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10. The Positively Arrogant Mishap
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10 / Tk~ P~Jitiv~ly Aff~gVt-t Miilup t met Liz Locke in Bloomington, Indiana, in I993, the night she first told me this story, the year that Q died. Her story IS a marked reversal of the stories from the previous chapter. The sense of malign neglect that runs through the lives of Stitches' HIVpositive friend, Deborah Johnson, and Darnell Collins is dispelled. There are no police, guns, jails, or prisons. It is a story about a coherent community, not colliding individuals in an alienating and confusing world. And unlike the Cuban Rockers, the people ofLiz's story live in a privileged world, where meditative souls engaged in creative work, building a sacred and economically successful community by practicing ancient principals in a contemporary setting. But then came AIDS, and almost everything changed. The moral authority of the highest leaders was thrown into question, and the community 's peace and stability exploded. If the fluids are right, the virus does not distinguish between oppression and sacredness. Mindlessly moving from body to body, the virus has no notion of the havoc it causes. Some months after we met, Liz agreed to record a full account on tape; I write from the transcript and our continuing conversation. An earlier version of this chapter entitled "Sacred Deviance and AlDS in a North American Buddhist Community" appeared in Law and Policy 16(July 1994): 323 - 40, and is used here by permission of Blackwell Publishers. 148 Copyrighted Material Sacred Deviance THE POSITIVELY ARROGANT MISHAP . n :D Taking a vow ofrefuge is likegetting intoyour own boat. Everybody is in their own boat on this vast, limitless, profound ocean oflife. And every human being, every sentient being is in their own boat. We're all out there, alone together. And the refuge is that there is no refuge. This is as safe as itgets: alone, in a little rowboat, on a vast ocean. It's not very comforting . . .. [laugh] Liz arrived at the Vajradhatu International Buddhist Church in Boulder, Colorado, in 1976, when she was nineteen, with the intention of staying two weeks to visit her brother. She had no desire to get involved (again) in another imported Asian religion. Indeed, if it wasn't Walt Whitman, she said, she didn't want anything to do with it. Bur in those two weeks she met Trungpa Rinpoche: • I was working on what was to become the main headquarters of the church, a building called Do~e Dzong (Indestnuctible Fortress) in Boulder. We were transforming it from an old office building to the main shrine room and offices. And I had been given a screwdriver with a piece of sandpaper wrapped around the end and I had been told to get the paint off the newel post at the foot of the stairs, which had all these curlicues and carvings and it had six coats of paint on it. And I had been working on this goddamn newel post for about two hours with the little piece of sandpaper and the screwdriver and the whole time my thought process was getting speedier and speedier and angrier and angrier and I wanted nothing to do with these people and what am I doing here with this goddam screwdriver anyway and I had just gotten to the point where I had decided to drive the screwdriver through.... Oh, no, an announcement came down that Rinpoche had changed his mind. Everything was going to be painted white and as a 149 Copyrighted Material :I In [18.234.139.149] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:06 GMT) • CHAPTER 10 III :E II : u result we didn't have to remove the paint now. Now this is classic in a Tibetan tradition, in any Buddhist t radition, it's like I told you to do it this way, but now I want you to do it that way. Just to screw up your plans. So my response to that was that I was going to drive the screwdriver through the newel post and I had my hand raised and I looked around and everybody else was standing very quietly with their hands behind their backs and I thought what the fuck is going on here) And I looked to the doorway, and there'sthis little Asian guy in a suit with two other Anglo guys in suits standing behind him, sort of holding him up, and everybody is looking at him like he's the main show. And I...