Dharmaphobia

A brief Dharma talk on aversion behind the wires
You'll have to imagine my bowing.

Pleasant local time of day, my dear readers. My name is Jayel. I am a nonbinary justice-impacted individual residing behind the concertina wires of a prison I've renamed Blessington, currently masquerading as masculine. I am a practitioner of the Nichiren tradition of Buddhism, and this post is very much about my practices.

One of the things I have taken away from my efforts in learning has been about aversion. When I call upon a dictionary to get us on the same page, pun intended, it yields these definitions:

• a feeling of intense dislike
• the act of turning yourself (or your gaze) away

One could say I have an aversion to grits (not G.R.I.T.S., just grits), and be assured of telling the truth. I would say it is one thing to turn away from a food because you dislike or cannot consume some aspect of it, but it is another thing to do it to a person.

But, is there a point where we have to turn away from a person?

Yes, I think there is a point, but not the ones most may think.

Turnaway Points

If one turns away from another person the very moment they do something foolish or evil without expending the effort to share the teaching of doing good to themselves and others, how does this serve the greater good?
If someone doesn't know, recognize, or realize they're doing something wrong and you just pitch them under the ocean to drown, how is that less wrong than what that person is doing?

In fact, let's explore this with a conversation I had with my new cellie during our lockdown.

I suffer from depression, major depression, which goes unchecked and untreated here in the Florida Department of Corrections.
I'm not proud to say that my hygiene suffers sometimes ("Hi, Gene" strikes again), but I own that character flaw. My cellie and I had a quite civil conversation about it, with him telling me that he can see something is chewing away at me, and that leaks into the rest of me.

He's right. I miss helping people, having the tools to help people, having access to mental health care that cares about me, having better food choices that protect my health, being in a place where racism is basically not a thing. Florida wants me to die here, and I don't want to accept being torn away from people who care to pick me up, heal me, help me so I can get back to following the song in my heart -- the one that heals and mends.
I broke down and cried about it.

You know, it's actually unusual to be hugged by someone I genuinely do not know well enough to invite inside my 3' sphere...

Oh, there's the aversion rising...

☝🏾
We have developed a comfortable pattern, a sequence with which we are familiar -- a rut, so to speak. Anything that pulls our wagon out of the well-worn divots in the road feels risky:

• What if my wheels fall off or break trying to leave this rut?
• What if I crack the axle?
• What if I get lost on my way to the destination?

• What if I don't like it?
  ...

• What if I do like it?

I would say that as people with the opportunity to do good in the lives of others, we need to do good for ourselves, and to allow others to do good for us, too. The teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh resonate within, reminding me that we are all interbeing. Each of us is a little of everyone else, and it does not always serve us to shrug the other off.

The one time I believe it is acceptable to walk on in solitude and not travel with foolishness is when you see foolishness in progress, rebuke it with hopes to steer the other onto a better course, and they choose to double down on wrongdoing.

I could always be wrong about that. After all, I wear Florida Private Prisons Blue. 😜

As always, I welcome your thoughts as I learn.

May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings receive the caring they deserve.
May all beings be peace.

Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo.