upasika day in white salmon

I finally managed to work up the courage Friday night to ask someone if I could catch a ride with them to the Pacific Hermitage in White Salmon, WA, and make my first (and very long overdo) visit. After a rough few weeks and what seemed like auspicious timing (it not only being a full moon observance day, but Pavarana, the full moon marking the end of the monastic rains retreat, as well), I made the determination to attend the Upasika Day retreat at Yoga Samadhi. My hope was that spending the day meditating with monks would help me get out of the dark mental cave I've found myself in recently.

The next morning was covered in a blanket of mist, the setting moon peeking through on its way towards the horizon, and I found myself looking forward to the coming day. Scott and Joan from Portland Friends of the Dhamma were kind enough to pick me up on the way from their home in Lake Oswego to the hermitage, and the three of us set out into the October fog a little before 9am. We talked a bit on the way, and by the time we got close to the hermitage, the mist had cleared revealing a perfect fall day, brisk yet sunny, the colours of autumn painting the Columbia Gorge with a vibrant spectrum of green, yellow, orange, and bright red.

We arrived at the hermitage just after 10am, which is nestled in a beautifully forested and relatively secluded area along the Jewlett Creek. We unloaded the food we brought for the meal offering and then offered to help with anything that needed to be done around the hermitage. A few people, including a couple of the monks, spent the next hour raking leaves, while I was conscripted to mow a portion of the grounds since the Vinaya, the monastic rules of discipline, doesn't allow monks to damage or destroy plants (although it's technically only a minor offense entailing a confession to another monk). Afterwards, we gathered in the hermitage to cleanup and offer the daily meal. I ate my meal outside with Charla and Alistair (also from PFoD) and a family of quails.

Once the meal was over and everything was cleared away, we migrated to Yoga Samadhi in downtown White Salmon for the half-day retreat. I took the opportunity to walk from the hermitage to Yoga Samadhi with Alistair along the same path through the woods that the monks take on their alms round, and as we walked, he showed me some points of interest (like the monk's kutis and adjoining walking paths and the two rock formations that one of the monks humourously named Moggallana and Sariputta) and told me a bit about the land and the hermitage's history. We arrived at Yoga Samadhi a little after 1pm, just in time for the formal requesting of the precepts and morning chanting.

Chanting was followed by alternating periods of sitting and walking mediation for the next five hours. I sat. I walked. My mind ran the gambut of mental states like a monkey swinging through a forest wilderness, rarely resting on one branch for very long before swinging off the next. A good lesson on annica. My body hurt here, then there, then here and there. A good lesson on dukkha. And during the Dhamma discussion, Ajahn Sudanto mentioned that our main strategy to the experience of dukkha is to try to control and manipulate things to be other than their nature, but that's a trap. A good lesson on anatta.

happy indigenous peoples' day (my yearly columbus day rant)

Sigh. Another year, another Columbus Day and its onslaught of Columbus Day sales (a fitting way to commemorate hundreds of years of greed and oppression, don't you think?).

Why this is still a national holiday is beyond me. Out of all our national holidays, I think this one pisses me off the most. Essentially, it celebrates a man who not only 'discovered' land that was already inhabited (Hispaniola), but a person who helped to literally wipe that land of its original inhabitants, the peaceful Arawaks, through his unbelievable cruelty, and that of those who followed him to the 'New World' (which itself is a very Eurocentric designation).

The Arawaks initially greeted Columbus and his crew with gifts and open arms. Of them, Columbus himself writes things like, "They are the best people in the world and above all the gentlest—without knowledge of what is evil—nor do they murder or steal ... they love their neighbors as themselves and they have the sweetest talk in the world ... always laughing" and "They are very simple and honest and exceedingly liberal with all they have, none of them refusing anything he may possess when he is asked for it. They exhibit great love toward all others in preference to themselves." As well as things like, "They would make fine servants. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

While simply passing judgment upon the actions of people long since dead doesn't serve much of a purpose, I think it's important to at least remember them and accept that they form an integral part of our nation's history, and a truly ugly part at that. I think this is especially important since the trend (particularly in school textbooks) has been to mythologize people like Columbus and their accomplishments while downplaying many of the negative things they also did, some of which were truly heinous acts. But these things shouldn't be glossed over, in my opinion; they should be reflected upon so that they're never forgotten—a reminder of the terrible price exacted by Mammon.

What happened to these poor people, and what eventually happened to numerous other tribes in the Americas, was nothing short of genocide; and I don't think we should celebrate the main architect of this inaugural (not to mention extremely brutal) land-grab as a hero with his own a national holiday. It not only dishonours the memory of the Arawaks and the other indigenous inhabitants who directly suffered at the hands of Columbus, his men, and those who followed, but I think it dishonours the descendants of all of the Americas' native inhabitants as well.

If anything, today should be renamed Indigenous Peoples' Day in their honour, and it should inspire us to do things to truly honour them like collectively pressuring the government to get rid of Columbus Day. Changing history text books to adequately address things such as what happened to the indigenous population of the Americas at the hands of European settlers, as well as the newly formed US, or else pressuring schools to use books like Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States that do. Pressuring the government to officially apologize for the Indian Removal Act, the Trail of Tears, reneging on treaties, etc. And even more radical, pressuring the government to honour its treaties and return land that was stolen, or else fully compensate tribes for the land that was illegally taken from them.

None of that can bring back the dead, nor make up for the unimaginable amount of suffering and privation that's been inflicted upon the native inhabitants of the Americas since Columbus' arrival; but I think it's the least we can do. And for anyone reading this who may be unfamiliar with the full history behind Columbus Day, I recommend checking out this excerpt from Howard Zinn's Columbus and Western Civilization, as well as this clip from The Canary Effect and this article by Thomm Hartman. They'll give you a good idea of why today shouldn't celebrate Columbus Day, but condemn it.