A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. — Walter Benjamin
I was recently given the honor of being a guest speaker at a conference organized by the Ulex Project / EcoDharma Center. Ulex is a political education organization based in Spain which provides training and educational resources for social movements to explore the deep and difficult questions of political strategy and its application to egalitarian ends. Ulex’s alter ego is the EcoDharma Center, a Buddhist organization which hosts or hosted meditation retreats and other residential programs at its property in rural Spain for radical/engaged Buddhists. The conference, which happened over two days on the weekend, invited guests to speak freely on a series of topics relevant to dhamma and social movement strategy.
I was asked to participate in the conversation, “Vision”, alongside the Ulex member and host Guhyapati and the Brooke Lavalle, president of Courage of Care and The Arrow Journal. Both of them are very experienced in dhamma, academia, and social theory, and I hope that I did not embarrass myself too much in front of them. I am out of practice speaking to an audience, and I rarely have the opportunity to speak about this work “live” with anyone at all. Most of my day is spent behind the wheel of a bus, after all.
Here is the description of the theme “Vision”
We know how hard it is to imagine our world beyond the horizon of capitalism and its individualistic view of human nature. The far right are seeking to offer an alternative and certainties with renewed emphasis on reactionary collective identities. What about us? What kinds of worlds, institutions, and forms of life do we long for? What vision of world-ecology-humanity guides our work?
This opens questions of time: the tension between urgency and patience, between immediate action and long-duration imagination. Without vision, movements contract into maintenance and reaction; with it, they regain orientation and direction. Historically, powerful and motivating vision has been vulnerable to hardening into ideological assertions about the direction of history and creation of blueprints which require authoritarian efforts to force the world to conform to. As we face the deep uncertainty and complexity of history unfolding, how do we sustain vision that can guide strategic direction and nurture motivation for the long haul?
Thanks again to the organizers of this fantastic event. I highly recommend watching the other three talks in the series, which can be found at:
https://deeper-resources.net/program
Long thinking of the sufferings of sentient beings and wanting to rescue them, I was unable to do so. Today I have attained the bodhi. Suddenly, obstructions are no more. I have also verified that sentient beings are sunyata and that the original nature and appearance are true reality.
My sorrows and sufferings nevermore, my lovingkingness and compassion are unconditional. — Sutra of Maitreya’s Descent
