F Alexei
Venues for possible collaboration
Working with homeless or climate change
greater participation amongst us
Personal experience from travel
Was in Jerusalem twice. Once in Louisville.
Very workshops on climate change and what we should be doing.
Mentioned the efforts of BCD twice
How bodies of faith can work together
Excited but scattered
Bob M
Met Bob Williams
Having a service for the 320 homeless who have died recently in the streets of LA County. Nov-May.
Will try to do something in the Valley.
Bob M
San Gabriel Coalition of Homeless
Administering shelter program since 95
People are shocked by how many people die in the streets.
Chronic homeless, resigned themselves to dying in the streets.
Richard
Had their names, ages, date of death, and where
Provided by LA Coroner
Mankuang
Cause of death? Frozen?
Bob M
Many reasons. Hard to stay healthy on the streets.
Richard
They have social security. But limited amount.
Sometimes they will band together for shelter and food.
Biggest thing is transitional housing. But we lost funding for that.
Alexei
Coroner will count people found dead in street but not cause.
Bhante
Coroner may not say because we are not related to them.
Richard
Money came from federal community block grants
It has Been diminishing
Bob M
$50k from neighboring
6 different churches in different areas
Cities in the past had been given large amounts of money
2008 Great Recession. Money shrank since.
$2500 received last year
Depending on foundation grants now.
The aggregate puts us in a position of being difficult to maintain.
Can’t predict where the income is going to come from.
We come in contact with thousands of homeless every year. We are probably in the best position to encourage them to get off the street. The longer they are homeless, the harder it is to get out. They get acclimated. Mental issues.
It’s so difficult to do things BC of funding.
Alexei
Tzu Chi and St Vincent de Paul are forefront
Debra
Not sure what we will do this year
Bob M
We collaborate with Volunteers of America
We can see when and where they opened thei access centers.
They’re not open anymore.
We are the one dealing with homeless in front lines. They do not.
They need a place like a motel. Get their kids cleaned up. Need at least a week in a motel. Before we can provide that.
The things that are needed out there that way. An organization like us is very small, unlike VofA. We do different things than them. Very hard for us to get funding.
Problem is very fragmented.
Alexei
That was the exact consensus of the LA Council religious leaders yesterday.
There’s no coordinated effort so no one knows what the other is doing.
Bob M
We HD established two different motels that gives us a substantial break in price.
Got extra funding from city of El Monte to put people in motels while we work with them.
We explore all the avenues that are available.
A section 8 voucher. But cannot find an apartment. Rent is so high. Landlords don’t want to deal with it.
Richard
Yesterday meeting. San Gabriel valley is called SPA3. Will be receiving a listing of motels.
Deborah
SPA1-6 has a meeting every month.
If an individual canny get funding for motel, Tzu Chi can provide it.
But need to be mobile.
Before we would sponsor them, we need individuals for volunteers. Need a faith based background.
But what happens after 2 weeks?
Deborah
One new perspective on funding
Grant bargain
Before funding would go to large organizations like VofA
Now they are setting aside some money for smaller charities, more local funding about how to take care of homeless, refugees.
For faith based organization we don’t have enough power to participate in meeting like VofA. Our strength is service provider. But funding is very limited.
Alexei
We decided last meeting to discuss the Buddhist and Catholic practices about this issue.
Bhante
What is Buddhist practice?
Ethical moral issues, responsibilities.
Applications of Buddhism in real world.
Real world. Reality is that every day lives and choices are different.
How we react with others. That is the challenge with Buddhism, and other religions in the world.
Not just accepting the practice of the religion, reciting sutras, etc.
8 noble path. That is the practical side of Buddhism. Right thought. Right action.
Practice is when we open our eyes and see things.
Cultivating wholesomeness in ourselves.
We are challenged to practice mindfulness.
Easy to say, difficult to practice.
Medication is good for beginners.
The challenge is to live without judgements.
Buddhist practice. Need to look at something with multiple angles.
Constant practice, right effort.
Alexei
To be a Christian is not just to accept Jesus, but it should be a way of life.
There is a resonance with your first statement.
Compassion. What would that mean to a Buddhist?
V Mankuang
Mindfulness need to be part of daily practice.
Compassion means to trade places with others. Understand their suffering.
Pure Garden, Avatamsaka sutra
By practice of these verses, we can have more compassion and mindfulness in our daily lives.
140 versus as part of our training. For mindfulness.
3 poisons in Buddhism: greed, anger, delusion.
All the suffering in this world is impermanent.
Even though we are in suffering world, we try to help the homeless. We may lack funding, etc. from our own practice, we make a vow to help.
These versus teach us to keep a positive and open mind about everything.
Once I read these versus, I find the faith again, positive energy.
Purify our mind, it’s not just sitting for meditation. Have to act in daily life from behavior or observing others.
In Buddhism we say we help people out of our compassion. When we help people with wisdom, that is the best way.
Bhante
When people have wisdom, compassion is there. When compassion so there but no wisdom, the word is stupid.
Richard
Santa Barbara allowing people who live in cars to park somewhere.
Bhante
The idea of opening garages to homeless.
City refuses to do it with their property, why ask religious leaders?
Alexei
Liability issues
Bob M
Always been an issue.
The concern is what happens in the morning?
We have been doing his since 1993, we don’t have these issues.
Several churches have schools. Need people gone before 7:30a. Little issues.
170 homeless every night.
We are blessed with what we are doing and why it works.
Richard
Busing is biggest challenge
We have a lot of organizations providing food.
Deborah
We studied why they’re so successful.
They empower the homeless to be leadership.
They are captains in shelters.
They tell which one we can touch. Which ones we cannot touch tonight.
V Zen
We have been conditioned in this discussion
How can we prevent the future homeless?
That’s where we should focus our energy on.
We should think of something to educate the public.
We should prevent homeless and to prevent their self destruction.
We spend billions to build shelters, etc. it’s very difficult to reverse that. They trained themselves to be like that. I’m not saying we shouldn’t help them. David from St Vincent de Paul. After spending millions and millions they can only help 30 people a night.
Alexei
How did you apply compassion in Boston to homeless?
V Mankuang
Be their friend
Ask them what they want
Some don’t need food, some just want to talk
That’s is the Buddhist way, just talk.
If I was homeless one day, what would I do?
Bob
There is a tremendous amount of insensitivity by people at the top.
V Zen
Recently people are losing faith
They are conditioned by the media
When they have money they can do anything. Their mind is conditioned to one thing: capitalism.
Bob
I think that’s a trap to blame that philosophy
We never left the feudal system
You can’t have wealth without a healthy consumer system
V Zen
On the mental homeless issue that is something this group can do
We can push mental and morality code to the mass.
If not we as religious leaders who else is going to do it?
Not just the poor. The rich are mentality homeless too.
They want to make money in any way possible.
Alexei
Next meeting July 15th LMU
Close with Passage from sutra