Love, Justice, and Radical Non-Doing

by jesse maceo vega-frey, BPF Board Member

July 2005

Over the past few years, the conversations about “spirituality and social change” that I have been a part of have revolved largely around the integration of spiritual practice into activism and social justice work. The resulting lines of inquiry are vital to our understanding of how sustainable change happens and should be pursued to their fullest ends. Yet I also believe that the way in which we’ve defined the discussion has pushed to the margins some important aspects of the conversation that are in some ways the essence of what is really radical about committing to a spiritual activist path.

I have begun to feel more confident in the notion that considering the role of Love in social justice work or activism is actually secondary to an understanding of the relationship between Love and a revolutionary Way of being. A revolutionary Way of being should certainly include activism as a fundamental pillar but it seems important to offer the possibility that activism as a Way in itself actually avoids challenging some of the fundamental unhealthy assumptions that underlie the prevailing order we are trying to change. In fact, it is spirituality’s gift to activism to provide an understanding that it is within the realm of Love that we may most clearly evolve our understanding of what functional and radical Ways of being in the world can really look and feel like.

Both the word “activism” and the phrase “social justice work” point directly towards an underlying assumption that change comes about through a whole lot of doing. In Buddhism, which is the spiritual practice I am most familiar with, I think that it cannot be overstated the degree to which a fundamental aspect of the path of transformation is deeply rooted in a whole lot of “non-doing.”

Progressives are quick to point out and criticize the frightening patterns of over-consumption we are engaged in as a culture but rarely address the corollary which is the idea that we are in fact an over-productive society that is simply unable to question the blind belief in the value of productivity. We are unable to acknowledge even the possibility that our lack of synchronicity with nature, with more humane ways of being in the world, with happiness are a direct result of our obsession with productivity, of action, as much as they are of our addiction to consumption. So if we can step back from activism as the core component of our understanding of spirituality and social change- of inner and outer transformation- and open our awareness to a broader consideration off “revolutionary Ways of being” I think we can truly explore the relevance of Love to personal and social transformation.

I am not trying to say if we stop trying to make peace happen it will just happen on its own. Its more that I feel we could possibly have a more liberated approach to what “work for change” actually looks like. Does it need to look like a 60 hour work week with no benefits and a garbage diet? Or is the refusal to work, to be productive, the refusal to consume, and the insistence on being a human, on being in community, on hanging out with friends and family, eating, playing, worshiping, jibing together actually more revolutionary?

I offer that as humans and as communities, that we in fact, we need to do less for peace. at this point in history, reclaiming our humanity is the truly revolutionary act. While surely the traditional activist cringes at the thought [and even my own internal skeptic raises its eyebrows] I believe that truly healthy community requires us to be doing a lot less than we are currently doing.

I have two heroes on the path of a revolutionary Way of being guided by a deep sense of Love and Justice: Wally and Juanita Nelson. When Wally passed away a few years ago at 93 he was still working on the organic farm that he and Juanita have cultivated for over 25 years. Juanita, at 84 continues to work the land to provide the majority of her sustenance. For over 50 years they refused to pay their income taxes because of the unacceptable portion of them that are directed toward military spending. Wally participated in the first racially integrated bus ride into Jim Crow states and the two of them have dedicated themselves to living peacefully and radically on this planet in ways that continue to inspire me. He said once,

Nonviolence is the constant awareness of the dignity and humanity of oneself and others; it renounces violence both in method and in attitude; it is a courageous acceptance of active love and goodwill as the instrument with which to overcome evil and transform both oneself and others. It is the willingness to undergo suffering rather than inflict it. It excludes retaliation and flight.

The first insight Wally had into overcoming violence came when he was only about nine years old. The son of sharecroppers in Arkansas, one day he was made responsible for getting the mule to till the soil. Inexperienced with controlling the animal, the mule was quickly agitated and began to run around the field, out of Wally’s control. Wally remembers being dragged around the field, flailing, terrified, and screaming when a neighboring farmer in the distance saw his distress and began to yell instructions at him. “Let loose the line! Let loose the line!” Unfortunately, Wally couldn't understand the words of the neighbor and kept pulling harder and harder on the mule to get him to slow down. Finally, he and the mule passed close enough to the neighbor’s field to hear him yell at the top of his lungs “LET LOOSE THE LINE, FOOL, AND YOU’LL BE FREE!!” Wally quickly released the harness and came tumbling to a stop. The mule trotted on a little further but also slowed down and came to stillness once it had been released.

