Ruby at the Festival

Today is the annual festival of Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and Ruby Grad came by to help Sue and others set up. Ruby and her husband Matthew have a deep, stable, grounded practice. He is an official "teacher," and Ruby teaches through her actions and her conduct in the world. They recently visited a series of monasteries in several Asian countries, and I have great admiration for their wisdom and kindness to all beings. 

I made photographs, and then Sue and I led a discussion of Buddhist Activism, along with another member of our group who was the dissenting voice in the discussion of whether to have a public meditation tomorrow, an hour before an Antifa rally which the Alt Right has promised to disrupt. We had seven yes votes and only one no, so we are having the meditation, but we honor dissent, and the person who voted against the action was given a platform to explain his position to the large group. When he voted, he wrote, "I have no desire to go anywhere near this event, it all looks like a losing situation however you may wish it to be." He finds the Anarchists who attend Antifascist rallies to be "violent cop-bashers." I countered that not all Anarchists are the same; that you cannot make generalizations about the whole group, and that I honor the energy of those who are willing to take serious risks to stand up for their beliefs in order to protect others and to resist Fascism. The point of holding a meditation before the event is to create an atmosphere of meditative stability and to be present with our wish for all beings to be safe. Our different points of view spurred a thoughtful discussion. Sue made some photographs during the discussion which I look forward to seeing.

My grandchildren will be with me again this evening till 10 p.m., and then I'm organizing that meditation tomorrow, so I have no time for commenting, but I will come back to read any comments on Monday.