Episode #176: Jonathan Crowley, Part 2
“It was a fascinating time. There was a sense that with each retreat, I was going deeper into practice, and understanding the practice at a deeper level,” Jonathan Crowley says, describing the extended time he spent at Dhamma Dhara, a vipassana meditation center in Massachusetts, in the tradition of S.N. Goenka. “And then this sense of the service being a way to integrate that practice, in the context of being a volunteer, which is a more extroverted position. You're cooking, you're cleaning, you're interacting with other volunteers, either in the kitchen or with the teachers who are conducting the course. So it was like entering a completely new world, and I was very open to it. It was very fulfilling to me on many levels! I had a real thirst to sit a lot, and it was fulfilling that.”
The second interview of an ongoing series with Jonathan, this one picks up where the last discussion left off, right as he had made the commitment to dedicate himself to meditation in the S.N. Goenka tradition. Like many new students, Jonathan noted how much about his life that his first two courses had called into question, and his difficulties in trying to integrate this newfound wisdom. Being at the center fulltime provided the opening of that pathway.
“There is this uprooting, you could say even in a disturbing, destabilizing way. And yet, it brings you to these depths, it brings you to these insights,” he notes. “It does take time to integrate and digest it. But in some ways, the process of living at the center allowed me to do this in succession, and get used to that process of entering into this operating role in it.” Eventually, Jonathan began to recognize the irony in his practice: he was trying to stabilize himself by following a path whose very essence was in some way destabilizing. “It's a kind of a paradox, where there's a lot of structure, and yet that structure is allowing you to crack the cosmic egg or slip through the cracks to the basement of your being, and then be in that basement, and do that deep work, and then come back, extrovert, and then integrate into the world as best you can. And hopefully, that is successful, as you as you integrate insights are deeper realities and deeper truths within you.”
It helped that Jonathan was approaching the experience through “a healing and psychotherapeutic framework,” as Goenka’s words fit into his ongoing exploration of the mind-body relationship. Jonathan particularly found great value during the courses in the three daily one-hour sittings when Goenka instructed students to not move, and Jonathan came to learn how to sit with immense pain. “The more equanimity I brought to these existentially disturbing experiences within my being, the more I was also clearing the slate of my mind and peeling back layers and, as [Goenkaji] would articulate, purifying those layers. So I did come off courses feeling a sense of lightness and feeling an incredible subtlety in my mind. I felt like I was recapturing my own innocence. And that was quite magical.”
Yet as deep as these inner spiritual experiences were, Jonathan had a life ahead of him to figure out, and without a college degree or any real livelihood, the question as to how to integrate these insights with the demands of real life still loomed. Additionally, as this was during the 1980s, meditation was still a “fringe” activity in the West that had little of the acceptance found today. “I was aware that what I was doing was quite unusual, and that it was kind of askance to everything that I had been conditioned to do in society,” he recalls. “I was also becoming aware that I was entering into a rarefied world that is not mainstream, that is secluded, that is apart.”
Recognizing the transformative value that the practice was having on him personally, Jonathan began to wonder how Goenka’s vipassana method could help to reform society. If so, this could bring the worlds together. “Here's a mechanism by which the world could transform in a similar way to what I'm seeing happening myself… ‘Oh my gosh, what impact could this have on society?’” he began to wonder. And as Goenka often emphasized that his teacher, Sayagyi U Ba Khin, was amazingly proficient in his work as government minister, Jonathan wondered how the technique could be applied in various sectors in the United States.
As Jonathan began to assume responsibility for answering inquiries at Dhamma Dhara, he began to read letters from incarcerated prisoners inquiring how they could be taught the meditation. At the same time, the center was organizing special Khmer courses for the influx of Cambodian refugees now streaming into Massachusetts, and Jonathan was touched to see how the courses addressed the deep rooted trauma they had only recently experienced under Pol Pot. Yet while these courses represented an example of the world coming to the center, it was far harder to find a way to bring the center into the world, as Jonathan found the rigid course guidelines prohibited contact with many mainstream entities. “There were silos that were being articulated around the Dhamma versus psychology, or Dhamma versus doing social work in the world,” he recalls. This certainly contrasted with Jonathan’s inner aspirations. “By this time in my life, I had already articulated an idealism that the personal is political, and that inner transformation is going to be part and parcel of what helps to transform the world… Maybe I'm a rebel at heart, but as much as I really appreciated all of the rules and regulations, I'm also a rule breaker on some levels and wanted to see how things could be done differently.”
