The Engaged Buddhist Election Retreat Guide

The Engaged Buddhist Election Retreat Guide By Edwin Herzog and the Engaged Buddhist Election Retreat Organizing Committee: Stan Dewey, Rob Lyons, Alan Senauke, Laurie Senauke, Susan Moon, and Edwin Herzog Edited by Susan Moon The Engaged Buddhist Election Retreat Guide Zendo altar from 2006 Election Retreat, Stockton, CA By Edwin Herzog Edited by Susan Moon Photo Editor: Ko Blix The Engaged Buddhist Election Retreat Organizing Committee: Stan Dewey, Rob Lyons, Laurie Senauke, Hozan Alan Senauke, Susan Moon, and Edwin Herzog For more information contact our website electionretreat.org; or email us at [email protected] CONTENTS Preface 2 Introduction 4 Outreach 8 Housing and Hosts 9 The Schedule as a Container 11 Group shot: Election Retreat 2016 in Carson City, NV Why Practice? 12 Dear Political Activists and Engaged Buddhists, Building a Sangha 13 Our intention with this guide is to offer you an Engaged Buddhist Election Retreat framework. This model has helped steer us through five Work Positions 15 election retreats since 2004. We offer it to you to help you define, design, and put in motion your own election retreat. Political Candidates 21 Our election retreats have all been in support of particular Canvassing 23 campaigns and candidates, but this model can also be used to support other actions and coalitions, such as voter registration, gun control, advocating for single-payer health care, or ending fracking. Challenges and Joys 29 Good luck! “We have chanted the Wisdom beyond Wisdom PREFACE Heart Sutra and the Metta prayer of Maylie …Buddhism has been conspicuously ready to accept or ignore the inequalities Scott. and tyrannies of whatever political system it found itself under. This can We have also worked be death to Buddhism, because it is death to any meaningful function of together for 14 days, compassion. Wisdom without compassion feels no pain…The mercy of the collectively, to get out the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been individual vote. insight into the basic self/void. We need both. We have knocked on 3093 doors, talked —Gary Snyder, from Earth House Hold, (New Directions, 1969). to 1063 people, and encouraged 598 votes. Gary Snyder’s prescient words form election cycles, going door to door Impact: immeasurable. a foundation for what we have to support values and candidates In our temporary Iris come to call Engaged Buddhism. who, at the very least, might be able Street Sangha, we have sat and sung together, Living in the West, we are shaped to create possibilities of greater Dharma talk in the Carson City zendo by principles of social justice. One freedom. In some campaigns we eaten and cleaned cannot be free when others are suf- have tasted electoral victory. In oth- together. fering and oppressed. So it is natu- ers we have reckoned with loss. But By car and on foot, we have journeyed in pairs in Carson City, Reno, ral that the adaptive and liberative in every case our common medi- and Douglas County, sharing the belief that it makes a difference to teachings of Buddhism fold in these tation and action have bound us vote, and that our democracy is still alive. principles, just as Buddhism has closer to each other in community, We offer great gratitude to Richard, Wendy, Max and Watson always been influenced by the cul- and brought us into connection Thornley, for opening their home and their hearts; to Stan, Ed, and Rob tures and philosophies it has come with so many other like-minded for organizing us, to Tamar for nourishing us, and to the many others in contact with. people. Win or lose, we have not who have made our work here possible. Principles of democracy, equal- been silent. Long ago the Buddha We honor the good intentions of Hillary Clinton, Catherine Cortez ity, and justice are not absent from walked through northern India Masto, and Chip Evans. the earliest Buddhist teachings and from city to town to village for We dedicate the merit of our sincere effort, yes, sincere effort, to communities. But as our “election thirty-five years, speaking wherever all beings who will be affected by this election, which, because of sesshin” has evolved over more than he stopped to rest. You have to say interconnectedness, is all beings on this planet. a decade, we have creatively found something. We remember, as Fannie Lou Hamer said, that no one is free until a way to integrate meditation and everyone is free. social practice in our U.S. electoral —Hozan Alan Senauke Whatever the outcome of this election, we dedicate the merit of our Berkeley, California effort together to the ongoing work for peace and justice for all.” environment. This little book col- October 2017 lects our experience through five —Sue Moon, Service dedication on election day morning November 8, 2016, Carson City, Nevada 2 3 election year. As Buddhists we were spiritual component. What could faced with an urgent