Thoughts on Community by Eshu Martin
Originally published on November 26, 2020 at Eshu Martin’s Facebook page:
You can learn more at the Zenwest Buddhist Society website.
Community is hard, frustrating, and never done. I’ve been a part of a few significant communities in my life, and this is what I’ve come to understand. Everyone likes and wants to be a part of a community when reaping the benefits of community; but many want to not be obliged to attend to the difficulties of stewardship. Everyday I learn more from ancient traditions of communities. Aspects of traditional culture that in my youth I ridiculed in hubris – hit home now so powerfully. Like taking time. People throw around words like “consensus” and “reconciliation” without any understanding of what those things truly mean. With “consensus” I’ve found people usually mean that nobody voices an objection. In practice it usually means a strong personality has strongly voiced an opinion and nobody has the energy or interest in opposing that opinion. It isn’t usually truly based in consent or consensus. It’s often used to do exactly the opposite of what it is intended to do. It’s used to “move on to the next point”.
Consent and consensus take significant time, and they are never “done”. They are an evolving and flowing process. Reconciliation is not something that gets “done”. There is no “do this and be reconciled”. It is an ever unfolding process. In every relationship there are actions and interactions that divide, and actions that connect, or re-connect after divisions. There are misunderstandings, violations, upsets, disasters and trauma in life, some caused by others with or without intention, and some happen in nature by environment or circumstance. Reconciliation is in some ways the process of integrating those experiences and recognizing the fundamental connection we have with all beings. It doesn’t end. I feel like too often we want to be “done”. The colonial white Euro-derived culture that I was raised and live within is all about isolating a problem and “getting rid of it”. Excommunication, exile, imprisonment, institutionalization, chemical subjugation, and execution – these are just some of the ways that we use to deal with problem behaviours. Which is to say, we don’t deal with them. We try to make them go away (as in out of our awareness) “out of sight, out of mind”. This never really remedies anything. In almost every case I’ve seen, it leads to greater suffering.
I have begun to use a mental model in my consideration of community. I imagine that I and my community members live on a small island in the middle of a vast sea, and there is no other known place to live anywhere else. Personally, I have no desire to harm or kill any other person, nor do I believe it ethical to delegate the harm or murder of someone to any other person. If, in this circumstance, someone in my community harms another person, or even misuses the land, plants or other beings on the Island, how do I respond? If I were to harm another person, or misuse the land, plants, or other beings on the Island, how would I want my community to respond to me?
In many traditional cultures and communities (and here I include my own ancestral Germanic and Celtic cultures); exile was viewed as the most severe punishment, yet today dressed up with words and buildings we use it as one of our first go-to responses. Suspension. Isolation. Exile. On-leave.
What if we assumed that there was nowhere else to go? Nowhere else to send our problems and challenges? What if instead of trying to “get rid” of unpleasant people and circumstances, we started to bring them in closer? What if we recognized that our community is the context and ground out of which every problem we face springs? What if we accepted the responsibility that if we don’t like the taste of the food we are growing we need to examine what we are saturating the soil with… and change?
It takes a bigger perspective. One has to work beyond “what I can put up with for my own span of years”, and shift to exerting oneself for the benefit of all beings. Because it isn’t just a mental model. While it is vast, this world we live on is quite tiny in the grand scheme of things, and everything we need to thrive is here. There isn’t anywhere else for us to go. When we turn our back on our problems, we pass them down the road to someone else who doesn’t have the history, context, or even awareness of the problem and by doing so – become the cause of greater harm ourselves.
Community is a calling for a lifetime. Reconciliation is a lifetime practice and isn’t necessarily about any individual issue, event, or culture. I commit to living a life of reconciliation with my ancestors, with myself, with the people of the lands that I live on. There are big wounds and small wounds that need healing. I commit to participating and contributing to healing in every way that I can and minimizing the harm I cause in the world. I commit to being held in community and called to account when I cause harm so that I can find reconciliation.
