We are volunteers from meditationcenters in the Twin Cities, and others interested in human liberation. The Beverly White Community Outreach Project is sponsored by the Minnesota Chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF). Nationally, the BPF is an organization that has made connections between meditation, non-violence and social justice for 25 years. Participating temples include Clouds in Water Zen Center, the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, Dharma Field Meditation Center, Compassionate Ocean Dharma Center, Common Ground Mediation Center, Twin Cities Vipassana Collective, S.N. Goenka Vipassana Group and Karma Theg Sum Choling Tibetan Meditation group.
Volunteers go in pairs to spend time with people who are in a variety of challenging circumstances, once a month, teaching simple self-awareness meditation. As more volunteers join the outreach project, we hope to offer sessions in treatment facilities on a weekly basis, and in 5 prisons, twice a month. In prisons we are also distributing books on meditation donated by area temples and are hosting 1-day meditation retreats for inmates (and supportive visitors), led by meditation teachers who are authorized to teach within their tradition. We are open to your suggestions for sites to visit. Sites we are currently visiting, or will soon visit include:
Volunteers are also available to provide hospice and bereavement support to individuals and families experiencing the transition of dying. Cathy Crafton, a member of the MZMC, apracticing nurse and trained hospice volunteer, is offering classes tovolunteers interested in offering mindful hospice support. Volunteers are also planning to offer yoga instruction for prisoners.
Please contact Cal.
Beverly White, 12/19/1919–3/14/1999, was (and remains) an inspiration for, and a friend to many of the volunteers who are involved in our outreach project. Beverly, who is often remembered fondly as a yoga instructor at Macalester College in St. Paul, was also a life-long student of meditation, apoet, an author, a community activist, lecturer on comparative religion and long-time friend of many people, of all ages, living throughout the world. Beverly helped to bring Zen teacher Katagiri Roshi to Minneapolis to found the first Buddhist meditation center in the Twin Cities. In her writings she explains with warmth and enthusiasm how her practice of Buddhism and mindfulness meditation helped her to be of greater service to her friends, family, students and our world. Beverly made each person she met feel special, while encouraging them to reach for their full potential. At the quarterly meetings of the Beverly White Community Outreach Project, we spend time reading and reflecting upon Beverly's writings. We feel Beverly's spirit inspiring our work to offer practical tools that can bring peace and freedom to people facing challenging life circumstances. Beverly's beloved husband of 54 years, David White, age 83, a revered professor for 50 years at Macalester College, passed away October 29th, 2000. David had a life-long dedication to nonviolence, including being a conscientious objector during World War II. David wrote his doctoral dissertation on Ramana Maharshi who remained a lifetime inspiration for him. He wrote a definitive translation and commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, a profound teaching on Karma Yoga, the source of David's spiritual practice. The intention of our volunteer service in the community is to preserve and further the spirit and legacy of Beverly and David's lives.
We are All Doing Time, by Bo Lozoff of the Human Kindness Foundation.
(Contact Cal if interested.)
This page contains a collection of writings by Beverly White (12/19/1919–3/14/1999). Beverly was (and remains) an inspiration for and a friend to a number of the Dharma heirs of Katagiri Roshi and to many of the volunteers who are involved in our community outreach project. Beverly, who is often remembered fondly as a yoga instructor at Macalester College in St. Paul, was also a life-long student of meditation, poet, author, community activist, lecturer on comparative religion, and long-time friend of many people of all ages living throughout the world. Beverly helped to bring Zen teacher Katagiri Rosh to Minneapolis to found the first Buddhist meditation center in the Twin Cities. In her writings she explains with warmth and enthusiasm how her practice of Buddhism and mindfulness meditation helped her to be of greater service to her friends, family, students, and our world. Beverly made each person she met feel special, while encouraging them to reach for their full potential.
For more information on the Beverly White Community Outreach Project, contact Sean or Cal.
Yoga has been practiced in India since deep antiquity. The word yoga, itself an ancient Sanskrit word, means to join, to unite with. It is cognate with the word "yoke" in English. Throughout the millennia, yoga has been regarded as a spiritual discipline aimed at self-mastery and self-transcendence, not mastery over other human beings or nature.