dilemma: how we do to transform our anger at to bring our practice and social injustice into action and involve activism together to save all beings ourselves in the electoral process in this time of war? in a form that was framed by our There we were, living in the San spiritual values? Francisco Bay Area, in our Berkeley We had dinner together and bubble, a center of liberal politics took the first steps toward map- in a reliably blue state. We felt that ping out a plan. We decided to call presidential and congressional ourselves the Election Retreat Plan- elections, though seriously flawed, ning Committee. We envisioned afforded us an opportunity to elect an Engaged Buddhist Retreat that politicians who supported at least would bring together engaged Bud- some of our agenda: health care dhists who wanted to volunteer in for all, ending the death penalty, the 2004 presidential election. We First Engaged Buddhist Election Retreat organizers Ed Herzog (l), Stan Dewey protecting the environment, cutting decided to model it on the Soto Zen and Melody Ermachild Chavis in Corvallis Oregon. the out-of-control military budget, meditation retreat, or sesshin, that and ending the Iraq war. we were familiar with from years INTRODUCTION We had all embraced the Bod- of Zen practice. (See Appendix G, hisattva vow to save all beings. But Engaged Buddhist Election Retreat The first Engaged Buddhist Elec- forms of nonviolent social activism. we felt that sitting on our cushions Chronology) tion Retreat took place in 2004. Edwin was a labor organizer/ was not enough and that doing In the Soto Zen Buddhist tradi- The country was deeply enmeshed filmmaker with extensive experi- nothing only led to despair. Many tion, sesshins are periods of intensive in the Iraq war, and George Bush ence in electoral get-out-the-vote of our friends were traveling to red practice, lasting from a few days to Jr. ruled in his fourth year as efforts. Melody was an author and states to participate in the election, a week . Starting at 5 a.m., partici- president. The idea of an Election private investigator specializing but these efforts did not include a pants sit numerous periods of zazen Retreat emerged during an infor- in death penalty cases. Stan was (meditation), eat formal, mal conversation in the Berkeley an appellate defense attorney who silent meals in the zendo (see Zen Center courtyard following a had been involved in the National Appendix H, oryoki meals), Saturday program of zazen, service, Lawyers Guild, the anti-apartheid chant, work, and do walking and lecture. The three organizers of movement, and Central American meditation, until 9 p.m. No the first Engaged Buddhist Elec- support efforts. talking allowed, much less tion Retreat—Stan Dewey, Melody We were freaked out by the war political organizing! During Ermachild Chavis and Edwin in Iraq. We knew it was a big mis- the sesshin itself, participants’ Herzog—were all committed Zen take with unforeseen consequences. attention is not directed out- students and active members of the We had marched against it from the ward to others but within; at Buddhist Peace Fellowship (BPF), beginning and gotten arrested in the same time the intention is a national network of engaged civil disobedience actions in Wash- to bring body and mind into Buddhists participating in various ington and San Francisco. It was an harmony with others. Could we integrate this Zendo in Corvallis, Oregon 4 5 coming election; • Be involved in a local congressional election, develop a rela- tionship with the local candidate, and use the local political infrastructure and our selected local candidate’s field operation to help get out the vote; • Be independent and unaf- filiated with any particular Our Photo Editor Ko Blix, canvassing Buddhist center or religious in Carson City, Nevada organization; • Make a schedule and stick to it; intense, internal, spiritual experi- • Be self-funded through contri- ence with the topsy-turvy world butions from participants and of electoral politics? We decided to supporters. We gather prior to walking in the Nevada Day Parade create a daily schedule that brack- That first year, after researching eted our political work during the our options, we decided to go to the day with Zen practice. swing state of Oregon, where we This is from our first letter to friends and fellow engaged Buddhists, Morning and evening practice could support the Kerry/Edwards inviting them to join us in this first Engaged Buddhist Election Retreat: sessions would use a modified form campaign, and work for Democrat- of the Soto Zen Sesshin model, ic Congresswoman Darlene Hooley, August 8, 2004 including periods of zazen, services whom Republicans had targeted as and chants adapted from the Soto one of the most vulnerable, pro- Dear Buddhist activist friends, Zen form, vegetarian meals, and gressive Democrats in Congress.

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