A Teacher Sits Under a Tree
A message from Shambhavi about diversity and inclusion
The image of a teacher sitting under a tree is commonly encountered in spiritual traditions from India. The accomplished teacher makes no attempt to attract anyone or push anyone away. They offer a place of refuge under the tree of wisdom for anyone who spontaneously shows up.
The symbol of a teacher sitting under a tree has always inspired me and moved me. It challenges me to slowly chip away at my own pride by doing my best to relax about whatever happens.
Five people show up fine. Fifty people show up, fine. Students come, fine. Students go, fine. Jaya Kula survives, fine. Jaya Kula bites the dust, fine.1
This “teacher under a tree” orientation has also informed Jaya Kula’s relationship to diversity.
Queer zero
When Jaya Kula first started in 2007, I was the only queer-identified person. Sometimes homophobic stuff happened. Sometimes I felt a little lonely, mainly because there was no one to crack jokes with in that particularly queer way. But I didn’t do anything to try to attract more queer people. I wanted to be okay just doing my job with whoever arrived.
My students who identify as BIPOC have at times expressed a similar loneliness.
I feel a great deal of sympathy for those students, and we’ve had many conversations about their feelings and ideas. But there is magic and mystery in the myriad ways that students and teachers meet and recognize each other. In general, I have chosen not to meddle in the magic by enacting scenarios intended to pull in more people.
More queer and more everyone else, too
Jaya Kula has become more diverse over its seventeen years. We’ve always had a lot of economic and cultural diversity. There are people here who grew up with dire food insecurity, others who were raised in the lap of luxury, and everything in between. We’ve also enjoyed quite a bit of age diversity.
A bunch of queer people finally showed up and then more BIPOC students. We are also learning from each other about experiences of neurodivergence and being transgender.
Another path of exploration for us, especially around the pandemic, has been about experiences of chronic illness and manifestations of ableism. This has been rich for me as a teacher in a tradition that historically has valorized physical health and the performance of effortful sadhanas.
Talk about it
I’m really glad that students who have had particular experiences of culture, oppression, and violence now have more company and support.
So I say this with some trepidation, but even as this is happening, I don’t care about diversity as a goal in and of itself.
I care that people feel they can practice here. I care that people are well-hosted and listened to and respected and loved when they do arrive.
What we are trying to do is create a place where people are supported to centralize spiritual practice and the process of self-realization; where everyone who comes is warmly welcomed and equally valued; where people can express and share freely; where the inevitable acts of racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, class prejudice, body prejudice, and so on are addressed decisively in the context of our community of practice through the lens of the View of our traditions; and where the messiness of human lives, including our anger, disappointment, and feelings of helplessness, tenderness, and poignancy can be expressed and held in community.
Seeing our real nature, together
Myself and the students of Jaya Kula regularly engage in conversations about the histories and harm of various kinds of supremacies and privilege. We are slowly learning to better see, name, and address harm. We are also learning about the limitations of holding identities too tightly.
Direct realization practice is all about integrating our recognition of the natural, awake state with our everyday lives. It is definitely not supportive of spiritual bypassing.
But our traditions do teach that each of us has exactly the same value, the same indestructible essence or vajra nature. This goodness and wisdom without an opposite is palpable. It is knowable in an experiential way. It is the real refuge.
My conviction and personal experience as a practitioner is that only the embodied, direct, experiential recognition of this can actually undo, and not just palliate, the harm of racism, misogyny, and the like.
For this reason, engaging in current discourses around identities and harm will always take a second seat next to our attempts to encounter, recognize, and actually experience our real nature, the natural state, the Self, or God. Whatever you want to call it.
Always already belonging
On a relative level, I want students to feel that the majority of the people who make up the Jaya Kula community have each others’ backs.
We will talk about pain and allow pain and anger to be expressed. We will get better over time about creating a culture of true ahimsa.
We will talk about marginalization, violence, and privilege. We have and will continue to take swift action to respond to incidences related to these. But we will not be encouraged to continue to solidify a sense of self around those experiences or create a ground out of our identities any longer than we have to.
The ultimate belonging is already accomplished for all beings at all times. It can only be forgotten or ignored. The only question is how can we recognize and embody that natural, irrefutable belonging more thoroughly.
Another spiritual teacher has already expressed much of what I feel more eloquently than I have. She is an author, poet, ordained Zen Buddhist priest, teacher, artist, and drum medicine woman. As Zenju Earthlyn Manual so majestically writes:
The relative experience of inclusivity, meanwhile, gets weighed down with the intention to unlearn harmful ways, which leads to trying to “fix” something. There is suffering in that. Inclusivity does not need fixing. It is something that already exists and has existed from long before where we were born. Everything is fully included. That is the absolute truth of diversity.2
The magic of diversity
Trika Shaivism has always celebrated the appearing of diversity as the glamor or magic or art of God. The entirety of manifest life is often symbolized as a city: a grand metropolis where innumerable diverse and surprising encounters may be enjoyed.
This city of all beings and worlds is called kula. Family.
With this orientation, we can learn to play together in a field of glad welcoming.
With infinite love,
Shambhavi
Not quite ready to fire up a paid subscription, but want to show your appreciation?
Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter on Substack to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, “Awakening Fueled by Rage” Lion’s Roar, April 3, 2022: https://www.lionsroar.com/awakening-fueled-by-rage/.
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