The wisdom of this ancient tradition was distilled and recorded by a scholar named Patanjali in about the second century B.C. who wrote a short book of 195 terse statements called the Yoga Sutras. Raja Yoga, as he called it, comprised eight disciplines involving the training of the body, mind, attitudes or feelings, will and spiritual intent. The ultimate goal was the development of inner peace in all circumstances and benevolent action in the world.
I call the yoga I teach Integrative Yoga, aiming at conformity with the basic teachings Patanjali put forth. The bodily disciplines of yoga work towards a spiritual goal: the oneness of body, mind, emotions, will, and spirit. I like to use the analogy of inner harmony the healthy body enjoys: every organ working in perfect synchrony with the whole organism. Yoga for me is the practice of learning to live in peace and harmony with oneself and the world. May I continue to contribute what I can towards the development of the holistic relationships with all of life that is becoming more and more understood and accepted in our society today.
Yoga can also be practiced to regain a natural harmoniously functioning healthy body. In 1953 I suffered a separation of a shoulder in an auto accident. After six weeks or so, I recovered normal functioning of my arm, but for years afterward I was weak; I could not sweep or shovel comfortably, and when I had to do strenuous lifting, such as stretching the heavy limbs of a stroke victim through their normal range of motion during my work as a public health nurse, my arm would sometimes go completely out of commission, making it necessary for me to go to an osteopath for treatment. It was only when I began yogic exercise that my arm became completely functional again. The muscles must have undergone some atrophy or constriction which was not affected by ordinary activity. Today, physical therapy is routinely prescribed for the restoration of normal functioning of any injured limb; that was not the case 45 years ago.
All muscles undergo a certain degree of atrophy if they are not used daily. Unlike many kinds of exercise, yoga practice can include a daily exercise of all the major muscle groups, and the maintenance of the full range of motion for all major joints as well.
Another thing I value about yoga in my life is its respect for the natural symmetry and balance of the body. To keep the spine straight while standing, sitting, walking, and lying can do much to prevent the lower back pain which many if not most American adults suffer from. For me, such awareness has been invaluable because I was born with a spinal curvature called scoliosis, which I have learned to compensate for through proper sitting and lying habits. Osteoporosis, beginning after menopause, had weakened my pelvis, making healthy alignment imperative as a way of controlling the pain and increasing stamina.
Palpable proof that I have learned to compensate for my crooked back is the ability I have learned over the years to sit in a cross-legged position for meditation purposes with both knees firmly on the floor, instead of the right knee needing to rest on a cushion. When both thighs and buttocks are firmly positioned, they serve as a support for the torso and spine which can allow a most comfortable sitting position, taking much less effort and constant readjustment than sitting in an upright chair does. Lying down, the scoliosis is still a problem for me; I have to have a pillow under my knees and a small pillow behind my left side to maintain a comfortable and painless position. Yoga has also taught me how to relax, tense person that I am. I practice—and teach—both warmup exercises and asanas, or yogic poses, as a daily means to this end. Warm-ups involve stretching a muscle group, such as an arm or leg, slowly to the count of four while inhaling, then relaxing the limb on a long exhalation. Asana practice involves assuming a particular posture, stretching to reach it, and then holding it to the count of twenty or more while relaxing within it to the maximum extent possible while still maintaining the posture. I call this "The Goldilocks Connection," because one is attempting to achieve just the right balance of exertion and relaxation to hold the pose. Svasana is a unique asana in that it calls for complete relaxation while lying on a firm surface in a totally aligned position while remaining perfectly still in body and mind. Such a position easily induces sleep unless one learns to stay both awake and quietly alert. Most yoga classes include this asana for 15–20 minutes at the end of each session. So I have learned—and continue to learn—to relax while engaging in daily activities as well, such as sweeping, mopping, kneading bread, sitting in front of my reading machine.
