Several years ago, I had a girlfriend with a history as a direct action activist. The cause deepest to her heart was animal rights, and she had spent many hours screaming into a bullhorn, “Your mother kills puppies,” at the homes of employees of huge companies that tortured animals for mascara testing.
Her stories moved me, the passion and dedication to creating change – not just in terms of breaking into factory farms to release chickens, but in a greater mission to fight sexism, racism, capitalism, and homophobia – to end animal and human suffering. My girlfriend woke me up to social justice at a time when I was losing my cisgender privilege. This brought into sharp relief the safety net of privileges I still had — race, class, education, national origin, maleness/masculinity — that many other trans folks did not.
With this awareness came a large amount of self-judgment. Why wasn’t I out there in the streets screaming and fighting for the welfare of my people? In retrospect, I can list a few reasons: escapism from myself (my constant self-judgments and my general unease) required a lot of energy; direct action was not a model that personally resonated with me; and I had yet to reframe some of the work I was already doing (through writing) as a positive contribution.
What I did have was the start of a yoga practice, and a Sanskrit phrase I learned in one of my very first classes: Lokah Somastah Sukhino Bhavantu, which loosely translates as “May all beings be happy and free.” These few words made a strong impact on me; they held space, a care and inclusion, for everyone (including the mother who kills puppies). I wasn’t sure what to do with this phrase, would only later discover the power of a mantra, but this offered my first hint that there was an entry into activism that did not require a bullhorn.
The definition and associations of “activism” was the very first thing we discussed in a 3-day workshop centered around Karma Yoga that I attended one year ago. A controversial Malcolm Gladwell article had come out at that time, praising (and rightly so) direct action protests around the civil rights movement while dismissing our current social media as a tool for powerful change. I thought of my old girlfriend who would throw around the term “slacktivist” when she wasn’t out in the streets. I realized how much resistance I had to expanding my definition of activism beyond direct action.
In this workshop, I discovered a new term. It turns out “karma” is not a curse word that means you fucked me over, now you’ll be fucked over. Karma yoga translates sometimes as “selfless service” or “yoga of action.” I think both of these definitions fall short. “Selfless” connotes a giving that exceeds receiving, an expenditure of energy without an equal replenishment of that energy. “Action” here in America is simply another excuse to kick our own asses.
I prefer to think of karma yoga as the natural result of feeling connection, an action or service born from tapping into this experience. Developing a practice (mindfulness, meditation, asana, or other) that creates a pathway to this state is what makes service sustainable. For me, this workshop signified a paradigm shift, offering a new language to shape social change from a place that feels organic rather than hard and forced.
And still, I found myself trying to beat, convince, and argue those around me into a more trans-inclusive world. I still beat myself up for not fighting tooth and nail for trans people. Until very recently, there was something disconnected, some type of resistance still inside of me. [Read full post...]
