Don’t Mourn, Organize!
by Chris Wilson, member, BPF Board of Directors

Don’t mourn, organize!

This was the advice of Joe Hill, a union organizer for mineworkers in Utah just before he was executed by a firing squad.

Is this old anarcho-syndicalist’s advice of any use to socially engaged Buddhists in the wake of the 2004 elections? Yes and no. The answer is no to the extent that the advice is interpreted to mean that we should bypass or suppress our natural cycle of mourning. The answer is also no if we interpret the advice to mean we should throw ourselves into organizing as if we knew how to turn things around.

The answer is yes to the extent that we can apply this advice in a Buddhist fashion. The Buddhist fashion is to properly host the feelings of mourning. Hosting means to accept these feelings with the common courtesy due guests, that is, without a judgment that we are superior to such feelings, or that having such feelings makes us inferior Buddhists. Proper hosting also means wanting to know our guest better and to learn from our guest/feeling. We cannot learn if we think we already know everything about the guest/feeling. In the case of the recent elections, the belief that we already know everything can take many forms, such as the belief that the situation is hopeless, or the belief that we don’t have the character necessary to pick ourselves up again.

Hosting our mourning is not wallowing in mourning. It is meditating with mourning, a kind of mourning-Samadhi, in which we host our feelings without knowing or judgment. Our mourning-Samadhi is something that simply is, in the same way a dog barking down the street simply is. All our guest/feelings want is to be received with due respect. As soon as they see they are properly hosted, they begin to reciprocate by becoming a considerate guest. Then, in the space of the accord between host and guest, out of the not-knowing we hold open there, will come an idea of how to proceed with compassion. As Dogen Zenji said, we do not raise the thought of enlightenment; the thought of enlightenment raises itself.

So don’t mourn, if that means being stuck in mourning. Instead, organize, but only if that means that out of your mourning-Samadhi, will arise a sense of how you will emerge from mystery into action.