Rugged Interdependency - Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Golden Highways Revisited: 1998May 15 thAs usual after breakfast we sort out who’s doing what for the day – Peter La Rivièrecalled early and confirmed that they wanted to release Bhante from the hospitalso we organized it for Chris Bradley (a nurse in training) to go along to staythere and help out. I was due to take part in a Harm Reduction conference inUkiah, organized by the Mendocino County AIDS Volunteer Network (MCAVN)and related groups, to prepare the ground for beginning needle-exchange in thisarea, so Ajahns Vajiro and Visuddhi offered to go along and help out with Bhante’smove. They dropped me off at 8:40 at the Episcopal Church on Orchard Street andheaded off to the hospital.The hall was packed for the conference – at least 100 people – and all hadbeen very well-prepared for the event. There were several sets of speakers throughthe day, ranging from Dr. Neil Flynn, of a medical and needle-exchange group inSacramento (where they reckon they have a population of 14,000 intravenous drugusers who inject every day: half heroin, half methamphetamine) to a drug alternativegroup in Santa Rosa, a housing group in Marin and a needle-exchange groupin San Mateo County. Despite the fact that, according to the Surgeon General: “Theevidence on needle exchange has gone beyond critical mass – it is proven beyondany doubt to improve health, slow the spread of HIV and hepatitis etc., and to savelives – however, we cannot allow it.”Perhaps they think “users are bad people – they deserve to suffer for it” asthey did with AIDS and the gay population (see Randy Schilts’ And the Band PlayedOn); perhaps these folks, mostly poor and African American or Hispanic (60%in Sacramento are Black women) are just getting caught in the cogs of the Waron Drugs – the replacement enemy after the Soviet Union collapsed – crushedwhere the rubber meets the road. But, for whatever reason, it was clear, firstly, thathere we had a seriously disenfranchised section of the community that were beingdriven to early, painful deaths by the social/political/medical systems that criminalizedtheir drugs of choice. And, secondly, that this hall full of mostly middle-classwhite folk, whose compassion and will had been aroused, were not about to letthem go down the tubes to hell without putting up a fight.I suppose it is common knowledge that Buddhists are not afraid of paradoxes– even making use of them as a spiritual tool in the unanswerable questions ofkoan meditation – and this seemed to be cause of the conference organizers havinginvited me to speak on moral contradiction. The questions of healing or enabling?Compassion or co-dependence? were thick in the air. To some it seemed impossiblethat there could be any genuine virtue in giving fresh needles to intravenousdrug users: “Surely this must be wrong!?!” Like giving the keys of a Ferrari to anerratic sixteen-year-old.The organizers had also, very wisely, structured it so that the spiritual perspectivewas the conclusion to the day. After all the details of sociopathology andvarious agency interdynamics, it was helpful to take a step back and view thepicture from both a more personal and more universal perspective, i.e. “how do Ideal with my doubts?” and “what is the mind-set of the nation?”70