What It is Like to Live the Dharma Life

By Duc Hong Ta | October 27, 2011

Like everyone else who finds themselves in prison, you either find religion or you find the devil’s playground. At age 16, I found both.

Being Chinese American, I was raised Buddhist. Everyone in my family for generations was a Buddhist. I remember being dragged from temple to temple for this holiday and that holiday. Sometimes they would take me straight to a temple right after I was suspended from school for fighting. Maybe they thought it would remove the bad spirits thought to possess me that made me fight people. I prayed to three different shrines twice a day. I held the incense in my palm bowing three times before placing it in one of those ash filled cups. I knew I was a Buddhist. I told people I was a Buddhist. But I didn’t live the way of my faith. Did I really know my faith like I was demonstrating with my daily prayers and bowing to the Buddha? I didn’t have a single clue.

Life wasn’t the greatest for me growing up. There were sweet moments here and there, but the bitterness of my father’s temper and abuse out weighed everything else. As in any typical Asian immigrant family, if one screwed up, you most likely got your butt whooped. Just the way it went, especially with the Chinese folks. Seems to be part of their tradition and culture. You can’t disrespect the elders and bring shame to the family name. With my bad temperament and ego, I grew up fighting and being beaten by my father on a regular basis. I asked myself that if my father was such a devoted Buddhist, how could he treat me like this? Yet, everything I did involved those same ingredients that were used raising me.

I had my father’s bad temper and tendency to violent outbursts. I rebelled against everyone and anything. No one could tell me anything and eventually I found myself in a situation where shots were fired out of my car at two other people while I was driving. By the grace of Buddha, no one was hit or physically injured though I can’t say the same for the damage done emotionally and mentally to all involved. I was arrested and booked in the local juvenile facility and what I thought would be just a weekend trip ended up being a 35-year to life sentence at the age of 16. My entire life spun out of control and crumbled. I couldn’t comprehend the seriousness of it all. I had no criminal record or run in with the law prior to this and I was just a kid. It was a death sentence to me. My life was over. Before I knew what hit me, I was being shipped off to one of California’s state prisons for hardened criminals. I thought I was tough but I knew I wasn’t as tough as the men awaiting the arrival of this new fish. Those guys were going to tear me apart and have their way with me. I couldn’t let that happen. I followed the advice from some guy at county jail, telling me I better assert my dominance as soon as I got off that bus. And that’s just what I did.

At least for the first seven years of my prison sentence. Although I practiced meditation and read countless books on Buddhism, violence was the problem and the solution to everything I encountered. I saw endless counts of violence that have been etched into my skull and will haunt me for the rest of my life. The first book I ever read in my life was The Way of the Warrior by Thich Nhat Hanh when I was first locked up in juvenile hall. I never forgot what I read, that there was another way to be a warrior than the one I thought I had to be. But I had become a product of my environment, a product built by violence and for violence. While I’ve done things I’m not proud of, things I thought were necessary at the time to survive, I never completely forgot my faith. It was always behind me even when I didn’t know it, as if it knew I would one day turn around and there it would be in all its beauty with open arms. It wasn’t until a very dark and difficult time several years ago that I read Ruling Your World by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche that my world completely changed.

I took a deep look into myself as a human being and looked at the things I was doing. I was only in my mid-twenties but I looked much older. I was letting the system win by chipping pieces of my soul away and I was falling faster than I knew. No longer did I want to be a contributor of violence and negativity to my life and the world I lived in any more. Deep down I knew with all of my heart that I was not a person of violence. It was a choice that I thought I had to make from being so afraid and immature. I made a vow to myself that I was going to live a life of love, compassion and kindness. Like Buddha who lived amongst the poor and suffering I would find solace and goodness in the people around me. I saw that life was about suffering and I needed to learn how to understand my own in order to cope with my ordeal. I made the choice not to let the hate and anger of this place take me, instead I practice dealing with the negativity and violence around me with love, compassion and kindness. By doing that, I learned that one can resolve anything without striking another and that love can truly overcome anything, even the meanest and toughest of them all.

Living the Dharma life gave me a new life. I was resurrected from the dead and my soul is thriving to live the life I was meant to live. I am a better son, a better brother, a better friend, but most importantly a better person. Through consistent meditation and practice of Buddhism, I no longer feel the emotion of hate towards others nor does the thought of physical violence ever approach my mind when I am confronted by anyone that is hostile. If anything, my heart breaks when I see violence being done to another, physically or verbally. I have dedicated my life while still in prison to be of service to those in need. Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I feel beaten and worn down. But Patience and Compassion are key elements to my practice. I find myself failing from time to time. But to me failure simply means that method didn’t work and now you know not to do that again and to find a better way. After all I am a Buddhist practitioner not a Buddhist monk. I am going to be tested and I will fail but I will just breathe and pick myself up and move forward. We’re not perfect and we never will be, but we can learn to be a better person simply by practicing.

]]> http://dianelefer.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/duc-ta-writes-on-the-dharma-life/feed/ 0 desilef Duc jan 2010 http://dianelefer.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/att-and-phone-scams/ http://dianelefer.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/att-and-phone-scams/#comments Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:42:55 +0000 desilef http://dianelefer.wordpress.com/?p=140 ]]> Monday. A very nice AT&T technician came and quickly got me connected again. BUT. After he left, I found I could not access the internet without reinstalling my service and ten years or so after the fact, no way could I remember my password and ID and the page that popped up gave no way to get those provided. So, seeing as how I now had a phone line, I called high speed internet tech support, but what I kept getting connected to was U-verse sales. These people phone me all the time anyway though I keep asking them to take me off their call list since I live in a one-bedroom apartment with a single 12″ TV and have no use for their connect-all-your-television-sets-in-every-room program. It’s like I keep telling the finance companies that phone to harass me about refinancing my mortgage: I’m a renter. I have no mortgage. Finally, I got someone to connect me to California DSL support. And I’m on hold. Waiting. And waiting. And in the meantime I’m trying every old password I can think of, and it finally goes through. Then I get a guy on the line and he’s asking me all the details and we go through the whole story and I’m waiting to see if the operation now in progress for many minutes, resetting my modem, is working, and finally the guy tells me he’s in North Carolina and cannot assist a customer in California. Tell me why AT&T, a phone company, can’t get its phone lines straight.

I hang up and keep fooling with the website myself and now I’m back on-line. And maybe there’s a silver lining. I usually get several calls a day from a scam operator calling itself US Pharmacy about my order. Well, there is no order. There was never an order. I’m not going to give them my credit card. The callers always have a South Asian accent. I’ve told them not to call back. I’ve told them I understand they are just trying to make a living. (I have been looking for employment for two years now but I do draw the line at telemarketing. Which is too often falsely advertised. I’ve been a field interviewer for social service programs like HIV prevention. But these days, “field interviewer” too often means phoning people at night for bullshit consumer surveys. No!) I’ve told these callers that what they are doing is illegal. That gets them angry. I’ve told them I’ve reported them to the FCC and the FBI. (Yeah, right. My complaints get a boilerplate response that is entirely unresponsive.) But I haven’t yet heard from them today. Usually there’d be at least two calls by now. Maybe they got the erroneous disconnect notice and I’m finally off the list!

update: Feb 6 – I spoke (or wrote) too soon. The phone calls for US Online Pharmacy continue. Including one that woke me this morning.

About the pleasure of being in buildings that unlike my apartment are heated! Walking around naked in the hotel room, feeling the warm air–ah!–on my skin. About Hector Aristizábal’s performance of Nightwind. The grad student at the University of Chicago — I wish I knew her name — who talked about her work in Chile on theatre in Chile under Pinochet. We met at the brown bag lunch at the Center for Latin American Studies. One point she made struck me: she said during the repression, political statements were often made in theatre through very abstract devices and I wondered if that sort of experimental abstraction has carried over into the post-Pinochet era. Specifically, I’m thinking about Andrea Lagos and her solo show Un beso es un beso es un beso which I saw her perform at International Theatre Festival for Peace in Barrancabermeja, Colombia. Her performance was strange, startling and powerful, but I really didn’t understand what she meant in her commentary about it being a reflection of the continuing impact of the era of repression on her generation. Certainly, language in the piece is broken, partial, silenced. And her physicality at times grotesquely controlled. But maybe the abstract aspect is immediately understood as a political comment by people in Chile.

I want to write about the Friday snowstorm that made roads impassable so that I couldn’t make it to Or Chadash for my presentation there, and that left us all worried about whether Hector would get to O’Hare in time after his Awakening the Imagination for Social Justice workshop and whether his flight would get him to LAX for his connection for Guatemala. (I haven’t heard from him so I’m assuming he arrived OK. I think someone would have heard from him if he got stuck.) (And I guess snow disruptions in Chicago are not exactly unforeseen.)

I wanted to post about the writing for social justice workshop at the Graham School–such enthusiastic and willing participants (including Stephanie Friedman and Naty Vesga)

and the trip up to Barrington to work with the Barrington Writers Workshop thanks to Tamara Tabel whose work I was so happy to read and my friend, Natalie Pepa who recommended me. Someone take note and publish Natalie’s tango memoir! and her funny, sad, evocative short pieces about Buenos Aires.

Natalie’s pareja (we agreed English lacks a good word for in a couple regardless of marital status) is Dennis, a scientist who works with, among other things, toxin-binding clays that protect livestock from aflatoxins, fungal infections that grow on grains, especially corn. In the fields, the aflatoxins protect the plant from being eaten, but after harvest, especially if the corn is stored in a warm and humid area, the stuff grows and spreads and can make livestock sick. For animal feed, you add specific clay to the feed. It coats the toxins so the bad stuff passes right through the animal’s body and causes no harm. There are many kinds of toxins and a different kind of clay is best suited to deal with each. Even under a microscope, all clay crystals look alike, so you need more elaborate instrumentation to identify what you’ve got.

But right now, I’m not sure when any of this will be posted. It’s been crazy here. First, a minor car accident on Wednesday en route to Moorpark, dealing with insurance, etc.

Today, Saturday, turns out the border between Argentina and Bolivia is closed due to some controversy over the gas fields, so mi compa Silvana Gariboldi, with whom I was going to collaborate in Bolivia, can’t get there. Edson Quezada, of Educar es fiesta, the organization we–or now I–will work with warns me that as I’m arriving in Bolivia on Sunday, the buses may not keep to their schedule–which may affect my 8 or so hour ride from La Paz to Cochabamba. Arriving in Cochabamba, I’m to phone him. Apparently not a good safe idea to get into a taxi alone. And I’m bringing a sleeping bag and will sleep on the floor of the office. But maybe that will mean internet access which is more than what I’ve got now.

Phone line dead. Internet dead. Without phone or internet, I couldn’t call for service, but I saw the AT&T van in the street and spoke to the repairman. He was working in a neighbor’s apartment and agreed to see what my problem was when he finished with her. I kept going out to see how he was doing, and all of a sudden his ladder was gone and so was his van. Used neighbor Claudia’s cell phone to call AT&T and went through one of their ridiculous phone trees which required me to specify either landline or internet. Of course I’ve lost both. But I chose landline as the internet is accessed via the landline. But the phone tree switched me over to internet as a choice. Whatever. I had to leave Claudia’s as a contact # and the recorded message said a repair person would come by 6:00 on Monday.

What joy. The other party to the car accident thought I was lying about my phone number when she tried to call it and it didn’t ring in my pocketbook or car.  It’s ringing at home, I said. She wanted the number for my cell phone and didn’t want to believe I don’t have one. Well, if she tries to call my phone now, she’s not going to get through. I didn’t plan it this way!!!! (The people at Safeco, my insurance company, have been calm, friendly, reassuring, and very nice.)

And I commented on our “peripecias”* in an email to Bolivia and Argentina–the unforeseen sudden accidents or complications to our plans — but now it seems that’s a Mexican word and I’m not sure I was understood. Ah, one more unforeseen complication.

PS My cat, being female, I refer to her as “gata” but Natalie Pepa told me in some countries–and I can’t remember which–the word means “prostitute.” To avoid any misunderstanding and potential peripecias, I will transgender my Desi–mi gato–while traveling.

* Peripecias – it sounded familiar. It’s not in my standard Spanish dictionary, only in the Mexican dictionary. Then I realized, I know it from Oedipus. peripeteia — Greek word — reversal of fortune. Though I understand that today in Greek it means adventure. Appropriate?

