We came off the streets of New York City on Sunday after our final council in Washington Square Park, under the same ginkgo tree where weโd opened a few days earlier.
People with dogs, cellphones, and cardboard coffee cups rushed by. A jazz band blared a few yards away. Birds picked crumbs and insects from the grass around our circle. Unsheltered people found refuge on the benches. Families with kids played in the little playground nearby. Lonely folks fed pigeons. Handsome dads kicked soccer balls with their young sons. A dense and unruly mix of life.
Kosho and I had been on the sidewalks since Tuesday. Our fellow practitioners joined Thursday, after an unseasonably cold Wednesday night in Manhattan. Now it was hot and bright. We were tired but caffeinated, thanks to the kindness of donors the day before.
The week was full. Weather swung from bitter cold to sticky heat. Endless sounds, smells, and sights. And generosity everywhere: offerings from strangers, garbage cans, soup kitchens, the sky. A puppy that leapt into our council circle. A cool breeze at just the right moment. A half-smoked cigar stub found in front of Trump Tower. A clean bathroom at Starbucksโmiraculously, with soap. Money given by people who had almost none. Snickers bars handed to us. And always, the sheltering shade of buildings. The streets provide, in their way.
Of course, there was also the hard part. The things that canโt really be put into words. The heartbreak. Iโll trust you to know what I mean.
Memory and Place
New York is home ground for me. I grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey. My father lived homeless in these same neighborhoods for about fifteen years. Heโs the reason I did a street retreat in the first placeโwhen I realized that my pain had numbed my compassion and I needed to turn that around.
Being back here stirred all that up. I remembered my graduate school years at NYU, the Stonewall shrine, Gay Pride, the early AIDS epidemicโmy terror and grief in those years, and the brave people who showed me how to find my activist voice. Walking the streets, old faces came back, long gone but suddenly present again.
There were funny memories too. During closing council, I thought of a dessert from the โ60s and โ70s. Some kind of powdered mix you poured into boiling water, and like magic it turned into a three-layer parfait. One layer was frothy, one was mousse-y, one was solid. It was unlike anything in nature, and as a kid I thought it was pure magic.
That parfait became the image for my retreat. Not because it was sweet, but because of the layers.
The Parfait of Practice
The frothy top layer was my outrage. Anger at what weโve createdโthis civilization, this economy, this system that leaves people on the streets. We donโt just leave them there, we normalize it, like the ever-present garbage cans and police sirens: part of the scenery. Weโve made this tragedy, and weโve gotten used to it.
When I remember that, when I really let it in, I foam up with anger, guilt, and a kind of smug righteousness. Itโs sticky, itโs stinky. Sometimes it bubbles over, vinegar-and-baking-soda style. If I take a deep look at it, though, it starts to quiet. The fizz melts into something else.
That next layer is thickerโlike mousse. Despair and hope, sitting side by side. On one side: the cynical belief that weโll never change. Corporate interests too strong. Productivity baked in as a measure of worth. A culture that looks away, or sneers, or hardens its heart. That kind of despair makes me want to run away to a cave. It divides the world into good guys and bad guys, victims and perpetratorsโand, of course, I always cast myself as one of the good ones.
But also in that layer: hope. It seems to me it would take just one simple new way of thinking, one new meme, one click of the dial, one collective action to shift things toward sharing our wealth, wisdom, compassion, and resources more evenly. Just one fresh thought, one conviction, one small act of redistribution could build houses, provide adequate care and treatment for mental illness and addiction, stabilize people who have forgotten what stability feels like.
It can seem so close at timesโthat we could easily provide what we Buddhists call โthe four requisitesโ of housing, food, clothing, and medical care. I know there is enough money, enough food, and enough people of goodwill to do this. Sometimes I find myself believing we can, and we are.
This is, in contrast to the hopelessness that sits on the other cushion, a place of great hopefulness for me. I remember what an old teacher said: the truth of impermanence means that change is possible. So I think I should just work on making that one little adjustment happen. Change my own mind and take the one action that matters. Sometimes I deeply believe this is possible. But I have to be careful. Pema Chรถdrรถn reminds me that hope is also a form of delusion, and that investing too much in it can be as blinding as despair and cynicism.
Beneath that mousse layer is the densest oneโthe solid foundation of the whole strange thing. I donโt know what to call it. Maybe the Dharma, maybe love, or the divine, or just the steady ground of being. But it is stable and foundational. If I let myself sink into it, let outrage, despair, and hope all rest on it, it becomes a resource. It allows me to show up for whatever else is in that glass, sitting on my shoulders.
Like the Four Foundations of Mindfulnessโbody, sensations, mind, and all thingsโthis base layer settles out of the rest of the concoction, not separate from it all. It becomes the foundation that was always there in the powdery mix anyway. Maybe that layer shows up as the strong back and soft front of our practice posture.
By the end of the retreat, I realized that street practice allows me to dip the spoon all the way to the bottom of that parfait glass, pulling up the layers and, as with koans, eat them whole and let them both consume and nourish me. It is, to call up Dลgenโs Instructions to the Cook, the dessert to the supreme meal.
The Supreme Meal of Many Things
During our days on the street, our hodgepodge spontaneous sangha participated in many traditions. Kosho and I spent a pleasant morning in silence with Enkyo Roshi at the Village Zendo, where she lovingly slipped her phone number into my hand, โin case you need anything.โ We slept on cardboard that night in the shelter of a Hebrew school. Later, our group prayed and danced in zikr with the Sufis during Ramadan in TriBeCa. As we finished chanting the Quran, a child and his mother came around offering each of us a sweet dried date and a glass of water to break the fast. Iโve never tasted a date so good.
The next day, in the basement chapel of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, we were fed eggs and hash, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and a much-coveted cup of strong coffee. Love was there, tooโacross the serving line and within itโas we waited with others who had spent the night on the hot sidewalks. After breakfast we attended Catholic Mass in the small chapel next door, where we were offered the eucharist which they called, โbread for the world.โ
At every meal, whether offered or begged, we had abundance. Not always healthy or fresh, but always nourishing abundance. Then, after we begged for our final meal at the Union Square farmerโs market, we chanted a spontaneous, wild, raucous Gate of Sweet Nectar right there. A young man named One Love joined us, along with a vibrant holy man named Geo. Many others gathered. After dancing during the Gate, we learned to hula hoop in the park and smoked the cigar weโd found at Trump Tower, like a peace offering.
.In the end, we all ate from the multi-layered dessert, the supreme meal.
Calling out to hungry hearts,
Everywhere through endless time.
You who wander, you who thirst,
I offer you this Bodhi Mind.
Calling out to hungry spirits,
Everywhere through endless time.
Calling all to hungry hearts,
All the lost and left behind.
Gather round and share this mealโ
Your joy and your sorrow, I make it mine.
Photos by Joshin and Kosho
An earlier version of this essay appeared on the website of Upaya Zen Center.
