them know that you understand what they are looking for, and that it is available right across the street. Be willing to walk them there.

  • If a person is expressing fear, isolation, or rejection, try to remember what these feel like, even if you don’t agree with the way the person is expressing them. When a person is in that place of fear, it can be very hard to hear that they have also done something wrong. So try to let the person know that you hear them, see them, accept their feelings (because they can’t just turn them off to fit into the group’s code), and gently try to redirect them as in the example above.

  • Remember that boundaries are social constructs–a set of unspoken assumptions about the nature of reality that not everyone holds or conforms to or is even aware of. Telling someone they have crossed a boundary can be received as if you were telling them that they don’t conform to the gender presentation that you expect of them, or that the sexual preference they are expressing is shameful or inappropriate. Social constructs are super weird: obvious to some, and completely a mystery to others. Realizing this, we can avoid pitfalls by examining our own assumptions, listening deeply to what’s being expressed, and understanding what is needed in the situation for everyone to feel safe and heard. Because we all deserve to feel safe and heard.

For folks feeling rejected, isolated, or defensive for having been reminded that their behavior/language/content crossed a boundary:

  • Try to understand that the person enforcing the boundary or code may not even be aware that that’s what they are doing, because to them, they are just exercising common sense, that they believe everyone understands, except for people who are uneducated or who are willfully violating the boundaries. They think they are doing the right thing and you’re doing the wrong thing (notice that I said may, because not everyone is coming from this place). They may not have experience with including different views relative to the code. But understand that they are basically responding to your idea, and not your person (unless they are making it personal, in which case, it’s not going to be easy to educate them, so maybe disengage for a moment, because they’re lost too).

  • Try to be aware of the way shops are arranged in a town–there’s the flower shop, the candy shop, the drug store, the grocery store, the record shop (I’m old). While there is some overlap, each shop has a vibe and a range of products. If you keep asking for disinfectant in the flower shop, the shop owner is likely to become frustrated, and perhaps enraged. Know that if they are expressing that they don’t have disinfectant, that’s not about you. It’s just the limitation of their shop. Social media does have a town square: it’s the main platform, outside of the groups. The groups are like specialty shops, so that people entering those shops can have their expectations met. They are not necessarily trying to exclude people, they are just trying to limit the expectations to focus on a particular product. For some of us, this seems super weird, because all of the boundaries seem arbitrary, and we feel like we’re not being met where we are. But try to understand that the boundary they are showing you expresses their limitation, and not yours.

  • If you are finding that your language/behavior/content is causing people to react negatively, again, try to step back for a moment and not take it personally (super hard, I know). Consider whether there is another forum that might be more accepting of your expression, and more willing to meet your needs. If you are not aware of a place, and your desire is to post on social media, know that you are empowered to create forums like the one you are posting in that can meet your needs. For example, if you are wawnting to connect with folks around the issue of neighborhood safety, you can start a group specifically for that purpose, and then invite folks from the first group to join you. I have done this, so I am speaking from experience, and it can be a game-changer in terms or feeling heard and appreciated. You have options. Even though it feels like a fight-or-flight situation, you have options, and you can create the kind of community you envision–it just takes some extra work. But people may end up being grateful for that extra work, and that’s a win for everyone.

Lead with love. Listen deeply. Don’t take it personally, but respond personably. Kindly redirect. Read the room and feel empowered if the room doesn’t hear you–make a new room.

Be safe out there! We really do need each other.

keep building toward a different future

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The recent post by Peter Coyote about comportment at charged demonstrations, and the backlash that followed from various quarters about respectability politics and race- and class-based values in activism got me thinking:

Who is really creating blueprints for demonstrators, based on lived experience and study of what has worked to create effective resistance movements in the past?

Who is providing examples of how to build consensus among demonstrators in the field, so that we are aligned and have each other’s backs when things get heated?

Once again, TeenVogue is doing the heavy lifting to share a variety of perspectives on urgent issues. No joke, you would do well to like and subscribe for a wholly relevant cross-section of what’s happening in the culture.

This recent article finds several activists from various communities reflecting on the demonstrations of 2020, and offering helpful insights into preparation, long-term planning, and on-the-ground support strategies for activists involved in the events unfolding now.

If you’re looking for a specifically non-white, non-Boomer, gender-diverse set of perspectives on how to navigate the resistance demonstration landscape, this is a good place to start. It’s one article, but you might find that the voices represented inspire you to dig deeper.