I have also learned the value of deep breathing. We all know that oxygen is so essential to our body's functioning that we cannot do without it for more than a few minutes. Actually, our vital capacity—that is, the amount of air we can take in with one breath—correlates closely with our life expectancy. The yogic tradition teaches that our breathing brings us cosmic energy, or prana, the source of both physical and spiritual vitality. So I practice deep breathing when I take my daily walk, filling my whole chest from diaphragm up to my collar bones with every few steps. Deep breathing can also have a calming effect on the mind; I use it before I begin to meditate to steady and compose my mind. I also keep my house clean and aired out, and I contribute to environmental causes that promote clean air for everybody.
When I was eighteen years old and a student at Macalester College, I became a vegetarian after hearing a talk by a man from the Catholic Worker Movement who put forth a simple idea: why should human beings kill animals for food if they can be well nurtured on plants? So I have deeply appreciated Patanjali's teachings on both harmlessness and pure food and drink. Cleanliness is certainly next to godliness from a yogic point of view; we all become yogis these days when we search for sources of pure water and uncontaminated food, as well as being environmentally concerned about the waste of good grain funneled through animals before we get the nourishment of it.
Another thing I value about yoga is that while it offers a lofty goal for human development, it has no creed, no set of theological beliefs one must embrace in order to belong. It does, however, have an ethic, a set of moral imperatives which comprise the first step of the yogic path. The practice of benevolence or good will and harmlessness towards all life is what is called by one of Patanjali's early commentators the "all-embracing austerity," so all-embracing, in fact, that if one is truly benevolent in spirit, one cannot help but be true to the other four ethical values of truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity, and non-possessiveness or greed. Patanjali is the good company of Jesus and the Buddha in his raising of benevolence to unconditional love.
So far I have discussed only the physical and ethical disciplines of yoga, disciplines that can contribute to full body/mind/spirit integration. I am also devoted to the practice of meditation which I learned from both Buddhist and yogic teachings. The kind of meditation Patanjali directs me to is based on his perception that a Supreme Spirit is the underlying ground of all reality. He describes it thus (Sutra 24): "[It] is an extraordinary Spirit, unaffected by Afflictions, Actions, Fruitions, or Dispositions." Su. 26: "[It] is the greatest teacher of the earliest great ones, because it is affected by Time." Su. 27: "Its symbol is the syllable OM."
The purpose of meditation is to communicate with this Spirit and to identify with it. The last four steps of Patanjali's eight step Ashtanga or Raja Yoga describe four types of meditative practice, each advancing beyond the previous one. This first step, Pratyhara, recommends the practice of sense withdrawal. I practice this in traditional Yogic fashion, sitting in lotus posture in a quiet place with my eyes closed; sensory involvement is at a minimum. The second step is Dharana, in which I use my breathing to calm and focus my mind and then engage in the repetition of a mantra, either OM or another yogic mantra, So Hum, Hum Sa, which means "I am Pure Spirit." The third step is Dhyana, described in the Yoga Sutras as "clear, spacious awareness," in which I bring into play what Patanjali calls "The Witness Soul," observing without judgment whatever comes to my attention from moment to moment, whether a thought a feeling, a sensation, an impulse, a desire. Ideally, during this kind of meditation, I, similarly to the Supreme Spirit, would not be affected by afflictions, actions, fruitions or dispositions. I am training myself, however unskillfully and incompletely, in the practice of equanimity under all circumstances. The final step, or Samadhi, Patanjali describes as a state of clarity, bliss, and oneness with all life. Certainly such a splendid state is devoutly to be desired, but to be experienced, one must learn to practice the third step, Dhyana, with ever more skill and dedication, rather than merely reveling in the imagination of the state of Samadhi.
I find the kind of meditation I practice a very healthy one, because it neither denies nor represses nor avoids any experience, but participates in all experience with non-judgmental acceptance and freedom.
At the heart of every religious devotion must be one's clear intent to search for the best one knows and to offer the best one knows to the world. Keeping that intent uppermost in my mind, I continue the practice.
For several years I have practiced meditation. Even though I have never experienced any visions, any breakthrough moments, any "enlightenment," I have continued to peg away at this discipline for whatever clarity out of spiritual murk, order out of confusion, resolution out of inner conflict, I can find.
