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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 6, 2015)
2C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2015 Beliefs INSPIRATIONAL MESSAGES FROM LOCAL CLERGY Submitted Photo Janet Ault is a resident at Great Vow Zen Monastery. Open doors, open minds By JANET AULT SSHFLDO WR TKH DDLO\ AVWRULDQ S etting foot in the bright halls and tranquil gardens of Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, you may feel a little more pep in your step. From the serene stone Buddhas to the smil- ing troupe of light-footed residents, it’s clear that friendly spirits dwell here. Peace rests upon this place. And you can sense the countless lives whose devoted effort made it so. Ordained and lay practitioners rise before dawn to sit long meditation and again from dusk to dark. They chant with reverent gusto, perform an ancient meal ritual of gratitude. Residents wear simple smocks, scour and maintain the tem- ple grounds with elbow grease, and prepare basic vegetarian meals. They engage in group and pri- vate studies with the teachers. Co-abbots Chozen Bays, Roshi and Hogen Bays, Roshi vow to be open to those in need. The monastery hosts a Sunday public service with meditation and dharma talks as well as weekend retreats such as mindful eating, the inner critic, and an introduction to Zen practice. One week a month they drop everything extra to focus on sesshin, an intensive meditation retreat to realign the compass of practice. Monastics renounce certain pleasures to in- vestigate the mind’s nature and practice harmoni- ous service. Through collective power, they face discomfort and hang-ups head-on to cultivate the helpful, dismantle the harmful, and probe: What is existence and this thing I call myself? For, they EHOLHYHRQO\E\FKDOOHQJLQJ¿[HGYLHZVFDQZH begin to realize our potential for change. -DQHW AXOW LV D UHVLGHQW DW WKH *UHDW VRZ =HQ MRQDVWHU\ LQ &ODWVNDQLH ? 9-1-WHAT? Thibault Camus/AP Photo France’s Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve spoke during a debate on secularism in schools at Jean Zay college in Paris Wednes- day. The school door and the cafeteria menu are the new front lines in the anguished debate over religion in France, where children in one Paris suburb this week were denied alternatives to pork in the name of secularism. After attacks, France walks narrow line on Islam in schools Pork, or nothing, for students By LORI HINNANT AVVRFLDWHG 3UHVV PARIS — This was the week that schoolchildren in one Paris suburb got a stark choice at the cafeteria: pork or nothing at all. Chilly-Mazarin joined a hand- ful of towns run by right-leaning mayors which have ended a prac- tice of offering a substitute for students forbidden by their reli- gion from eating pork. The decisions have come amid increased discussions in France about its secularist ideals follow- ing the terror attacks in January that were blamed on French Is- lamic extremists — a discussion critics say has been hijacked by anti-Muslim forces on the far right. On Wednesday, the Socialist government issued unusually di- rect criticism against the schools that have ended the pork substi- tutes as it was training dozens of appointees to mediate tense ques- tions about the role of religion in schools and in public life. Increasingly narrow line In back-to-back speeches, the education and interior ministers walked the country’s increasingly narrow line on religion in schools, with the unspoken threat of Is- lamic extremism hovering over the auditorium in Paris’ tony 16th arrondissement. Education Minister Najat Val- Thibault Camus/AP Photo France’s Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve shakes hands with a woman working at Jean Zay college prior to attending a debate Wednesday. laud-Belkacem said teachers at schools have to impart the secu- larist ideal, but “not a secularism that is a declaration of war against a religion, as we see when a may- or here or there decides that in the name of a so-called secular ideal, children will be forced to eat pork or skip school lunch.” France forbids “ostentatious” symbols of religion in schools and government buildings, a mandate generally interpreted to mean Muslim head scarves and one that includes parents who ac- company school outings wearing them. Schools take seriously their mission to educate the next gen- eration of secular French citizens, never more so than since the Jan- uary terror attacks. Vallaud-Belkacem alluded to that mission repeatedly in her speech to the mediators, whose job is to offer advice to local governments and schools about France’s much-vaunted division between church and state. “School is a place of knowl- edge, not of belief. This distinc- tion is essential and we have to re- peat it and teach it without cease,” said Vallaud-Belkacem, who was born in Morocco and raised as a Muslim. Schools need to take responsibility for spotting and countering extremism, she said. Little economic power, even less hope But some say that what France GH¿QHVDVDUHOLJLRXVSUREOHPDF- tually leads to discrimination of a minority population that has little economic power and even less hope of advancement. “The terror attacks of Janu- ary 2015 weigh heavily on the ZD\WKHSUREOHPLVGH¿QHG´VDLG Olivier Noel, a sociologist who studies discrimination in France. “When you are talking about mis- using the secular ideal, on the one hand it’s happening on the ex- treme right, with Islamophobia. Then you have the extreme sec- ularism of the left. And without meaning to, they join the posi- tions of the extreme right.” Vallaud-Belkacem and Interi- or Minister Bernard Cazeneuve GUHZ WKH OLQH DW SXEOLF ¿JXUHV they accused of using attacks on religion to score political points. Vincent Berton is the secular mediator for the Marseille area, a Mediterranean crossroads where religions have mixed for hun- dreds of years. But even there, he VDLG³\RX¿QGWKHVDPHTXHVWLRQV pretty much everywhere” scarves, school meals, prayers. The issues are not clear cut. Although a group of intellectu- DOVÀRDWHGWKHLGHDRIYHJHWDULDQ meals as a secular alternative, the concept of meatless lunch- es has yet to take hold. But in Chilly-Mazarin, for example, the school cafeteria menus for No- vember and December show only four days when pork is the only main dish offered. And in the Burgundy town of Chalon-Sur- Saone, an administrative panel rejected an emergency request to keep the substitutes, ruling that only two of 50 meals until the end of the year contained pork. The tribunal said the hard de- cision whether the town’s deci- sion was an attack on freedom of religion will be made within three months by a higher judge. TULFN, GH¿QLWHO\, WULFN T he runup to Halloween brought out the drunk and the weird to emer- gency dispatch. Like the extremely intoxicated dude in Warrenton who greeted trick- RUWUHDWHUVLQWKHQXGH7ULFNGH¿QLWHO\WULFN And then there was the stolen fruit. And the teenagers charging elk that were bedding down. Some free advice: Elk don’t forget. Follow reporter Kyle Spurr on his 9-1-What? Twitter watch, where a few of the sometimes head-scratching calls to area dispatch take center stage. The full feed is at www.twitter.com/9_1_WHAT. THE BEST OF THE WORST CALLS TO ASTORIA 911 DISPATCH s a v e 20 - 50 % Antiq u es Diam onds Art Estate Jew elry es R ic VE Pr p or SIL f To & holiday sale 503-325-7600 T u esday-Su nday LD on 12th Street GO Dow ntow n Astoria
