#19 Maine Postscript: RIP Kobutsu Malone

 While looking for an online meditation in Maine, I came across the obituary for Kobutsu Kevin Malone on his Facebook page; apparently he died July 29, 2019. 

Kobutsu's biography is HERE.   A victim of abuse in Catholic school and later in prison on a weed charge, he worked tirelessly against the death penalty, founding the Engaged Zen Foundation, and the Shimano Archive, a trove of damning evidence of sexual abuse against his former teacher Eido Shimano.   He witnessed several executions and was the Buddhist priest for Sing Sing prison. 

Kobutsu came to the Buddhist Sangha of South Jersey a few times, visits I helped arrange; I visited his zendo, I spoke to his inactive board when he wanted help getting grants for an idea to teach social skills to kids in Camden NJ.   That idea never got off the ground and we did not keep in touch.  

He was very kind but not apologetic.  He said "better to not start the path if you don't want to keep going, you know I wanted to be a 'bartender of the Caribeean', I figured that would be a good path; but it did not work out and now I am a Buddhist monk" 

We don’t have to be subservient. We don’t have to practice love and light. We don’t have to go around handing out imaginary lotuses and telling each other that we’re buddhas-to-be. That’s horseshit. That’s watered-down Dharma for children. 

What I am proposing is that we need to carry awakening beyond just personal transformation. It has to go into the social, psychological, spiritual, political, economic, and ecological realms. We have to awaken in all of these areas almost simultaneously.