Call for Submissions: Issue Number Two

First and foremost, on behalf of Prapañca’s editorial crew, I’d like to thank everyone who’s taken the time to read our humble little journal and for all the support. We’re just getting started and might be slow to respond to folks from time to time. But with your support we know that this project will grow and mature. So, thanks!

Now on to Issue Number Two. Each issue of Prapañca is focused on a theme, a chance for contributors to think about a particular topic or to approach their subject from a particular point of view. For our second issue, we’re going to focus on the Four Protections.

Buddhism, as many of you know, loves lists. There’s the Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths, the Twelvefold Chain of Causation, the Five Skhandas — I could go. But the Four Protections may not be as well known as some of the other lists. Generally speaking, the Four Protections are used within mediation practice as a place to return the mind, a point on which to focus, especially as you find yourself wavering. Reflecting on these protections helps train the mind. The Four Protections are:

1. recollecting the Buddha’s attributes
2. recollecting lovingkindness (metta)
3. recollecting the loathsomeness of the body
4. recollecting the certainty of death

Reading that list, two things may be abundantly clear. One, this is a pretty wide and broad set of recollections that might spark any number of ideas in the minds of potential contributors. Two, those last two points might strike some people as particularly dark or uncomfortable topics.

As for the first issue, the broadness of these topics, I hope that this works in Issue Number Two’s favor. I hope that we’re able to spark inspiration in people’s minds and attract a wide range of articles and artwork as folks reflect on the attributes of the Buddha, the importance of metta. As or the second issue, and speaking on behalf of the editorial board of Prapañca, this ain’t your usual feel-good, self-help Buddhist journal. We’re not afraid to confront death, to come face-to-face with the potentially uncomfortable. We trust you’re willing to come along with us.

On that note, we are still accepting submissions for issue number two. Please review our submission guidelines and feel free to contact us with any questions — or just send in your work. We’d love to hear from you.

This week’s spotlight: Middle Passages

Charles Johnson and the Raft of Dhamma

To regard the cycle of samsara (and its cessation) through the Middle Passage experience, as [Charles Johnson's work] implies, carries profound cultural resonance for people like myself who are descended from the enslaved Africans that survived the global atrocity. Slavery, as Johnson points out in Turning the Wheel, “is, one must say, a frighteningly fertile ground for the growth of a deep appreciation for the First and Second Noble Truths as well as a living illustration of the meaning of impermanence.” He also suggests that just as racial difference has been used to build hierarchies of oppression, so do the delusions of our perceived selves keep us from a full awareness of an interdependent reality. All of us, every living being, will confront middle passages in our lives. Will we, too, take to the raft of Dhamma and emerge sea changed?

One of our recurring features in Prapañca is the column “Middle Passages.” In its inaugural iteration, Qiana Whitted discusses the world of African American writer and Buddhist Charles Johnson. The Middle Passages column will address the question of how Buddhism is intersecting with the world of African American literature.

Qiana, a member of our editorial committee and staff, is also a professor at the University of South Carolina and the author of “A God of Justice?”: the Problem of Evil in Twentieth-Century Black Literature.

Read Qiana’s contribution to this issue of Prapañca.

This week’s spotlight: If You Cannot See Yourself

If You Cannot See Yourself

At that moment, I distinctly remember thinking, “I’ve had it with this Zen bullshit.” I was totally at the end of whatever rope I’d been tenuously hanging onto for the past several years, meditating my butt off in unheated North American Zen centers, working overtime as the temple treasurer and secretary, then throwing newspapers in the desert in New Mexico and hauling construction materials in California with Sam to earn money for our airfare to Korea.

Using a straightforward and brutally honest style, Mushim tells of her journey to the East and back in this week’s spotlight. Her essay, “If You Cannot See Yourself,” details an encounter between her and a Zen monk in a mountaintop hermitage in Korea.

As Mushim tells it, she wasn’t an “imperfect” Zen student, she was “a total failure.”

Her piece obviously fits in well with this issue’s theme of imperfection; but it also highlights those moments in practice where our realizations were nothing like we’d expected. Mushims realizations on that remote mountaintop led her back home to California.

Mushim is a teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California. You may also recognize her name from a number of publications including Tricycle, Turning Wheel, and the poetry collection What Book!? edited by Gary Gach.

Read Mushim’s contribution to this issue of Prapañca.

This week’s spotlight: Not a Cholo

Not a Cholo

I would like to challenge those of us who call ourselves Buddhist, progressive, open-minded to deeply consider what it really means to be committed to diversity. If we (and I include myself here) say that we are committed to creating a safe space in a multicultural world, we need to back it up with specific definitions and explicit actions. I’d like to ask all of us to step up and show others and ourselves how we will ensure that people are safe and supported should something insensitive or dangerous enter our communal space.

In one of our featured essays, Erica Shehane explore the challenges in creating truly diverse communities, the difficulties in attending to the needs of everyone in the community. Her piece begins with her reflections as a social worker in Los Angeles. While on the face of it, it would seem that this work has little connection to Buddhism, the opposite is true. It has everything to do with sangha.

Erica is a member of the Against the Stream meditation society, a community that, as she puts it, has changed her life for the better. Her work within this community includes the push for a people of color sitting group, a group that can attend to needs that aren’t always met despite our Buddhist platitudes for diveristy and compassion.

