I was listening to a dharma talk by Steve Armstrong (listen to it here) on working with the defilements of the mind.   He begins the talk by quoting the Buddha who says that the pure mind is radiant and bright and that everything else is the result of being visited by defilements.   In Buddhism these include greed, aversion and delusion.

Less important than the dharma content of this talk though is a line that Steve Armstrong said that zinged home with me.   He said that when we sit down to meditate, we should not expect to have a “good experience” but rather, we should understand that this is the place where we meet the mind’s defilements head on.

That really resonated with me.   It seems an important feature of any practice that one recognize that the reason for practicing is to meet challenge, difficulty and frustration.   In that sense any practice becomes a dojo, a place of training.   In meditation we sit to discover how our mind works and to work with what we find.   In my own martial arts practices of taekwondo and warrior of the heart, it is about confronting physical challenges and fear.

And it made me think about what it means also to be a practitioner of conversational arts.   Many of the places I work are difficult places, and I can see now that what makes me a practitioner is that I willingly choose those places because they are hard.   That is where I practice, and the practice is learning to use the social spaces between us as people to make good happen in the world.

Practice is not a retreat from the world, it is confronting your sharpest edge.   Work, for me, is like that too.

I had dinner with Hanns and Marlene Skoutajan tonight here in Ottawa.   Hanns was the my minister at my church when I was a teenager and he was largely responsible for supporting my call which was at one time to join the United Church of Canada as a minister.   He was also responsible for introducing me to church politics and structure such that I decided not to pursue my career for that employer.

Hanns and Marlene were a particular anamoly in my upper middle class neighbourhood, where they stood out as the most visible members of the New Democratic Party I knew.   They, along with another mininster at our chruch, John Lawson, were my introduction to progressive politics and it is largely to them that I owe my political consciousness raising.   Here’s an Op Ed he wrote last month for the Ottawa Citizen. on alternatives to appeasement. You can see that he is unwavering in his commitment to peace.

The name of our church was – wait for it – St. James-Bond United Church, so named because it was the result of a merger between St. James Presbyterian and Bond Street Congregationalist back in the early days of the United Church.   The congregation itself folded up in 2005 and the building was torn down.   At the corner of Avenue Road and Willowbank in Toronto there is still a great hole where this formative structure in my life once stood.   As a gift to me tonight, Hanns gave me one of three bricks that his son saved from the old church.   While it seems at first glance like a whimsical gift, I told Hanns that I would receive it as a deep symbol of the foundation that he gave me in life as a spiritual teacher and a teacher of activism in the world.

The most enduring teaching I have from Hanns comes from the benediction he used to give at the end of every service on Sunday.   Hanns told me tonight that the benediction actually came from another very well known progressive United Church minister Cliff Elliott by way of Marlene who brought it home one Sunday.   It goes like this:

Go into the world with a daring and a tender heart.   The world is waiting for you.   Go in peace and may all that you do be done because of love.

That continues to stand as a deep motto for me to this day.

The Globe and Mail:

An unnamed source told CNN that “she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party.”

And on Saturday, Politico’s Ben Smith wrote of an emerging “Palin insurgency,” quoting four unnamed Republican insiders who said Ms. Palin blames McCain handlers for her negative image and has “gone rogue.”

When she described herself as “a maverick” what did people think that meant?

At least you couldn’t accuse her of false advertising, for this is how a maverick really behaves.

I’ve spent most of the last week in some deep practice with my close friends Toke Moeller, Monica Nissen, Caitlin Frost and Bob Wing. The practice we were in this week is called “Warrior of the Heart” and it’s a combination of aikido, other martial arts and art of hosting, a blend of practices and disciplines that leads to great insight about oneself and helps develop the clarity of heart required to develop our own leadership and our personal capacity to host conversations that matter and to act powerfully for good in the world.

Warrior of the Heart evolved from Toke and Monica’s practice of aikido and sword work with Bob. Bob is a remarkable teacher and sensei of aikido and related samurai arts like iaido (the art of drawing the sword). What makes Bob’s teaching so powerful is that he uses the physical work of learning martial arts techniques to raise questions about oneself with incredible clarity and immediacy. To me this is the essence of martial arts practice, but it has been lost in many lineages in the pursuit of physical domination. O Sensei, Morehei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido (the way of harmonizing energy) wrote about his style as The Art of Peace: The Way of the Warrior is based on humanity, love and sincereity, the heart of martial valour is true bravery, wisdom, love and friendship. Emphasis on the physical aspects of warriorship is futile for the power of the body is always limited,

The fastest way I know to describe Warrior of the Heart is that it is a martial art that uses physical techniques to generate questions. We work with our hands, with wooden swords and with partners to learn something about the way we wield power, the way we relate to others, the way we address our fears. You cannot lie to yourself when your body is asked to execute a technique, Those that are afraid of their own power let the sword languish in their hands and they fail to engage. Those who are aggressive and overly ambitious find themselves losing their ground an d their power carries them away. Warrior of the Heart makes these things visible to oneself and then uses the Art of Hosting to tap the wisdom of the collective sensei, the group that is training together, to make sense of the questions that are raised.

And what questions they are! What does it mean to stand in your ground while you are filled with fear? How do you find confidence with your own power when you have no idea how much you actually wield? How do you handle attacks in your life? What does real action feel like, and how do I develop the clarity necessary to act wisely?   What does it take to strike decisively in a way that opens space for invitation?

Whenever Toke and I work Art of Hosting trainings together we have worked with aikido and Warrior of the Heart. This week took the practice to another level for me though. Friends and neighbours from my home island joined us as we trained on the beach, in the forest and on mountain tops, and we committed to declaring a Warrior of the Heart dojo open on Bowen Island. It is a dojo that will always be open to anyone who wants to come and train a little together. We can gather anywhere for any amount of time and dedicate ourselves to learning a little together.

Bob gifted us with some bokkens and some support to begin training together, so anyone that wants to join us is welcome. As O Sensei wrote One does not need buildings, money, power or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train

Leave me a comment if you are interested in training together some day. Come visit on Bowen and we’ll take the swords out into the forest and practice a little. And let us know if you would like to be a part of a more intensive practice retreat. We’re planning one for this year and we’ll call the teachers together on Bowen for a few days of deep learning and practice.