Melody’s collection of Bug Stories — yes, insects — will be out from Kitsune Books in 2013. And I want to post news of a book of Jerry’s soon.

And in the meantime, Rainstorm Press has posted profiles of all of us Rainstorm authors, along with info on our upcoming books.

Protesting at the gates of Ft Benning in Georgia, November 2006, I met Kathy Berger and Ines Sommer, Chicago filmmakers, who were dedicating years of their lives to making a documentary about torture survivors. Instead on focusing on the horrific acts, on the scandals, the exposés, they wanted to show the aftermath in the lives of human beings. Hector was one of the survivors whose lives they planned to film.

We’ve stayed in touch but Jan 18 was my first chance to see the finished product, Beneath the Blindfold, at a screening at International House, University of Chicago, organized to coincide with the events planned for Hector and me. It was extra exciting because the documentary had just had a sold-out screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center, which meant an extra show was quickly scheduled. And we were thrilled to see the work get attention from The Atlantic, even before its real release.

Besides Hector, they profile Matilde de la Sierra, a physician from Guatemala who made the mistake of trying to provide medical care to the indigenous; Blama Massaquoi, of Liberia, forced into service as a child soldier and then forced to drink a caustic substance that destroyed his esophagus; Mario Venegas of Chile; Donald Vance, the former Navy man who was detained and tortured by US forces at Camp Cropper (same facility that held Saddam Hussein) after he became a private contractor and blew the whistle on his employer selling US arms to insurgents.

We had dinner with Sarah Moberg of the University’s Human Rights Program who helped make the screening possible. Thank you, Sarah!

It was gratifying to see the audience response to these very human stories. And I very much enjoyed seeing Hector’s kids, Gabo and Camilla as they looked years ago. (They’re all grown up now and very sophisticated teens.) And his mother, who is usually so quiet being outspoken enough to loudly argue that Hector’s performances prove his masochism. Less pleasing, the footage of me — at Ft. Benning and at the Healing Club event at the Program for Torture Victims as we celebrated the grant of asylum to Meluleki, survivor from Zimbabwe.

I hope this film gets seen!

Met Carol for lunch and heard her good news, all the exciting pre-pub buzz for her new novel, Carry the One.  I mean, Carol’s earlier novels, three of them, got great reviews and enthusiastic readers, but without drawing real attention to her work or, how shall I say?, lifting her. This time around, her publisher has her traveling the country before the book comes out. Her book is the Indie Next List #1 pick for March, but this time around Simon & Schuster isn’t relying on bookstores alone. The publishing business model keeps changing. So besides the before-the-fact tour, they sent out hundreds of copies to bloggers and to people who post frequently on Goodreads and seem to have the right sensibility. It seems to be working and I am so happy for Carol!

(Carol, however, was somewhat disapproving of the fact I’d been invited to speak at Or Chadash, the LGBT synagogue. “Why did they invite a straight woman to speak? Couldn’t they find a lesbian?”  I was supposed to be there to read the section of The Blessing Next to the Wound about Hector Aristizábal’s youngest brother, who was gay, and to give an update on the status of gay rights in Latin America. But Carol had her way: the Friday snowstorm blocked the route and I never made it to the shul!)

Back to Stephanie Friedman’s office at the University of Chicago where I stashed my luggage and made a general nuisance of myself. Check out Steph’s blog, The Winding Stitch.  Writer, poet, teacher, wife, mother, associate director of the writers studio and summer session in continuing ed. She bakes pies and keeps kosher — the woman has enough to do without organizing several days’ worth of events for me and Hector , getting almost a dozen different organizations on the campus to cooperate when I suspect they usually don’t even recognize each other’s existence.

Naty Vesga in Bogota, Colombia

Naty and I finally reached each other by phone and she came to the office to pick me up and we were squealing in the street with excitement like the kind of teenage girl I never was.  We went back to her place where we talked nonstop for hours and I got to meet the “babies” – the dogs that figured in her Lariam-induced delirium in Bogotá when she awoke in terror (and woke me in a rage) believing we were on a bus being attacked by paramilitaries and, as if that weren’t bad enough, that I had called her dogs “hillbillies.” She gradually calmed down that night when I assured her that I knew her dogs were wonderful. I also got to meet her husband, Giano Cromley, who gave up a career in politics to do something honorable and meaningful. He got his MFA and writes fiction (Check out a sample story on-line here and teaches at King-Kennedy alongside poet Martha Vertreace– small world — who I know from Vermont College.

