Bernat Font: On Being A Bear - Identity, Performance & Liberation

So tonight's talk is titled on being a bear Identity performance and liberation Probably it doesn't need saying in this environment that I am a bear you can you can see that but for those of you who might not know what that means or If anyone ever listens to this talk on Darmacid I Have to explain what that means a Bear is a type of gay man that's on the chunkier side Harry and usually with a beard I Also should say that I wasn't always a bear believe it or not. I was a thin 20 year old but time Aging genetics bad habits, whatever all together. I became a bear It's never a twink probably an otter which is the Harry And I'm a bit of an animal phase in this retreat right I talked about my dog now. I'm talking about bears and otters But I remember the time when I was starting to gain weight and I never minded too much but at some point there was a bit of an anxiety of Oh, maybe I will stop being desirable I'm less attractive That body that had provided certain things Decided to change against my will So something was suddenly at stake But then I discovered that bears have quite an audience and so in some ways Adopting that the identity of a bear Was was quite a quite a safe place suddenly That's that this label in category existed So it could be visible and some people who might be into it could find them is a protection It's a protection against certain standards of attractiveness And that's in a way part of the emergence of the category of the bear within the gay scene Was that was a bit of a backlash towards a stereotype that a gay man had to be a certain way They had to be thin and the feminine and hairless and whatever And it was a way of affirming those other ways of being a gay man Today to me. It's it's really it's a rebellion against the tyranny of the six pack So identities can serve to affirm who we are and to protect who we are There and I don't say that in a condemnatory way. They're defense mechanism as well Defense around certain duke a certain pain and suffering There also a way to find belonging and worth so like yes, there is such a thing as me And also I'm not completely alone So that's the belonging it's still vulnerable though Because what if I lost weight Then will I no longer be a bear will some of the people who like me stopped liking me I remember Something that someone many many years ago in an app told me told me you're not big enough So I had become bigger but apparently to some people that wasn't big enough So these labels and these categories can also serve To categorize too much and to objectify and etc. It's a double-edged sword But there is something else I discovered about this image of the bear that I quite like and Is that it was also a push against some traditional understandings of masculinity as tough and unemotional The image of the bear as that soft man kind warm and So I could tap into that as a sort of beneficial element of being that type and Cultivate it kind of in inhabiting that identity Do something positive with it Cultivate it in a way that wouldn't be tied to my body changing again for example So if we broaden this beyond beyond certain queer identities We see that we identify as so many things as parents as Married husbands wives or a single as teachers as Intellectuals as crafty as artistic whatever it is And these identities are made up of roles that we inhabit repeated behaviors With how others see us with how we want others to see us We can build an identity on our achievements Our successes we can build our identity on our losses our wounds our traumas We can build an identity around what it is that we're most worried about So identities can be perfectly functional healthy healing even Necessary and also they can become fixed they can hinder further development further flourishing and movements Sometimes are an attempt to freeze time To keep things from changing they can outlive their usefulness So River yesterday spoke of the hindrances and How we can identify with the hindrances as well. I'm an angry type I'm an anxious type. I'm a greedy type. I'm an overthinker These experiences that might be frequent visitors Become suddenly our essence No, no, this is who I am I I like the similes of the hindrances the the pots of water Because if I recall well, and I didn't check this before the talk but anyway The passage begins by saying if someone wanted to see their own reflection You come to a body of water wanting to see your own reflection But that water is colored or it's boiling or it's muddy or it's full of seaweed Then you won't see your own reflection. You will get a distorted image of yourself These reactive patterns give us back a Distorted reflection of who we are or who we can be But through meditation we can become aware of moments where some of those very frequent visitors Are not present Aware of something being absent and that's a very important experience because even if it lasts for three seconds To see a moment where there's no anger no overthinking and yet Here we are So it doesn't matter if it lasts a millisecond it is a confirmation that we are not intrinsically reactive intrinsically greedy or angry or jealous or Whatever Because if we were that millisecond could not have existed so it's incredibly significant Sometimes to allow ourselves not just to notice. Oh, there's no anger right now But to fully inhabit Non-anger to fully inhabit absence of anger Here I am Not angry Here I am Not feeling small Here I am in a moment of no doubt It's a moment, but it is possible for a reason but we tend to build these solid selves and According to Buddhism they're all protective. It's not just being a bear. That's a protective mechanism All selves are protective Against this ultimate transiency and unreliability of this world It's an unsettling place changing all the time Doesn't obey our orders and we will be ejected from this life one day and We don't know when and so It's obviously quite unfair that sometimes queer people get singled out as clinging to our identities When more normative Identities are just the same. They're just as protective. There's just us conditioned. They're just less visible to people Because they're not challenged perhaps I could see within myself those different parts Some parts are more naturally affirmed by my environment or there are more challenged and so I experience them differently But they're equal in an ultimate sense that they are kind of structures of being that are helpful and Ultimately constructed They're constructed from personality trades and habits and patterns that we feed but also from the environment Something that might be challenging for some of us might be how our identities are socially and historically constructed Some may find Disliberating some may find this threatening but the labels we use for ourselves is not just words to describe They end up configuring who we are and so they depend on what concepts and labels are available around us Different cultures different historical periods for example had different notions and have different notions of What it means to be gay or straight or a man or a woman or something in between or something fluid They might put the boundary between identity and orientation in a different place or not have that boundary at all Had we been born in those places or at those times? Would we identify the way we do? Maybe yes, maybe not Have we been born a hundred fifty even twenty years ago When different concepts and words and role models were available, maybe we would identify differently and People who will be born in fifty years time will very likely have a different experience with different concepts Of what is available to a human and we see these Sometimes in these retreats where we have the great joy of bringing different generations of queer people together Which is an experience that sadly doesn't happen very often But we see how our communities change and no version of That community is either wrong or right It's changing So again just to really emphasize none of this makes our identities bad or wrong or good and right We see how they come together how they are constructed and how they could be Maybe they will become otherwise in our own lifetime. Who knows? So the question becomes really how we relate to these identities how we use them Even though a lot of the times this using is not conscious, but that's what we do with them. What impact they have What are they an instrument for? So if the category of a bear helps me soften and develop kindness or If it leads to worrying about my body image my insecurity those are two very different things If the concept of being a Dharma teacher helps me channel kind of the best version of me to serve people It's very different than if I use that to become arrogant and stop learning Or if I'm a very politically engaged person and activist, that's neither good nor bad Does it made me act in ways that have a positive impact and help a cause or do I become rigid and judgmental? And I alienate people even from my own cause So these are the things in the end that matter to develop kindness or insecurity to serve others or become arrogant To have a positive impact or to alienate people. This is what matters Identities may skillfully whisper here is a way you're allowed to be But at other times they may shout this is what you have to be and must continue being in the Buddhist teaching of dependent arising You may have heard of it It speaks about craving or reactivity leading to clinging or identification leading to a word Bava Bava means existence, but more specifically continued existence becoming When we identify with something we bring it in to be We make it even more real we reify it and we also perpetuate it So this is not very good when we identify with unskillful qualities and reactive patterns But it might be good even if temporarily if we identify with beautiful qualities and Buddhism has always played with that Which is kind of where this talk will end up So this summer I spent a week with my brother's family. I have a niece who's five years old and Quite often she would come to me and say Let's play Let's go play and I remember a couple of occasions where I got really curious just about the concept of playing So she gave me a little ball And she said because obviously she decides what happens She said you run and I tried to get it from you Okay So I take the ball and I start running and of course I'm not gonna run how I can run because she's five So what I do is I run a little bit and then I pretend to drop the ball so she can win and She gets the ball and she laughs and she's very happy and a little voice inside me went Does she think she won? Does she know that I let her win and then it was her turn she runs I have to snatch the ball and She did the same thing as I did she dropped the ball Pretending oh So I could get it I found this very interesting So there's a pretend losing and a pretend winning, but that's the game In that little world that we agree upon That is winning and losing and that's fun for both of us We're performing something And within the game it it has a purpose and it has a Consequence right which is that we have fun if I suddenly take it seriously and run for my life It's not that She'll be frustrated because she cannot get the ball she'll be frustrated because I'm not playing the game I'm not playing at all. So in some ways those winning and losing they're staged But like many things in our adult life are equally staged It's not that different a little but less than we may think Here's another example she gave me a stick and Said this is a sword. Let's go on a quest. So she knows it's a stick. She's five. She's not that small She's not gonna try and slice bread with the stick. I mean she's five She's not gonna try and slice bread in general and she shouldn't but It's not that she doesn't have the ability to discern an actual knife from a stick But while playing it is a sword This is our agreed upon world Asking whether she really believes that the stick is a sword is to completely miss the point. It's the wrong question Because in that world in the world of play Believe and make believe this binary isn't relevant It's not a relevant distinction there That's the conventional reality we agree upon and there it is a sword So here are other examples From our adult lives Paper money you could say it's just paper and it is but also That would be to ignore what it means We just decided that those bits of paper Have a certain worth So but if I say well, it's really only paper. That's both true and not true It more than revealing a deeper truth about paper money It ignores the kind of agreed upon world or game that we're playing with it, which has real consequences just because it's an agreement doesn't mean it doesn't have consequences Another example an actor playing Hamlet He obviously is not Hamlet and yet in another perfectly meaningful sense. He is Hamlet Hamlet has no hidden essence of hamletness that you possess or don't possess. He only exists through text imagination and performance I think Hamlet is a good example. It's not a historical figure. It's not like I'm talking about Napoleon or but Is he Hamlet is he not Hamlet? Well, he is in a context There was a movie many years ago Called I think men on the moon. Have you seen it? It's a bio peak of the comedian Andy Kaufman from the US Who was known for kind of pushing the boundaries of performances and kind of staying in character in in In real life or staging a fight at Saturday night live in an interview that everyone thought was a real fight But he had just agreed with another guest that they would get in a fight and And so they made this movie about him and his character was played by Jim Carrey and A few years ago a documentary of Kind of making off of that movie came out I think it's called something like Jim and Andy and It was full of footage and of from behind the scenes and off-camera taken by actors and some of the cameras from the movie and It was a total chaos the movie because apparently Jim Carrey Started to never leave the character. He would stay in the character of Andy Kaufman when they were not shooting People had to address him as Andy and people were not really sure whether he was just Making it up as a kind of game or he really had lost touch with the distinction and It's even hard when you see the documentary to to know is this a stunt or or or Or what? So again, there's these places where the catch is of believe and make believe just don't apply. They're not being used There's something in between where the performed is the reality because reality is constant performance So the case of Andy Kaufman and Jim Carrey might be a bit extreme or fringe But still the point is that performance is not just Representational it's also constitutive It makes what it is What it is it makes something what it is So is being a Dharma teacher any different from acting as a Dharma teacher? What's the difference I Mean acting ass can mean posing ass or pretending to be in a fraudulent way But also a real Dharma teacher is only so by legitimately acting as a Dharma teacher By acting as one are we Dharma teachers when we're at home watching Netflix? I mean beyond the conventional sense of course the conventional sense we use to identify people's jobs like I'm a Dharma teacher I'm a carpenter. You're a plumber But in that moment if we're not being a Dharma teacher, are we a Dharma teacher? It's also a relational identity There isn't any sort of additional metaphysical Dharma teacher Ness underlying me or River With all respects Well now with all respect because it's not a negative thing. That's just not That's just not how life works So perhaps some of what we are is little more than what we repeatedly do and enact and perform and inhabit And that doesn't make it fake and it doesn't take away any of its value so I'm remembering when I for a few years I used to interpret for Dharma teachers in Spain and It's an interesting Experience where you're translating life for someone you're speaking their words you start doing their hand gestures their cadences and You use the first person, you know if the teacher said When I was training in whatever you don't say in the other language He says that when he was training no you say when I was training in that place Even though you haven't done that so in that moment You're a little bit them You're doing the things that are identified as them you're in a fluid strange Middle place You inhabit or channel them. I've also had a similar experience as a jazz musician. So I'm also a musician and I've had these experiences Sometimes where while during a performance You kind of think or recall perhaps a musician who has influenced you a lot and Suddenly something strange happens You start really sounding quite close to them Playing the way they played and that is from how you've accumulated and integrated the language to listening to the recordings Maybe studying some of that but in that moment I wasn't calculating. Oh, they tend to play this chord this way and they tend to attack the notes like this. I Rather found my hands doing something that my deliberate brain couldn't produce from all that Sedimented knowledge and yet in that moment. It's not a conscious decision Happens organically a year ago. I went to a retreat as a retreatant and On the way there on a bus with other retreatants I Started to feel a different version of self being shaped up One that's even more dharmic, you know in my than in my day-to-day life So I started to be more naturally mindful and Being a different version of myself Absolutely not a fake version that is in there But it is partly through environment that it tends to arise which is why we have retreat centers and and We try to have spiritual friendships and etc. Because they help shape this up So who is the real me? Because that's already quite a few selves Sometimes we speak of the masks that we wear right we put on masks to go in the world We have these roles and that makes sense In a certain way to speak in these terms But also masks can be totally sincere It's not just I tried to maintain the persona of a good meditator as in a just try to give a certain image Perhaps it's all masks It's masks all the way down with no face behind it Now you may have heard how a lot of Buddhist teachings speak about not self or Disidentifying we can see the masks as masks instead of mistaking them for a real face We see conditioned identities as conditioned and So in that way we gain the freedom to deconstruct ourselves To stop believing we are the mask To stop identifying as these and that to lessen that particular type of clinging To stop to construct this identity or that one But this is just one side of the coin of emptiness the other is reconstructing or Constructing on purpose or skillfully skillful fabrication Since the existing self is already an ongoing constructing performance Maybe we can construct differently Because it's all masks and we have no true face behind it Well, we always need to wear a mask Which one so in light of all this the time trying to allude to perhaps certain Tantric Vajrayana practices you may have heard of about visualizing oneself as a deity Do not sound so strange and so exotic So in Vajrayana Buddhism as you may find in Tibet and also in some sect in Japan One engages in a meditation where one imagines oneself as a particular Bodhisattva or like we have here Kwan Gin. It is the Chinese Chinese female representation of Avalokiteshvara the bodhisattva of compassion and one imagines oneself as being Avalokiteshvara for example and inhabiting the mandala kind of the realm of Avalokiteshvara and one is Reciting the mantra of Avalokiteshvara like one is having also the speech and one is having the thoughts of compassion of Avalokiteshvara Of course one is not in a delusi