Retiring from Professional Buddhism

Avalokiteshvara / Chenrezig
Photo by petr sidorov / Unsplash

Thank you so much to everyone who joined in celebrating my 40th birthday a couple of months ago. I'm still not dead yet, but the online event did help to clarify that it was time to retire—from a significant part of my recent work, at least. Yes, the time has come to let go of the role I've been holding for the past five years or so, whatever you want to call it: "Professional Buddhist," "Dharma organizer," "Buddhist activist," "Engaged Buddhist," etc.

As I take this bow and exit the stage, I thought I'd use the first post of the new year to point towards a few places I've been along the way. It has been a wild ride and I hope to write more about the journey once I've had some time to sit with it—yes, I still have a lot of sitting to do ... that part isn't going to stop anytime soon!

Whereas many of my predecessors and mentors in this space came to Buddhism through their of activist practice, I found my way into activism through Buddhist practice. I first connected with the Dharma in my 20s through a North American Vajrayana practice community after growing up attending a now-defunct liberal Presbyterian church and not really feeling the God vibe there. Although I found these new teachings deeply inspiring, I found few friends my age in the sangha and began organizing young meditators' groups with my partner. Those gatherings took on a new flavor in the wake of the Occupy uprisings, which arrived in Los Angeles just as we were moving into our first apartment. That spirit of liberatory horizontalism struck a chord with many of the millennial meditators who attended our weekly gatherings as we began to also learn about other efforts to cultivate young meditators' groups in other cities. Within a couple of years, we convened the Ziji Collective, a global network of young meditators' groups around the world that organized convenings in San Francisco, Mexico City, and Berlin from 2014-2016. As I became more deeply involved in coordinating those events, tensions emerged between our approach to self-organization within the sangha's top-down governance model. Before I knew it, I was deep down a rabbit hole seeking means for this geographically dispersed network of enthusiastic but under-resourced practitioners to support one another and make things happen. This led to the adoption of decision-making protocols, learning to use online tools like Loomio, and other fun experiments as we figured it out together.

That all came to an abrupt halt in late 2017, when the #metoo movement spurred me to start asking more questions about the sangha ... there were too many rumors, stories, and odd decisions from the higher-ups that never quite added up. This brought me into contact with Andrea Winn, founder of Buddhist Project Sunshine, whom I supported with communications and media relations as she and many others worked tirelessly to disclose patterns of "abhorrent sexual behavior" by senior teachers in the community. During this time, I found refuge in another sangha of Buddhist practitioners in Portland who organized around concrete efforts for social transformation, the Portland Buddhist Peace Fellowship. The efflorescence of this small group that found one another in the wake of the 2016 presidential election led to beautiful actions, connections, and consciousness raised; those gatherings are the source of many of my fondest memories of that year (as well as my first interview for the local news!)

As one of the first community members to actively support the survivors in my previous sangha, however, I began receiving aggressive threats and strange attempts at manipulation from higher-ups. Within a few weeks, it was clear that I had to leave the community that had provided my gateway into Buddhist teachings. As I put it in a Facebook post announcing my decision in July 2018,

I take this next step as a dedicated Buddhist committed to my vows---to not cause harm, to benefit others, and to proclaim the fundamental worthiness of all beings and of human society---with absolutely no idea where this spiritual path will take me next. The Dharma has taught me to welcome this as groundlessness---the true soil for the possibility of liberation from suffering. Still, I'm not gonna lie---it fucking sucks.

As it turns out, the path brought me into contact with Lama Rod Owens, Lama Justin von Bujdoss, and the nascent Bhumisparsha sangha. When fallout from my work with Buddhist Project Sunshine led to an abrupt dismissal from my new job at an academic-adjacent mindfulness nonprofit, these two encouraged me to bring the skills I was learning to this new, growing translocal community of practice. Around the same time, I accepted an invitation to join the Board of Directors for Buddhist Peace Fellowship after hosting the national organization's co-directors at one of our "Thawing ICE" walks for immigrant justice. The hard work of stewarding both of these organizations through transition and new growth have been an important focus of my energies through last year, when I finally disentangled myself from a messy breakup with Bhumisparsha and then stepped down from the BPF Board at the end of the year.

It feels like this work did accomplish something in these short few years: Bhumisparsha arrived just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic and offered truly innovative virtual organizing that laid important groundwork for both lamas' teachings to reach hundreds of engaged practitioners. The inspired, spontaneous forms of self-organization that emerged from that summer continue to remind me what is possible when strangers with a shared purpose step up to meet the moment. BPF moved through another iteration in its tumultuous organizational life as the previous staff transitioned out and a fantastic new team is now taking the reins, fully empowered by the organization's shift in structure to a worker self-directed nonprofit. I've also had the deep, transformative blessing of studying with Lama Rod through all of this and am deeply grateful for all of the heartful seekers of beauty and justice with whom it has brought me into relationship (including many of you reading these words—the real ones know!)

As I float through this next bit of groundlessness, I feel confident in my practice and look forward to finding out what happens next. In the meantime, I'll still be leading a weekly Chenrezig practice for Lama Rod on Wednesdays—hit me up if you'd like to join and I'll send you the link!

To close with some music, check out this lovely album from Franklin Kiermyer, the jazz drummer and Vajrayana devotee who graciously offered sage advice as I began to shift gears back into the music world: