Rising to the Occasion: Taking the Dharma into Social Action

by Michaela McCormick

Seventeen of us gathered on March 4 at our Shambhala Center to feel and express our broken-heartedness at the violence, injustice, and environmental degradation that recent political events are now refueling.

We spent almost three hours voicing our longing to use what we know about compassion, interdependence, and curiosity to stand up against the insanity and help shape a sustained effort toward healing, inclusion, and a good society. We acknowledged the urgency of our immediate and global circumstance while recognizing how indispensable it is to act with patience, without aggression. It is well past the time, we agreed, to step out of our preoccupation with personal liberation, and choose to be driven by the truth that none of us is free until we all are. We admitted that we face deeply entrenched obstacles like elitism, historical oppression, and individualism,
both within Shambhala and in the larger culture. We know it will take humility, deep listening, and largely undefined skillful means to address the many issues and help fashion what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called the Beloved Community. As much as anything, we are curious.

Although many of us have been working for social justice and the healing of mother earth for a long time, we come to this moment knowing there is much we don’t know. In this time when the well-tested strategies and tactics of organizing and social change are once again being employed in reaction to the latest version of power hording and oppression, we are seeking gentle and fierce means of resistance and creation that do not vilify those easy to blame but rather challenge their words, policies, and actions. As the Sakyong has written, “If we fear the power of others, we have lost our connection with earth (and our sense of interdependence).”

The group of us who came together on March 4 will meet again soon. Please check your email and Portland Shambhala Center’s newsletter and calendar for the date and time. And if you are moved by what you’ve read here, please join us.

“Without inner change, there can be no outer change, without collective change, no change matters.”

– Rev. angel Kyodo williams