Back in the Quaker fold during the past two years, I have found in the meeting for worship a sense of being in the company of people who are longing for and seeking the Good—for themselves, for their loved ones, and for the world. I participate in the culling, the sifting, the intensification of thought, feeling and intent that occur in this spiritually charged atmosphere. Sometimes it becomes galvanized and focused enough to bring a person from sitting to standing, from silence to speech. There is a ring of inner authority in that speech that is not merely personal. It speaks from the larger heart of us all.
In recent months I have discovered another kind of spiritual practice: prayer. It is not supplicatory prayer. Rather it is what I would call the prayer of benevolent intent. The investment of my deepest will in wishing for what is spiritually the best for the person or persons I am praying for. I do not presume to know what might be spiritually the best. Therefore, I do not will anything specific. Instead, I surround persons I know who are undergoing great suffering (but whom I cannot reach or help by any tangible means) with loving attention, willing for them the best.
I have no idea whether this prayer is effective or not. Too many imponderable influences play upon the lives of any one person for my praying to be given any positive credit. Nor do I tell any of these people that I am praying for them. So, I have no idea whether it lends one iota of spiritual strength or clarity to President Clinton, or the the members of the Prairie Island Coalition, or to my friend who is undergoing a mental breakdown.
However, I realize more and more that this daily praying, this time I take twice a day at the conclusion of my formal meditation, is helping me enormously. I have become more deeply connected to the people I pray for, to the extent even, it seems sometimes, that my identity includes them. Amazingly too, this focused well-wishing intent has changed my attitude towards some of the people for whom I pray, people towards whom I have felt great resentment because of their behavior or their indifference. With these benevolent feelings, this intent uppermost in my mind when I pray, there seems to be an erasure of what in the past I desired or expected from them. Now, feelings of deep appreciation, even admiration, rise up in me!
Late in the summer of 1992 I attended a weekend conference in Boulder, Colorado, on the subject "Subtle Healing Energies," organized by the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM). The presentations, lectures and workshops were entirely devoted to explorations of healing modalities that do not depend on the use of ingested substances, either pharmaceutical or herbal, or manipulation or massage of the body. Over 200 people were in attendance, including allopathic and alternative therapy practitioners, psychologists, psychotherapists, and the like. As a yoga teacher, I was eligible to attend.
The mornings were devoted to lectures and demonstrations, the afternoons to workshops. I attended one workshop on Therapeutic Touch, which I teach in a minimal way in the yoga course I teach at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, and one on "Holotrophic Therapy" derived from the work of Stanislav Grof.
Dr. Grof was a successful psychiatrist in Czechoslovakia during the 60's and 70's, employing LSD in the treatment of psychotic patients. His work became so well known that he was invited to the US for various symposia and lectures; finally he settled in this country. Not long after his arrival, however, the use of LSD as a therapeutic agent was outlawed by the federal government. So he set about to develop techniques which would provide psychotherapeutically healing experiences similar to the ones he had discovered working with LSD.
At the conference in Boulder, two therapists trained in the methods he had developed, led the workshop.
They were assisted by several facilitators. I entered a darkened room already occupied by 20 to 30 people, some of them lying down on blankets, some sitting up. I chose to sit up in my cross-legged meditation posture. In front of the room was a huge screen lit up by a light show, flickering with colored images. As the session started, the participants were instructed to look at the screen, listen to the amplified music (tapes of classical and semi-classical vocal and instrumental music), and to breathe as hard and fast as possible for the next one and a half hours. The therapists also announced that some participants might thrash about or even shout, but that this should be expected and accepted as signs of the purgative process taking place. We were also asked to raise our hands if we needed any advice or help.
As the session started, I had no idea what to expect; I was merely curious. As I began the vigorous breathing, what went through my mind were recollections of the speech I had heard that morning given by Stephen Schwartz, the leader of the conference. He vividly described a tour he had had of the devastation in Los Angeles where the race riots had recently taken place. Speaking passionately, he endeavored to persuade us all that our work as therapists wasn't enough—we all must also attempt to remedy the deepening degradation of our society through social and political action.
His profound concern reached me as I sat there, and I began to feel overwhelmed with sadness and powerlessness. Tears streamed down my face; they fell so copiously that I had to call for tissues from a facilitator. I don't believe I have ever wept so deeply. The light show, the loud music and the vigorous breathing had somehow reached and released the sorrow I must feel at the depths of my being at our human capacity to be inhuman.