More than that, Erica is a founder of the web community Urban Refuge, a “virtual sangha for Buddhist practitioners of color, allies and all others interested in promoting racial and cultural diversity in Western Buddhism.”

And more than that, Erica is also an artist. You can check out her work at her website, ericashehane.com.

Read Erica’s contribution to this issue of Prapañca.

Help Wanted

Prapañca: a buddhist journal is hiring. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we can’t pay ya anything.

First, know this. The editorial committee of Prapañca is dedicated to growing this journal, to attracting new talent, good writers, and great artists. We’re also in the process of coming up with something that you might call a “business plan.” But right now, since we’ve all got day jobs, our humble little project remains a labor of love. And unfortunately there are very few ways to make any money off of a labor of love. (Unless you live in Nevada, but that’s another story.)

All of which is to say that while we can’t pay ya now, that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to down the road. Provided we can grow this thing. And that’s where you come in, especially if, like us, you’re passionate about Buddhism, you’re passionate about good writing and great art, and you’re passionate about having a venue for some amazing combination of Buddhism-writing-art.

If you’d like to be a part of Prapañca and help us grow, we’d love to hear from you. Here’s what we’re looking for:

• Media and marketing: this person would help spread the word about Prapañca using all the tools at her or his disposal. Twitter, Facebook, Diaspora, standing on street corners, nutty promotions, whatever you think would help attract (positive) attention, have at it.
• Graphic design/web design: I’m pretty proud of what I was able to accomplish in Issue Number 1. But let’s face it. I’m not a professional. Web design has always been my hobby. Think you can do better? Have at it.
  While we’re on the subject of design, in some future iteration of Prapañca there may be a print edition. So someone who knows their away around print media would be awesome.
• Web programming/software engineer: ideally, Prapañca will be powered by swanky new web technology like HTML5 and it’ll be all dynamic and stuff and play nice with the iPad. In fact, having a mobile app would awesome. How cool would it be to see Prapañca all gussied up and interactive on an iPad? But, hey, I don’t even own an iPhone so what do I know about writing mobile apps? Or, more to the point, what do YOU know about writing mobile apps?
• Content management: don’t want to reinvent the wheel but know your way around HTML and CSS? Wanna update some code? Have I got a job for you.

If you’re interested in volunteering some of your time to this project, let us know by sending an email to playofwords@prapancajournal.com and we’ll fill you in on all the details.

Let’s change the world.

Launch Party

If we could, we’d be having a launch party right about now. But since we all live in different time zones, we’ll just have to settle for the pure joy of sending this labor of love out into the world.

Prapañca: a buddhist journal has officially launched with the release of Issue 1: Imperfection.

The cover may be familiar to many of our readers; we’re very please to showcase the work of Tibetan-born artist Gade whose Mandala images have made the Internet rounds a few times since 2008. His work is featured in a Prapañca series titled “Art in Dialogue” where we ask our contributors to respond to a provocative work of art.

Other contributions include the poetry of Jack Butler, thought provoking articles by Erica Shehane and Mushim Ikeda-Nash, as well as an excerpt from Stephen Asma’s book Why I Am a Buddhist: No-Nonsense Buddhism with Red Meat and Whiskey.

We’ll be highlighting selections from this issue here on the Editor’s Blog over the coming weeks. And as always feel free to keep up with Prapañca, connect with other readers, and let us know what you think via Twitter or Facebook.

We hope you enjoy our inaugural issue. Thanks for reading!

Prapañca on Flickr

How do you imagine imperfection? Do you have a photo that evokes the imperfect and the ways in which we reflect upon, struggle against, and come to terms with imperfection in our daily lives?

We recently set up a group pool on Flickr to highlight your photos in Prapañca, but in an effort to encourage a range of reader responses, we’re also inviting photos that speak, in particular, to the journal’s themes. Imperfection is the theme of Prapañca’s first issue. Upcoming themes will be posted on the Flickr discussion board and regularly promoted on our social networking sites. The images may be featured as part of journal, through the Flickr gallery, or on the editor’s blog. (All photos will be clearly attributed and you can find more details about licensing information on our Flickr group page.)

"Off-Kilter" by NJW via Flickr

My own contribution to the journal’s group pool almost didn’t happen. Last week I gave my four-year-old daughter a disposable camera – over half of the roll had already been used in her gymnastics class – and I told her to go crazy with it. She took photos on the ride home [click], in the neighborhood [click], and every time Mommy’s back was turned [click, click, click]. Yet when I picked up the developed photos, almost none of her pictures were included. Apparently the drugstore technician didn’t print the mistakes, distortions, and blurred photos on the roll so that we wouldn’t be inconveniently charged (although these still appeared in the negatives). The only one that slipped through the filter was the photo of a house for sale in our neighborhood (pictured). Unstaged and off-kilter, it is perhaps the most authentic reflection of how the world is perceived and conceived through the lens of imperfection.

Imperfection can take many forms besides blurry pictures, of course. We hope that as you read Prapañca, you’ll consider adding to the conversation about this theme by adding your visual interpretation to our group pool on Flickr. You can also upload a photo to our Facebook page or send it as a Twitpic to our Twitter feed. Make sure to tag the image with the theme name and, if you like, feel free to use the description field to tell us the story behind your choice.

Welcome

Welcome to the editor’s blog for Prapañca: a buddhist journal. We’re just getting started, so expect more updates in the coming weeks.

And mark your calendar. Issue 1: Imperfection is being released June 21!