Entering a New Dharma Gate: Executive Director

July 2007

Homage to Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva

of compassion.  Much gratitude to the founders, benefactors,

and friends of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship

In June 2007, I found out about a friend who died in

December last year.   I stood stunned on the steps of her front porch as her husband told me, “Oh, Dee died.  I

thought everyone knew.”  With shoulders down and heart sinking, I walked slowly back to the car, hoping that her beloved grandson Ronald was handling it all okay.  

Tears came.

I had known Dee for twenty years as my

psychic.  Yes, psychic, a profession she did not advertise to everyone.  However she was more than a psychic to me, she was my friend, a spiritual friend who would often say to me, “God hasn’t forgotten about you.”  Expressing these tender words was her way of encouraging me to go on with life despite its disappointments.

Upon returning home to Oakland in April 2007, from a six-month-meditation training at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, I thought about my friend Dee and had plans to visit her.  I wanted to know what she had to tell me about the next steps of my life.   I called her, but the phone had been disconnected.  This was Dee’s way of getting rid of people.  In the time I knew her she had at least twenty phone numbers.  So, I went by her house and dropped a note in her mailbox, which is what I usually do when I can’t reach her by phone.  I didn’t hear from her for three weeks.  I thought, “This is unusual.”  Finally, I went by the house only to discover that my dear friend had passed on into death.

When faced with death I become sober with the potency of now or this moment.  War in every country must end now, this moment.  The violence in the urban streets of this country must end now, this moment.  The peace that there is, can we embrace it now, this moment?  It is with such soberness that I enter the dharma gate of Executive Director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. 

Dharma gates appear in my life as challenges.  What is this gate?  What is the fear that is arising?  Are you going to continue on the path, through the gate, or go the other way?  There is usually no going back down the path I’ve just walked but there are other choices of going forward such as crossroads or forks-in-the-road.  How do I make the choice?  I look at what has chosen me.  Where am I?  How did I get here?  Yet, my experience with life says that the answers to the questions can only be revealed in the going forward.  Therefore, I accepted my place at the gate of BPF and entered upon being invited.

There has always been a strong pull toward BPF. This gravity did not come from a desire for a job as much as a desire for a livelihood that embodied valuing all life.   Executive Director of BPF is a livelihood in which everyday I can wake up and work toward harmony and peace. Therefore, BPF provides a context for practicing skillful means as daily work, a foundation for spiritual growth, an environment to integrate skills developed over the years, and a community in which everyone is concerned with ending suffering. 

Standing on the other side of the gate, I have visions of a socially engaged organization that is responsive to systematic oppression, which results in war, ecological disasters, hunger, and pandemic diseases.  I would like us to go beyond the petitions and marches, finding innovative ways to speak out and bring attention to the growing discontent in this world.  These are urgent times.  We do not need to rush but we do need to respond knowing that all of our lives depend upon our social/political actions and our intentions.   The questions to ask myself as I walk the path at BPF are, “What are we doing at BPF? And what is the cetana, the intention?”

Of course, there will be those times when there is disappointment, when transformation of the suffering seems futile.  Hopefully at those times, I will hear my friend Dee’s tender voice saying,  “God hasn’t forgotten about you.”   Then, I will simply breathe in her essence as a calming elixir, rest my pen on the desk, and be just there, in that sober now.

May the merit of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship be with you all.

Earthlyn Manuel

Executive Director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship