Universal Burdens : Stories of (Un)Freedom from the Unitarian Universalist Association, The MOVE Organization, and Taqwacore
Popular Abstract in English Universal Burdens There are Zen students who are in chains when they go to a teacher, and the teacher adds another chain. The students are delighted, unable to discern one thing from another. This is called 'a guest looking at a guest.' -Linji What do Zen master Linji, Muslim scholar ‘Abbād ibn Sulaymān, and Comanche thinker Parra-Wa-Samen have in common? Among manyZen Buddhists have long given the following advice to attain liberation: “Eat when you’re hungry. Sleep when you’re tired.” In other words: “Freedom” is the “knowledge of necessity” (Hegel, Marx, and Engels). Early Islamic communities dealt with the challenge of internal warfare and tyranny and concluded that, “sixty years of tyranny is better than one day’s anarchy.” In other words, the worst-cas