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You know, the funny thing about this to me is that folks I know appropriately can be skeptical of something really being "new." It's like someone saying, "I was once an addict, but I'm over it now" or "I'm not racist ANYMORE, now that I've gone through that training!" In so, so many ways it isn't a new day at all - social injustice abounds in all its usual forms.

However, this is an important example of balance and of holding contradictions. In Tema & Co's sheet sharing what tools maintain supremacy cultures needing to pick one right way and not being able to hold both/and paradoxes is a symbol of a dangerous dominant culture (and in our racial/classist culture, some trainers refer to it appropriately as a "White Supremacist Culture." - more on that later, it doesn't necessarily mean what you think it does.)

Back to US America: it's been a long time since our country collectively could say "yes, we still have all these problems to work on... AND ALSO it's a new day." For me there are some clear Buddhist parallels too in being an individual... and a product of an infinite stream of causes and conditions. Of the face of the external world being created by my mind (by laying condition conceptualizations of WHAT IT IS (secretly: according to me!) on everything I see AND ALSO having a world exist outside of my head that I'm interacting with. Of maintaining that seemingly delicate balance of what is and what may be as a dynamic tension to create around... not to DECIDE WHICH IS RIGHT. It's like an argument between two children, stuck in who's right... and unable to move to putting both people's valid experience on the table and collectively deciding where to go. To say that yes, yesterday is still here in so many ways. AND ALSO:

It's a new day.

Labels: Buddhism, social justice