When Wally told me this story, it was the first time that I understood the possibility of withdrawal as an act of resistance. I understood that every part of their tax-resisting lifestyle that they had chosen - from growing nearly all of their own food, to pulling their water from a well, to living without the use electricity- was exactly this kind of aikido maneuver of ‘letting loose the line,’ at once liberating themselves from a relationship of violence and providing a powerful opportunity for the violence to desist. Juanita still says to me about many modern activists, “These people can protest the war all they want but as long as they’re paying for it, it will never stop.”

This kind of radical withdrawal means sacrifice and is an attempt at profound renunciation akin to monastic practices in many of the world’s spiritual traditions. It requires conviction and love, will and selflessness, strength and surrender. It requires a complete reexamination of livelihood and community. And to be clear, it is not a simple withdrawal from society that Wally and Juanita have been engaged in all these years. It is a withholding from society the means, methods, and attitudes of propagating violence and hatred. It is engaged with society in a way that attempts to only offer the peaceful, the liberatory, and the wise. This is the essence of what I understand as a revolutionary Way of being. It is radical non-doing par excellence. It is simple, calm, difficult, and just. And the explicit foundation, method, and outcome of this Way is Love.

Love, the absolute surrender of “self” and “other” allows us to rest in void, in groundlessness, in fluctuation, and insecurity. It is the engine of faith. Growing comfort in these places of unknowable change provides for and develops the capacity to engage in true risk, to offer our own comfort and security for the benefit of others. It is the thing that allows us to sit at a lunch counter when we hear the sirens getting closer, to refuse to fight in territories we know should be left unoccupied, to withhold taxes from a Caesar who has lost its perspective of humanity and goodness. In some ways I think that it is the capacity to engage in socially-oriented risk is the outcome of Love that has the greatest potential to manifest lasting social transformation.

It may be just because we are in such dark times that in some ways I have come to feel that to engage in the traditional forms of activism and political change is more or less like playing different games at the casino. You may get ahead over here and at that table over there but in the end the house always wins. They designed these games we play and they make up the rules as the game goes along and we who care to change things often seem to be caught eternally scrambling to negotiate the specifics of these new rules rather than confronting the fact that the whole game is set up for certain people to win and others to get left behind.

Of all of the ways to think about who the house is, who is controlling the game, who is designing the rules I have been most grounded by the sense recently that it is in fact the forces of greed, hatred, and delusion that are running the show. These are called the 3 poisons in the Buddhist framework and are considered to be the root causes for all of our suffering- internally and externally. Rather than exhaust ourselves and be manipulated into hatred by our engagement with these systems, these forms, and venues that are seeded in, cultivated in, and now bear the fruit of the 3 poisons I think it is worth looking at efforts to create our own systems: formal and informal, activist and effortless, underneath, around, and in between these prickly vines that point toward real freedom because they are based in Love, Compassion, Wisdom, and Justice.

We need to create and pursue alternative economic, healthcare, communication, and community models that can truly allow people to be in the radical ways we need to be in order to really function as breaking mechanisms to the violent stampeding cattle that is this society. Activists need access to healthcare for ourselves and our families, we need to have support systems for the retaliation that the state enacts upon those who withhold their taxes, refuse to fight, or engage in civil disobedience- those who do less for peace. We need theories and though on what a variety of healthy economies can look like and how GDP and consumer spending cannot be the end-all be-all of gauges of economic success.

And again, I’d like to hold the possibility as we develop new strategies and models for change that these may require less doing, take less work, be less exhausting, less alienating, less dehumanizing because they flow naturally from a revolutionary Way of being that finds it primary driving force in Love, in community, and in the possibility for liberation in our lifetime.

Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey is a writer, artist, brother, and son currently holding it down in Holyoke, Massachusetts. As supporting director of stone circles, he helps document the efforts of activists who are integrating spiritual practices and principles into their work for justice. He worked for two years at the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society helping to research and convey the story of the use of contemplative practices in organizations dedicated to social change. He is involved in developing a program of community-based cultural activism in his hometown using oral history and storytelling through graphic, written, and digital techniques. Jesse is a Buddhist practitioner.