Buddhists sample Austin street life

Retreat brings awareness, compassion to homelessness.

By Eileen E. Flynn
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, August 11, 2006

Sitting in the shade on the Texas Capitol's south lawn, John Kojin Dinsmore doesn't look like he spent the previous humid night sleeping in the woods with a rolled-up shirt for a pillow. He isn't sure what patch of earth will make his bed tonight.

But this is exactly what he hoped for when he signed up for a four-day Buddhist street retreat in Austin, a kind of walking meditation aimed at deepening participants' awareness of suffering.

Laura Skelding
AMERICAN-STATESMAN

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• Photos: Buddhists 'bear witness' for homeless

"This puts you in an environment where you have no coordinates," said Dinsmore, a Buddhist priest with Austin Zen Center. There is no agenda, he adds, just a desire to bear witness to the lives of homeless people.

Group leader Fleet Maull, a Zen Peacemaker priest, leads retreats every March in Denver, usually taking students from Naropa University, the Buddhist school in Boulder, Colo., where he teaches. Austin Buddhists were eager to start the tradition here.

"It's kind of an immersion into a particular world, so much so that it dissolves our usual reference points for who we think we are and what we think is going on and what world we think we belong to very quickly," said Maull, an intense, gray-haired man who spent 14 years in a federal prison for drug smuggling before discovering Buddhism.

Hope Malkan, with the Austin Shambhala Meditation Center, helped coordinate the retreat, which included 12 people ranging from a 26-year-old man to "some real middle-aged ladies." She said she raised $400 before the retreat to give to pay for the homeless services they used.

They set out Tuesday afternoon with the clothes on their backs, some water and an extra pair of socks. The plan was to live the homeless experience, though there was contraband. At least one woman brought a change of underwear. Another smuggled some Pepperidge Farm Mini Brussels cookies. Two sneaked into the Daily Juice Company on Barton Springs Road for a cold drink. And between meditation and dinner time Wednesday, several group members puffed on cigarettes hand rolled with additive-free, natural tobacco.

But they also begged for money, slept on the ground, walked until their feet ached, struggled to find bathrooms and felt film building on their unbrushed teeth. And they realized how agonizing such a life can be when they watched a homeless man fall asleep at a soup kitchen - too tired even to eat.

"I'm trying to walk a path of understanding and compassion," Tom Broughton, a Buddhist who lives near Bryan, said after the group's daily meditation on the Capitol lawn.

"It's one thing to sit cross-legged and smell the incense. It's another thing to do it," he added.

Austin and its roughly 3,600 homeless people have seen similar retreats in the past. In a city with both spiritual and socially engaged residents, the desire to understand the struggle of others has drawn several groups to experience homelessness.

St. Edward's University students have hit the streets in recent years and blended into the homeless community. And Alan Graham, whose nonprofit Mobile Loaves & Fishes serves food to homeless people, frequently leads street retreats to raise awareness of the conditions people on the streets endure.

Pat Yingst, a member of the Austin Zen Center, said she joined the retreat to open her heart.

"It's really hard for me to look homeless people in the eye and get past the stink and the garbage," she said. "I came to get past this barrier. . . . to see their humanness."

A few minutes later, the group members gathered their bags and marched toward Congress Avenue in search of food. After two attempts, they stumbled upon a Mobile Loaves & Fishes truck, ate some sandwiches and then made their way to Zilker Park for a free concert before retiring to the woods.

Want to learn more?

Fleet Maull and Grover Gauntt III will discuss their experiences in a presentation tonight.

When: 8 p.m.

Where: Austin Shambhala Meditation Center 1702 S. Fifth St.

Tickets: Free

Information: http://austin.txshambhala.org; 443-3263

eflynn@statesman.com; 445-3812