I’m not amplifying these voices because I am 100% on board with all of their takes, but because I believe we make better decisions when we consider multiple strategies and consequences.

This article includes reflections from:

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
Kandist Mallett
Kelly Hayes
adrienne maree brown
Dean Spade
Vicky Osterweil

Study! Examine your narratives! Reflect on what has worked in the past! Avoid dead ends that sidelined our forebears!

Be safe out there!

“For this story, we want to recall the lessons of that time — lessons that seemed so unprecedented — and to practice what Olurin called for: Remember our history, that we’ve been here before, so we can learn from the past and keep building toward a different future.”

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/organizers-and -thinkers-share-lessons-from-the-2020-protests

👫

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Friends don’t let friends enter highly-charged and heavily armed oppositional demonstration spaces without a clearly articulated plan and a high level of coordination with well-defined allies.

Trusting our instincts only works when we are very familiar with our environment and aware of the ways that a situation can change.

Highly effective strategy

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Keyboard warriors pushing the “rage is justified, property damage is not violence” narrative don’t realize it, but they are practicing a very effective and time-tested technique, that one can see being implemented around the world. It’s the same technique that is used to prepare child soldiers to die.

Children are recruited or abducted to fight in extremist and ideological movements because they are easily manipulated, have little impulse control (especially considering the trauma-infused environments they are in), and, in most of the areas where these movements operate, places with high birth rates and low life expectancy, they are plentiful–and expendable.

They are fed sugar, stimulants, and narrative. Narrative is a very effective tool for preparing the child’s nervous system for the theatre of guerrilla warfare. Narrative works with a child’s emerging ideation, their sense of who they are and their purpose. They are fed narrative that emphasizes a sense of ‘other.’ and nurtures resentments against that other. The other, for these purposes, doesn’t need to be well-defined–in fact, these resentment narratives are often employed within in-groups to promote competition and inspire brutality.

Notice that I haven’t said anything about training. The lack of training is by design. What’s being cultivated in these scenarios is not a skill set, but a disposition–a nervous system that is finely tuned for violence, with adrenaline and cortisol overriding any fear or instinct for self-preservation, and a child’s undeveloped impulse-control mechanism ensuring that their anger will arise quickly and they will lash out at anything that moves. Couple this with an AK-47 and you have the perfect front line killing machine in a forested or dense-infill urban environment. They fit into small spaces, are unperturbed by uncomfortable sensory input, and are small targets.

The strength of the child soldier–its ability to act without thinking–is also its weakness. Lacking the instinct for self-preservation, they haven’t had the time to think through battle scenarios or consider consequences. Not having had training in any skill or craft, they don’t have the framework for complex thinking or strategy. They are the first line of defense, but they are also the first to fall in a hand-to-hand conflict against a trained enemy.

And in open environments, once their magazine is empty, they are easily captured or eliminated. But they are valued more for their expendability than for their skill. By the time they are taken out in a battle scenario, the adults have already retreated to their safe position. Recruit more kids, rinse, repeat, and you have an endless resistance campaign. They operate around the clock around the globe.

Let’s apply this same program to the modern resistance scenario today, in Los Angeles. With a sense of other cultivated over a lifetime, the modern rage warrior has been mentally nurturing resentment narratives for years, with no plan or physical training in any type of combat skill, and no strategic or long-term vision. The rage warrior resembles the child soldier in many ways, but also lacks many of the qualities that make the child soldier so effective in its ideal environment.

The rage warrior has a much higher instinct for self-preservation, and a much lower sense of personal loyalty in a high-stress situation. The adult rage warrior is much more susceptible to being deterred by difficult sensory environments such as temperature, dampness, pungent smells or chemical agents, loud sounds, etc. They also lack the AK-47. But they share the child soldier’s urgency of purpose, their quick tendency to anger, and their low impulse-control.

The areas where demonstrations are happening in Los Angeles would not really be thought of as dense-infill environments. Street are wide, and helicopters and sniper posts are able to target anyone outdoors with high accuracy. One of the strengths of the child soldier is their ability to hide and fire from small spaces; the modern rage warrior has a brick (short range and low lethality) and would be uncomfortable in a closet, let alone the crawlspace beneath a building.

The other thing lacking in this modern scenario is the adult. The modern rage warrior believes themselves to be part of a large, unified force. Driven by ideology rather than operating instructions from a trusted leader, this cultivated self-deception means that they are both without marching orders and without peers once things start to get heated.