After about fifteen minutes, as the tears continued to fall, my spirits suddenly rose as I felt and saw the approach of a being with huge wings which enfolded me in its embrace, as if to comfort and reassure me. I knew that it was an angel because I could recognize the feathers on its wings, their color and texture and design. But the form of the angel itself was shadowy, too faint for me even to discern its shape. This experience lasted only momentarily.
Never before having had what I could call a mystical experience, nor even having had a special interest in angels, I was (and am) understandably astonished by this experience, and left the room a more believing and grateful person than I was before. Since then, however, my spiritual practice has returned to mindfulness and breathing meditation, along with Friends' corporate worship. I entertain no expectations that I will have such an experience again, nor do I feel the need to solicit the help of angelic aid. But the memory of that day remains in my heart as a visitation from the realm of Spirit.
I had formed no opinion about ritual one way or another before I entered a period of training at Hosshinji Temple in Japan. This was probably to the good, since the life there was largely ruled by ritual, a way of living and moving I soon embraced wholeheartedly as both meaningful and supportive of my spiritual search.
Sometimes I felt as though I were participating in some kind of liturgical drama, which included both music: the cacophonous chanting, the bells and gongs and drums; and dance: the rhythmic walking, the gasshos, the prostrations and meditative postures. The chief actors were the monks, performing their parts with utter ease, grace, and exuberance.
The ritual life of the monastery, I discovered, had many expressions, many aims. It served to maintain and carry forward the Great Teaching as it had been passed down through the centuries. In addition to the chanting of the Heart Sutra and other sutras, there were the lectures based on Zen literature and experience presented by Harada Roshi. Once a year, all of the sutras were taken out of the storehouse and given a symbolic reading (and airing!) by the monks opening and shutting them in accordion fashion during a special service. Ritual paid daily homage to the priests and patriarchs who had kept the tradition alive and pure all the way from Shakyamuni to the present time. Ritual honored the founding of Hosshinji (some four hundred years ago) and its founders in a monthly service held in the Founders' Hall. Ritual also preserved the ancient monastic life in many ways, but by no means in all ways. The monks no longer slept in the Zendo (nor on wooden pillows); they had a dormitory. They could attend political meetings. They could attend Saturday night movies.
The weeklong Sesshins which took place at the beginning of each month of the six months' training period comprised the Great Ritual for which all the other rituals prepared us.
Some of the traditional rituals profoundly touched me. For instance, there was the ritual I was taught to perform before taking a bath. The anteroom of the bathhouse contained a small shelf adorned with incense, a candle and flowers. Here, before disrobing, each community member made nine full prostrations in commemoration of all those individuals over the centuries who had experienced satori as they stepped into the hot water of the bath. I might add that I was not to become one of those honored!
Once a month or so, the monks would engage in a ritual called Takahatsu. Its purpose was to preserve the memory of the ancient practice of the monks' begging for their daily food. Dressed in the traditional garb of white leggings, straw sandals and sedge hats, the monks would walk the streets of the town, each with a bowl held up in his hands crying "Ho! Ho!" Housewives, children and business people would run out into the street to place a few yen in the bowls. Upon their return to the temple, the monks would divide the money: half was given to the monastery, half divided among the monks for personal expenditures. The amount collected was usually small. One time, after the money had been divided in this fashion, one of the monks came to me and the other American living at the temple, saying, "I have brought you your share of the donations we received today." What a surprise! Neither my friend nor I had participated in the Takahatsu! Besides, we were "rich Americans." In the monks' eyes, however, we were integral members of the community who should be included in the benefits of the ritual. Tears still come to my eyes when I recall this occasion.
The ritual life of the temple also served to remind us of the Reality behind our ordinary understanding, our everyday consciousness. Our gasshos, both to the altar and to each other, our prostrations, our chants, communicated—at a subliminal level perhaps—this Great Truth. The silence observed in the temple, its hangings and images, the incense and candles and gongs, its cleanliness and airiness, all contributed to this sense of the numinous.