Jonathan was moved by how the courses were offered freely to one and all, with no preference given to students who gave generously, as opposed to those who gave little or nothing at all. But he began to wonder over time if anyone was being excluded in spite of the apparent equalizing of the playing field that the courses offered. So eventually he asked himself, “Who doesn't get to benefit from this [meditation center] in our society? I don't think I realized that at the time, but there were some social justice orientations in me that was asking that question and was wanting to explore that.”
An opportunity emerged to enter this intersection between intensive meditation and social justice when Jonathan had the opportunity to accompany a senior teacher, Bruce Stewart, to Donaldson Correction Facility, a maximum security prison in Alabama to conduct a meditation course behind bars; this novel experiment was later showcased in a documentary, The Dhamma Brothers. “It was moving into a social application of this profound, transformative personal experience, and that in many ways dated back to earlier parts of my childhood.” And the resulting experience was definitely deeply fulfilling! “I would remember this on my deathbed as one of the most profound experiences of my life, just offering this [meditation course] to that population.”
However, looking back on it now, Jonathan realizes that through his enthusiasm at the time, he had actually missed a big part of the story. “To be honest, I would say that I was still very racially naive at the time that I was doing this. It was clear for me that I wanted to bring retreat experiences to populations that would not normally have access to it, but I was naïve to the settings that I was going into, and to the social, racial, economic injustice that had brought so many folks to these institutions.”
This episode references a recent podcast episode with Insight Myanmar featuring Victoria Robertson, an African-American vipassana teacher who is no longer with the Goenka organization. During the discussion, Victoria opened up about her feelings regarding not only the course at Donaldson, but also the documentary, and its use as an outreach tool. She expressed frustration that a film depicting White Teachers instructing Black prisoners was in fact propagating stereotypes about African Americans, and spoke of her discomfort that the organization’s overwhelmingly White leadership was actively marketing this to largely White meditators.
“I would agree with Victoria,” Jonathan acknowledges, accepting that he wasn’t aware of these larger issues at the time. “The way that my racial naiveté manifested, and I'll just speak for myself, was with a with a very typical ‘White savior’ mentality.” Without having examined his own conditioning, privilege, and the shape of oppression, Jonathan had not been aware how his well-intended actions were in fact exacerbating painful tropes. “To be honest, there's parts of the film where I actually cringe now, looking at myself, in terms of what I'm articulating! I see that unexamined whiteness in operation,” he says. “It's stereotypical, and it's not representational. It continues to reinforce those roles and those optics.”
The more Jonathan examined his own racial naiveté, the more uncomfortable he became that the organization, which done so much to help him transform his life, was not effectively engaging historically marginalized communities of color, nor actively seeking to ensure that courses genuinely welcomed members of those communities who did attend. For example, he remembers asking himself, “Why didn't we have more assistant teachers of color on the dais? Why doesn't your average African American or Latino who's coming to sit see someone who looks like them on the dais, and where was the diversity of the tradition?”
Earlier in his practice, Jonathan had been deeply moved by how Goenka universalized the technique, proclaiming in discourses that “breath is breath,” and explaining that it couldn’t be differentiated according to nationality, religion or skin color. But Jonathan was beginning to see that there was more to this story than this universalist-sounding messaging. “I understand structural racism as intergenerational trauma,” he notes. “So now, I would say that even our breaths and our sensations are conditioned by this level of trauma, and that has to be addressed. Without generalizing, I think that folks of color who come to retreats are processing at another level, and particularly if there is not a teacher of color on the dais who can understand some of the experiences.” Jonathan advocated for an alternative, affirmative selection track for ATs of Color that would counter current racial and economic obstacles for the possibility of appointment, such as unstated, extensive time requirements for center service and longer retreats. He also proposed organizational tracking of demographic group participation; however, there was little interest and much resistance in pursuing either initiative.
“These are all the barriers that go into why we don't have more Dharma teachers of color,” Jonathan concludes. “And I’m not speaking about the Goenka tradition, as what's going on there is similar to many Dharma organizations. But I think that the potential [for making progress] is greater [in the Goenka tradition] because the field has been leveled, at least in terms that you don't have to pay an exorbitant fee to get in [courses].”