I accept that this all takes a huge amount of time. I will give it all the time I have. There is nowhere else to go. There is nothing else to do.
Community is hard, frustrating, and never done. I’ve been a part of a few significant communities in my life, and this is what I’ve come to understand. Everyone likes and wants to be a part of a community when reaping the benefits of community; but many want to not be obliged to attend to the difficulties of stewardship. Everyday I learn more from ancient traditions of communities. Aspects of traditional culture that in my youth I ridiculed in hubris – hit home now so powerfully. Like taking time. People throw around words like “consensus” and “reconciliation” without any understanding of what those things truly mean. With “consensus” I’ve found people usually mean that nobody voices an objection. In practice it usually means a strong personality has strongly voiced an opinion and nobody has the energy or interest in opposing that opinion. It isn’t usually truly based in consent or consensus. It’s often used to do exactly the opposite of what it is intended to do. It’s used to “move on to the next point”. Consent and consensus take significant time, and they are never “done”. They are an evolving and flowing process. Reconciliation is not something that gets “done”. There is no “do this and be reconciled”. It is an ever unfolding process. In every relationship there are actions and interactions that divide, and actions that connect, or re-connect after divisions. There are misunderstandings, violations, upsets, disasters and trauma in life, some caused by others with or without intention, and some happen in nature by environment or circumstance. Reconciliation is in some ways the process of integrating those experiences and recognizing the fundamental connection we have with all beings. It doesn’t end. I feel like too often we want to be “done”. The colonial white Euro-derived culture that I was raised and live within is all about isolating a problem and “getting rid of it”. Excommunication, exile, imprisonment, institutionalization, chemical subjugation, and execution – these are just some of the ways that we use to deal with problem behaviours. Which is to say, we don’t deal with them. We try to make them go away (as in out of our awareness) “out of sight, out of mind”. This never really remedies anything. In almost every case I’ve seen, it leads to greater suffering.
I have begun to use a mental model in my consideration of community. I imagine that I and my community members live on a small island in the middle of a vast sea, and there is no other known place to live anywhere else. Personally, I have no desire to harm or kill any other person, nor do I believe it ethical to delegate the harm or murder of someone to any other person. If, in this circumstance, someone in my community harms another person, or even misuses the land, plants or other beings on the Island, how do I respond? If I were to harm another person, or misuse the land, plants, or other beings on the Island, how would I want my community to respond to me?
In many traditional cultures and communities (and here I include my own ancestral Germanic and Celtic cultures); exile was viewed as the most severe punishment, yet today dressed up with words and buildings we use it as one of our first go-to responses. Suspension. Isolation. Exile. On-leave.
What if we assumed that there was nowhere else to go? Nowhere else to send our problems and challenges? What if instead of trying to “get rid” of unpleasant people and circumstances, we started to bring them in closer? What if we recognized that our community is the context and ground out of which every problem we face springs? What if we accepted the responsibility that if we don’t like the taste of the food we are growing we need to examine what we are saturating the soil with… and change?
It takes a bigger perspective. One has to work beyond “what I can put up with for my own span of years”, and shift to exerting oneself for the benefit of all beings. Because it isn’t just a mental model. While it is vast, this world we live on is quite tiny in the grand scheme of things, and everything we need to thrive is here. There isn’t anywhere else for us to go. When we turn our back on our problems, we pass them down the road to someone else who doesn’t have the history, context, or even awareness of the problem and by doing so – become the cause of greater harm ourselves.
Community is a calling for a lifetime. Reconciliation is a lifetime practice and isn’t necessarily about any individual issue, event, or culture. I commit to living a life of reconciliation with my ancestors, with myself, with the people of the lands that I live on. There are big wounds and small wounds that need healing. I commit to participating and contributing to healing in every way that I can and minimizing the harm I cause in the world. I commit to being held in community and called to account when I cause harm so that I can find reconciliation.
I accept that this all takes a huge amount of time. I will give it all the time I have. There is nowhere else to go. There is nothing else to do.