Naty is getting her Masters in Social Work and she told me about the project she’s getting off the ground. I will share it because if you like it and steal it and implement it elsewhere, she’ll be thrilled. So much the better! Programs already exist where troubled youth work with animals to learn responsibility and caring for others. She wants to connect at-risk and gang-involved youth with organizations that do pit bull rehabilitation. She thinks the dogs and young people have a lot in common, both groups have been stigmatized as dangerous and face banning, lock-up, extermination; they’ve been molded to be aggressive and violent (whether by humans or by their environment). The youth already know pit bulls and know them as marvelously dangerous. They can identify with them, and as they work to socialize them and teach them gentleness, Naty believes dogs will transform youth at the same time that youth transform dogs. More effectively than when kids who’ve been traumatized by violence work with, say, golden retrievers, or other dogs who are mellow to begin with. Great idea, no? I love it. I want to connect her to Micaela Myers at Stubby Dog  which works to improve the reputation and lives of pit bulls. Naty wants to meet Cesar Millan!

Urban Prep Academies in Chicago has to provide students–all African American, all male, all from low-income communities–with “Swords and Shields” is what Tim King, the founder, president, and CEO told us during lunch, after his keynote address. The Swords? Their weapon is intellectual prowess. The students, coming out of the dysfunctional Chicago public school system, take double sessions of English and math to catch up. I love it that students are chosen through lottery and the schools don’t give up on anyone. Kids can get in trouble, but they don’t get thrown out. The school works with them to keep them moving forward. None of this zero-tolerance crap that I’ve written about before, kids criminalized for tardiness, a system that pushes kids out of school and into the school-to-prison pipeline. Maybe I shouldn’t even say “kids.” Tim King addresses students by Mr. and their last name. He wants 13-year-olds to experience being treated with respect, adult to adult male. Beautiful. They start each morning with a community ritual in which they reinforce their commitments to themselves, the school, and their education. The Shields? The sense of identity, confidence, self-esteem, and character they will need once they go out into the wider which, as he said, often means whiter world. They need that inner strength to withstand all the crap the world is gonna throw at them. I think of my friend Karen Taylor. The multitalented Karen D. Taylor, writer, vocalist, who also needs all her talent and vision in raising a black son in this society. She recently posted this link to a report about a Yale study which showed black boys receive harsher punishment and less attention (regardless of socioeconomic status) than white counterparts. Duh. When do we stop funding academics to research the obvious and start funding inner city schools? Instead we continue to fund our schools through property taxes so that the students who need the most attention consistently get the least.

Someone asked Tim King the secret of his success with Urban Prep. He said he didn’t know yet whether the schools were a success. Yes, 100% of the students have gone on to 4-year colleges, but till they graduate and till we see what they do with their lives, the question remains open.

I led a two-hour focus session in the afternoon–my workshop that uses the arts to improve literacy and writing ability. I had a great group–some Valpo freshman, some non-matriculated foreign students who are on campus to learn English, and Stuart Schussler of the Mexico Solidarity Network also attended. The Network recently initiated a unique study-abroad program–unique because participants never leave the US. College students live for a week or two with immigrant families in Chicago. It’s Spanish-language immersion and consciousness-raising rolled into one.

Interesting time at Valpo, staying with Prof. Nelly Blacker-Hanson, and distracting her from what promises to be an enlightening paper on Lucio Cabañas, schoolteacher, who went to the sierra as a guerrilla after his peaceful protestand strike in 1967, Guerrero (Mexico) led to violence and government attempt on his life. (Click here for a taste of  her earlier work on the struggle in Guerrero.) Also fun to meet Nelly’s dog, Mischa, a huge Russian breed that looks like an Old English Sheepdog crossed with a bear. It’s a good thing a canine that size is so utterly mellow and gentle. And it’s no surprise children look at her with all that hair covering her face and ask “Does your dog have eyes?”