Another function of ritual was to dissolve our preoccupation with ego, the sense of being a separate, discrete reality. What was required of us both in formal activities such as zazen and oryoki, or informal, such as walking through the halls or opening a sliding door, was focused attention to whatever was presenting itself in all its fullness NOW. We could be severely criticized for failure in being mindful at all times.
Other rituals in the temple related each individual to the larger natural environment. With each breakfast, a few grains of rice and the wash water from our bowls were collected and fed to the carp in the temple pond. When we took a dipper of water from a standing well (water abounded here at the foot of the mountain), we always poured back part of It in keeping with Dogen's injunction that part of every dipper of water should's descendents. For every tree cut down on be donated, as it were, to one's the mountain, one was planted. All waste matter, including human excrement, was carefully given back as compost to the fields. One monk summed up the spirit of the monastic life as it related to nature, " Our life is hard, but it's easy on the universe."
On occasion we would even participate in a ritual taken from the Shinto tradition. Before breakfast, the assistant Roshi would sometimes go out on the veranda and clap three times to greet the rising sun; the rest of the community would join him in this observance.
Identity with the outer Buddhist community was expressed in ritual observances and feasts on holy days; in Jihai, a gathering of the faithful for re-dedication to the Buddhist Way; frequent requiem masses read for the deceased who were buried in the temple cemetery; and the sesshins, in which lay Buddhists from outlying areas participated.
It is evident, I believe, from the foregoing brief account, that the Japanese teachers who have brought Zen to America have brought to us the rituals which they saw as most essential in bringing us the Dharma and the Way. Other rituals, however beautiful or moving, were left behind. We Americans, then, have the freedom to choose additional rituals that will enrich our practice. We can derive these rituals from our own cultural values and concerns as well as from Japanese and other cultural sources. The opportunity is richly ours, since, enjoying religious freedom in this society as we do, we are under no governmental constraints, nor do we feel threatened by other religious communities. Furthermore, every Zen center in this country is autonomous; there is no central authority determining what rituals must be used. By the same token, priests are not given a rigid, systematized training. Under the personal direction of their teacher, they are given great freedom in developing their own insights.
To become an integral part of a Sangha experience, the rituals which arise spontaneously, or, upon being suggested, are quickly approved of by the group, are the ones which will ring true and continue to be meaningful with repetition. Ideally, they must originate as a natural expression of community feeling and aspiration, then kept alive with fresh interpretations.
One can envision what some of these rituals might be. There could be Rites of Solstice and Equinox, marking the turn of the seasons. Along with seasonal displays of flowers, grains, vegetables and fruits, there could be a Tree of Life at the winter equinox around which a dance symbolizing the return of the sun could be performed. Individuals could read both Japanese and Western haiku and other nature poetry. Children could happily participate in these rituals, all of which would celebrate our integral participation in the natural world. Vows could be taken to help save our threatened companions of the wild.
Solemn Query could be another ritual by which Sangha members ask each other questions about our conduct not only as a Sangha but as national and inter-national citizens, parents, children, mates, friends, workers; how we can be true to the precepts and all they imply; how we can live more harmlessly, truthfully, compassionately and simply in our secular and very complex society. It could even be a time for public confession of wrongdoing for the catharsis that could provide, along with the request for support from Sangha members.
The Great Self/no self Ritual could celebrate the experience of spiritual release from the ego which has been testified to down through the ages by both Oriental and Western seers. The stories of their experience could be narrated; their sayings read or chanted; their understanding celebrated with high ceremony and joyous chanting of the Heart Sutra. A Zen-inspired poet could be asked to provide a "fresh" sutra to celebrate this highest joy human beings can experience.
The Bodhisattva Ritual could celebrate our dedication to deepening our search for enlightenment through lives of service and giving to all sentient beings. It would awaken our sense of the interbeing we share with all human beings, whatever their rank or moral condition. It would extol individuals in world history who represent the Bodhisattva ideal transculturally: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, and Gandhi. It would commemorate their self-transcendent lives and actions. Examples of less well-known people who have lived lives of quiet giving against great odds could also be witnessed to.
Rituals such as these, endowed with fresh insights, wide sympathies and intense energy, could make Zen practice more and more relevant to a secular and threatened society.