So, effectively we have a person ideated for guerrilla warfare with a high-lethality weapon from a securable covered position against an individual or isolated opponent, but with virtually no weapon, no trusted leader, no plan and no assurance of backup, and no ability to adapt to changing conditions or see the full field of battle, who is operating in the open against a highly-armed and highly trained enemy who is able to create formations and enclosures with their numbers, and who can develop and change strategies through communication with leaders as conditions change.

This is not sounding like a highly effective strategy.

In fact, given this understanding, one has to wonder whose side these keyboard warriors are on, as they spread narratives that stoke rage and justify violence by an imagined cooperative movement against a very real foe. It sounds more like they’re trying to get protesters eliminated than show them operation plans for an effective movement.

People!

Organize! Examine your narratives! Identify and amplify your trusted leaders! Do your homework. Have a plan and know that it is shared and understood by the people around you.

Be safe out there.

Burn it down!

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Here’s what I imagine the keyboard warriors pushing the “rage is justified” and “property damage is not violence” narrative believe about the LA riots in ’92:

They believe that the 63 people who died and the nearly 2500 people injured were all batoned by police in riot gear or the National Guard.

They believe that the $1 billion of property damage done was a result of the combined, unified, and justified rage of Black people.

They believe that the 12,000 people who were arrested were arrested unjustly for directing their rage at property, (which is only owned by rich people or the government, which is made of rich people, and both are exclusively white) and for looting, which was just Black people taking what was owed to them by the rich people and the government (and since all of the looted goods were taken from property, all of those goods belonged to rich people or the government, and so were fair game).

They believe that it was rich people and the government who paid to rebuild the property. They believe that the government and rich people had it coming to them. They believe that the government has money and deserves to have to pay for things. They believe that the government has money because it prints it.

They believe that, since it is tax dollars that pay for education, health care, and services, but rich people and the government who pay for property, that those services were not affected.

They believe that there was a fire that burned for a little while, but then the property evaporated. They believe that the new buildings appeared the day after the fires were extinguished. They believe that everything that was rebuilt made the lives of people better because they could finally move into better places, that cost less than the old places. They believe that everyone who lived and worked in those properties stayed at friend’s houses for a night and then returned to the new buildings the next day.

They believe that before the riots, the cops were bad. They believe that the cops were still bad after the riot, but not as bad as before. They believe that, after the riots, life got better for immigrants, people of color, and other marginalized communities. They believe that all of the tensions between different cultural communities evaporated in the cathartic and healing fire.

They believe that the LA riots were a big, glorious, cathartic party, where everyone who was not a cop, a member of the military, or the government, or rich people, were unified in directing their rage directly at the buildings owned by rich people and the government. They believe that were it not for the rage directed at property, more people would have died.

They believe that things got better in the days after the riots, but then they got worse, and now we need another cultural reset.

Why do I say that the keyboard warriors pushing the “rage is justified,” “property damage is not violence” narrative believe these things? Because this is what one would have to believe to amplify that narrative.

People!

Violence and property damage impact people of color and marginalized communities first.

The people who die as a result of violent protests are disproportionately people of color and people from marginalized communities.

Property crimes exact higher sentences than disturbing the peace, loitering, trespassing, and other indictments associated with public protest. Those convicted of property crimes are then processed through the prison-industrial complex, which is a for-profit industry funded by outsourcing dollars provided by the government–your tax dollars.

Properties damaged in violent events like the LA riots are disproportionately housing and small businesses owned by people of color and people from marginalized communities.

Often, unable to rebuild, these families and small business owners sell their properties to corporate landowners at reduced rates.

The money to rebuild comes from tax dollars, which are often diverted from education, health care, and other social services. And since corporations and the wealthy benefit from tax loopholes and government entitlements, that means that the burden of rebuilding rests disproportionately on lower-income people.

And that money goes disproportionately to rich corporate contractors, who have sweetheart deals with the government.

It’s starting to sound like those pushing the “rage is justified,” “property damage is not violence” narrative are actually working in service of the people who benefit from that narrative – corporate property owners, large building contractors and the government agencies who fund them, and the prison-industrial complex. They are actually the ones pushing for a cultural reset.

Don’t fall for it. Practice discipline. Work out your rage at the gym, or in a free anger management group funded by your tax dollars.

Practice discipline, and show up for people of color, people from marginalized communities, and small business owners when you protest.

Let’s do this, people! Learn from history! Practice civil disobedience responsibly! But do practice it!