On Practice and Detachment

In the yoga world, abhyasa and vairagya are two of the magic words that define the path forward. Practice and detachment. Want to make progress in the physical practices or the many guidelines for living an ethical life? Practice and detach. It’s a formula for success.

I’ve been thinking a lot in the past few weeks about practice and what it means. The yoga sutras say to engage in long, uninterrupted practice, detached from the fruits of our labor and with devotion. Long, uninterrupted practice is pretty self-explanatory. You do it vigorously and with effort, whether you feel like or not. Detachment means you don’t do it only to get ahead. You don’t practice so you’ll look good to others, or to serve your ego. You don’t do it only because you want to win or garner praise. You keep practicing even if none of those things happen. And devotion is the quality of mind and heart. It implies a loving dedication to the deeper values and the spirit of what yoga is about – non violence, the quest for self-realization, reducing the suffering of all living beings.

Over the past several years, I have started to understand how helpful it is to think about all the things that matter in life as a question of practice, and in particular, my dedication to fighting for justice. Just like in yoga, I try to analyze what I’m doing well and what I could do better. I try to set goals and identify steps to achieve them. And to engage in long uninterrupted practice, detached from outcomes, with devotion.

I’m thinking about that more lately. For one thing, we need a formula to help us move forward when the fatigue and despair start to set in, as they have started. The last two months have really worn on me. The passage of the tax plan, all the politics of trying to get DACA enshrined in law. The government shut-downs. It has felt to me like we’re losing a lot. I’m tired. And I’m not even on the front lines of any of this stuff, so I can only imagine what it feels like to be a dreamer, or have people in your family with that status. Or to be part of the community supporting those who are already being deported. Or to be leading the charge against police brutality and the assault on black communities.

And – in part because of my job situation – I’ve been spending time reflecting on my role in the broader movement and what I should do next. I am so lucky to work for social justice, but it doesn’t mean that every minute of my life is spent speaking truth to power. Anyone in our movement knows that a good chunk of the work is mundane. There are meetings and conference calls. There’s the endless search for funding. There’s management of money, people and projects. I sometimes wonder if I’m doing the right things, making the right kind of contribution, especially as more of my life is spent in the infrastructure of the movement and not in the direct confrontation with power. I want to know that I am living out my true purpose and making the best contribution I can.

Over the years, as my jobs have become more demanding and intense, the decisions I make about what to practice have been driven more by organizational needs and priorities than my own. Suddenly I have the chance to decide for myself. It is both liberating and scary.

I had two experiences last week that reminded me that there are lots of ways to practice. On Friday, I went to the weekly meeting of a group of women in the Milwaukee area who call themselves Persisters. They gather on Fridays and write letters to elected officials. It’s a 60-90 minute meeting and the organizers propose topics and suggest talking points, but the participants decide on their own what to write and to whom. I call my elected officials regularly and I go to rallies and protests, but I have been feeling lately that I needed to do something more. The chance to connect with women I don’t know, to share values and strategies and ideas, and to share our grief over the state of the country nourished me in a new way.

I also spent time last week phone banking and canvassing for my friend Steve Shea who is running for Milwaukee County Board. Let me tell you, door knocking on a cold February day for a primary for a local spring election is an exercise in the basics of democracy and I love it. Unlike my experience of working on many presidential cycles, people at the doors don’t have election fatigue, they’re happy to be reminded something is happening and they want information. I even enjoyed the people who disagreed with my candidate because I could tell they are paying attention.

I left both of those experiences feeling energized and inspired, and reminded that HOW we win is as important as THAT we win. We need practice, detachment and devotion. Devotion means love and reverence for the values we are united behind, but also for the people. That part is easy to forget in the heat of the fight, but it might be the most important.

It turns out, my job doesn’t have to define the full extent of my practice. And now that I have more control over when and where I travel, I have a chance to build out new practices – things that don’t pay money but help develop other skills and connections in the movement. I’m going to think about how to keep building these kinds of opportunities into each week. Next up on my agenda: get connected with the SURJ Milwaukee chapter (Standing Up for Racial Justice). It is time for white people to get serious and get organized around ending white supremacy. I’ve been working on that through my job. Now I’m going to start working on outside my job.

I hope you are all finding practices that sustain and nourish, and that move us all closer to justice, even if we can’t see when or how that will happen.

With love, gratitude and solidarity forever.