Tuning the global chi

Life doesn't need to be complicated - meditation before oatmeal and honey in the morning, a bicycle ride to the local library to pick up a new stack of children's books, followed by a nourishing vegetarian lunch. Participating in the societal food procurement system - responsible for delivering food from the field to my table - represents probably the biggest portion of my family's carbon footprint.

After lunch, Pema and I curled up in a large chair for "Sinbad the Sailor", "Godiva", and "Thank You World", followed by a short nap (just me), and a walk to a nearby park. The week after Christmas is a good time to score free stuff on the sidewalk. Somebody had placed a beautiful wooden chair out with a free sign. I sat down on it and smiled - this will do just perfectly for my desk at home.

My family and I eventually split up on our walk, Pema wanting to ride her pink hand-me down bicycle with the training wheels through the park. I was feeling tired carrying my new treasure, so I bid Upel (my wife), and Pema good adventures in the park and headed south down Broadway, towards home. And this is where my life suddenly got a bit more complicated than I had anticipated.

I was only a few blocks from home, when suddenly a police cruiser whipped into a parking lot just behind me. Before I knew it, a black man was being held against the back of the cruiser, surrounded by three officers, with two other patrol cars near by.

A lot went through my mind in a very short time. A part of me just wanted to keep walking, but another part told me to stop and bear witness. Why was the man being stopped? Were they going to use undue force? Was this racial profiling? I held my questions lightly and quietly, neither believing in their validity completely, nor dismissing them. I kept observing, allowing my mind to be a silent gatherer of bare impressions.

He was wearing ragged clothes and probably had slept on the streets for some time. He had a beat up leather suitcase on wheels with him.

I noticed the shadow of prejudice in my mind, seeing the burly police officers in their crisp blue uniforms, probably toting tasers somewhere on their arsenal belt. I viewed them as "other", a potential enemy of humankind. I forgot, for a short while, that they too are human beings, just doing a job, trying to maintain public safety - even if I don't always agree with their methods.

More empty clouds in the mind, mere thoughts, neither real, nor unreal.

I decided to move closer, to cross over the invisible line between being an anonymous person, and an obvious witness. I walked back to the other side of the scene. As I passed, I heard pieces of the cold interrogation going on. They asked him where he lived, where he had been.

Instinctively, I stood next to a tree, as if joining forces with the Earth to bear witness.
The closest officer had his back turned to me but quickly sensed my presence, perhaps twenty feet away, glancing every so often in my direction for a while, perhaps wondering if I represented some kind of threat. Each time, I averted my eyes before his gaze could connect with mine. I was still holding a chair awkwardly on my shoulder, and suddenly I realized how silly I must've looked, so I put the chair down on the sidewalk, sat down facing the scene, maintaining my vigil from a comfortable position.

At first, I think this completely threw the officers for a loop. They may have even thought I had left when suddenly I became aware they were talking excitedly about me, as if I was some sort of odd-ball. "There he is, he's not gone." One of the officers waved at me in a goofy sort of way. I stayed motionless without acknowledging his questionable gesture, pretending to be in meditation, gazing at the rare December blue sky in Seattle, but with the corner of my vision still trained on the scene, bearing witness.

I watched the other passers-by, not seeming to pay any attention to the scene as they moved about their business. One woman paid for her parking spot, slipping a few bills into the box, not three feet from the police cruiser's driver side door. She seemed not to question for an instant what was happening, quickly walking away. It was positively eerie that I was the only one of perhaps fifty or one hundred people who bothered to stop and pay attention during the fifteen or so minutes that this scene continued to unfold.

They were standing there, at the tail end of the cruiser, the engine still on, exhaust belching clouds of poison the entire time, enveloping officers and detainee alike, as if they had turned off their senses.

Finally, they handcuffed the man, presumably reading him his Miranda rights, and escorted him to the back seat of a nearby patrol car. I walked away and was home in a minute. My wife and daughter had taken a different route home and were waiting for me on the front porch.

Sometimes I remember how interconnected we are all on this tiny ball in space. All of us are like walking acupuncture needles, variously sedating Evil Wind, tonifying The Earth, or applying even technique with the actions of our body, speech, and mind.

As practitioners of energetic medicine, it is our responsibility to strengthen and balance our Chi and bring our surroundings into equilibrium wherever we go, not just in our clinics where we get paid. Not that the above incident is indicative of any Gandhian act of selflessness on my part. That's why it's called a practice.