Buffy Sainte-Marie (1941- ) is an awe inspiring artist and activist who travels the world performing, and working on her Cradle Board Teaching Project which links indigenous teens across communities, provides School Curriculum on First Nations and much more. I really like her innovative digital art work, 'painting with light'. Her multiple streams of creativity, and standing up for what she believes in. Learning more about her long trail blazing career as a singer and songwriter since the 1960's was just wonderful. She has worked so hard for close to five decades, and endured her music being 'blacklisted' and suppressed due to her stand on First Nations rights and many other issues.
Buffy Sainte-Marie who was born in Saskatchewan, Canada of the Cree Nation, lives some of the year, when she is not traveling for work, in Hawaii. She talked about the need for a place of retreat, and quiet, in order to be able to do all she does as a performer and teacher. Similarly Hanne Sorensen (1960 - ) originally from Denmark who is one of 6 people featured in the film The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island, talks about needing to retreat after years working as a welder and technician aboard Greenpeace ships on environmental issues. The Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior - named after a Cree prophecy of the ecological disaster that would befall the human race if nature was not respected, was to lead a protest against underwater nuclear bomb tests at Mururoa, in 1985. For decades the peoples of the pacific have been made so sick by radiation poisoning, which still effects people today, including genetically. The Rainbow Warrior had just come from Rongelap, (Marshall Islands), where the indigenous people had asked for help to relocate to another island, their homeland had become so uninhabitable. The ship was bombed by members of the French military in a covert operation in Auckland harbour, it sank taking the life of Fernando Pereira. Many of the crew now live on nearby Waiheke Island. Aotearoa has been a nuclear-free zone by practice since 1984, and by law since 1987.I understand that need to retreat, to reflect, to rejuvenate. Both these places - Hawaii, and Waiheke Island, where these two women live, I have been to, and returned to for exactly these reasons - healing, review, renewal. Places which in and of themselves are healing, they have such powerful energy.
Alice Walker's third novel The Color Purple is one of my favourites. It talked about things I knew: violence; relationships with women; and things I had not been subjected to: racism. It meant so much to me, when the movie based on the book came out, a friend took the poster from the movie theatre and gave it to me, it hung on my wall for years. Alice Walker was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (the first African American woman writer to receive it) and the American Book Award for The Color Purple 
Or as the Dalai Lama puts it: 'Acceptance of suffering does not mean we should not do everything in our power to solve a problem whenever it can be solved. However, acceptance of the suffering that we are already undergoing helps us not to make it worse with the additional burden of mental and emotional suffering. For example, there is not much we can do about old age. Far better to accept our condition than to fret about it.'
Powerful medicine, after three hours one of the most painful places on earth felt as clear, neutral, energized, pure as a temple. I have recently been taught the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. Making your heart a place of light, through which you breath in others suffering, breathing out joy, peace, happiness. I do not find it easy, I am still learning how not to take in, on that suffering, not to be overwhelmed by the suffering of all living beings. Being a bit of an energy empath, I frequently shudder, on the bus, on the street, in traffic, when people and places of hurt, negative energy reaches and envelopes me as I pass by. I try to have compassion. To remember that sometimes, angry, aggressive, violent people, are just like barking dogs - scared. Yes I try to protect myself, with light. There are reasons I live in the mountains, and meditate on buses. In the ceremonial space of so much concentrated energy, with so many people standing in spirit with their sacred medicine bundles, and constantly renewed by the smoke of the smudge, it was much more possible. The breathing in of suffering, transforming it, the breathing out of joy. It was a profound way to spend the summer solstice.
After in the park, we ate wonderful vegetarian South-Asian Indian food. Amidst the First Nations drumming and dancing, I thought of friends in Aotearoa, in the winter, celebrating Matariki, the new year.
Later that week, an Aussie musician friend from down the line, I wished I could see more often, was in town and turned up unexpectedly next to me in my mediation class to surprise me! No not in a vision, like in reality! Let us sit together and envision a better world for all.
With gratitude Namaste.
Later that week, an Aussie musician friend from down the line, I wished I could see more often, was in town and turned up unexpectedly next to me in my mediation class to surprise me! No not in a vision, like in reality! Let us sit together and envision a better world for all.
With gratitude Namaste.
