Vengeance

Last week's dreadful events in Mumbai had me thinking, in a previous entry, about death. They also triggered some thoughts about vengeance. Thus far, India has been commendably restrained in its response--at least insofar as action is concerned. There have been the press reports about high officials laying the blame for the attack on Pakistan but, to my knowledge, no rattling of sabers or deployment of troops to the border as in that earlier incident, back in 1992-93, when terrorists attacked the Indian Parliament. The exchange of angry words is inevitable; the return of violence for violence is not, if reasonable minds prevail.

The desire for revenge is understandable. Humanity 101. You slap me in the face, my hand itches to hit you right back. The Mumbai incident, obviously, provoked memories of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, and of the American response. Most of us, including my not-quite-completely Buddhist self, could not but feel that urge to respond to bloodshed with further bloodshed. The attack on the Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, whose support and training had enabled the 9/11 hijackers, seemed to me justified as an effort to protect ourselves from further harm.

In retrospect, though--and particularly in view of the current deteriorating situation in that unfortunate country--I question whether the American initiative was either practical or necessary. It has certainly proved ineffective in the long term. My sense is that the practical necessity for self-protection was so clouded by the spirit of revenge that intentions became unclear and confused, with the result that the real mission was left incomplete. The return of the Taliban today surely gains strength from that same spirit of revenge. The cycle is tragic and unending.

Insult to mind or body offers opportunity, however. I can respond in kind and give myself the momentary, illusory satisfaction of having repaid the offense; or I can swallow my pride and, in the words of that other great prophet, "turn the other cheek." In the latter case, I risk appearing weak in the eyes of the world, and of showing myself as a person to be taken advantage of--a risk not to be taken lightly in today's dangerous world. The risk, though, is perhaps even greater and more imminent if I choose the other path, returning violence for violence, satisfying my ego but opening myself to further retaliation.

I hope that India will seize the opportunity with a measured response and an invitation to continue along the path of peace. Under our current reckless leadership, we set the worst of examples. Had we responded soley with our attack on the Taliban and the terrorists they harbored, we might perhaps have stood justified in the eyes of the world. In following that up with the invasion of a country in no way related to the provocation, we lost our moral bearings as a country. An eye for an eye is poor policy for a great nation. Two eyes for one--and more--has proved an unmitigated disaster. Let's hope that India chooses a wider path than we did.

The Buddhist teaching is pretty clear: in exacting retribution, I am likely to do more harm to myself than to my enemy. As always, though, it is easier in the theory than in the practice. To follow the teaching requires some honest and fearless inner debate.

Angry? Why Not?

Okay, I make a point of accepting a challenge when it comes along. A comment on my past entry has me wondering whether I'm in fact as "frustrated" as the writer says, and whether I'm too "caught up in the tumultuous world." Am I a part of what the current occupant of the White House described, in his absurdly short address to the Republican convention last week, as "the angry left"? You bet I am. It seems to me the only rational response to what he and his administration have wrought, these past (nearly!) eight years. I'm mad about pretty much everything to do with politics. I'm mad, particularly, that the American voting public seems willing to be led about by its me-first nose, allowing the spinmasters to twist every evidence of corruption, incompetence and failure to their advantage.

I'm mad, this morning, in the knowledge that blame the Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac debacle and the attendant bailout will be cast on "government" and "Washington"--not for the truly reprehensible laissez-faire deregulation that for too many years catered to corporate and homeowner greed alike, but for bringing the bill to the door of the almighty "taxpayer." So who gets blamed? Not the free-marekteers, who have obscenely profited, but those who believe that government has a responsible role in exercising due vigilance over the economy.

I'm mad, this morning, about the "bounce" for the McCain campaign as a result of his selection of a person as unqualified to be president as anyone who has ever stood the proverbial heartbeat from that office. I'm mad that the "family values" gang are now ecstatic about the kind of unmarried teenage pregnancy that has previously aroused their ire and condemnation, despite their fanatical opposition to the kind of education that could help prevent it. I'm mad that this governor of Alaska has commanded so much media attention, as fodder for the consuming public's childish need for novelty and excitement, while the important issues that confront this nation go ignored.

And while I'm at it, I'm mad about the senseless war in Iraq and the deceptions that led up to it; I'm mad about the sheer incompetence of its conduct. I'm mad about the seven-year neglect of every other pressing issue in the Middle East including, especially, of course, the simmering conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians that is at the heart of it all--along with the demand for oil. I'm mad about the disgracing of America in the eyes of the world, and about the public shredding of its constitution. I'm mad about the coddling of the rich and the neglect of the poor. I'm mad about the denial of scientific evidence and the shameful delay in addressing the issue of global climate change. I'm mad that vast numbers of citizens in this richest nation in the history of the planet lack adequate access to health care. I'm mad that cour children's education lags so far behind that of children in other developed countries, and that we are so busy attending to our own needs and defending our own rights that we lack the will to make the improvements that are needed.

So, yes. I'm angry. It seems to me the only sane and reasonable response to what is happening in this country. And yes, I confess to being "caught up in this tumultuous world." I was gifted by my parents with a social conscience that will not allow me to walk away from what I see to be madness, injustice, abuse of power and economic exploitation. As for being one of a "frustrated bunch of Buddhists"... well, call it frustration if you will. And yet I have said repeatedly that while I learn immeasurably from the teachings of the Buddha and the meditation practice they inspire, I am not (yet?) able to call myself "a Buddhist."

So far as I understand them, the teachings here would not have me deny the anger that I feel. They would ask me to conscientiously explore the source of that anger, and the ways in which it might be relieved. They would not have me ignore the suffering of the world around me, nor my own. Skillfully practiced, though, they would help me to establish the kind of equanimity that might in some measure alleviate the suffering of myself and others. They would urge the kind of goodwill and compassion that is much needed in the world--and in our country--at this time. We would all be getting on very much better if we could remove our own prejudice from the equation and listen with mindful attention to the views of others. I recognize that I myself am not very good at doing that, but at least I'm aware of the need to try.

That said, to reduce Buddhism to the catch-phrase "all is dust" is to seriously misunderstand the wisdom that it teaches. Perhaps, as I understand it, the alternative construction, "there is dust, and then..." might be a little closer to the mark.

"Vengeance Is a Chain...

... there is no room for hate." So says Ingrid Betancourt, out of the wisdom of her six years of captivity in Columbian jungle camps by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia. "You have to pardon," she continues. I think that's the key of everything. We're human beings. We think different, we act different, but we are human beings."


I watched the few moments of her interview with NBC's Ann Curry that their morning show could spare, and was glad indeed to encounter her humanity. She spoke of the necessity for compassion not out of some philosophical belief, but out of a heart and body exposed to worst a human being might have to experience; extending it not only to those she loves, but to her captors, imprisoners, and torturers. There's true wisdom for you, compassion in its most generous and non-judgmental form. Let's call her "enlightened." To watch Betancourt and listen to her speak is to see and hear Buddhism in practice, with none of its religious trappings but all of its human understanding. Perhaps she, seemingly a devout Catholic, would call it simply Christian. If so, it's Christianity as Christ surely intended it.

"Vengeance is a chain." Listening to these words, I could not help but think about our hapless situation in Iraq, and how the piously "Christian" man in the White House and those he chose to appoint as his advisers exploited our instinctive (read "primitive") need for vengeance after the 9/11 attacks in order to promote his aggressive resource war for oil; and how we are now "chained" to the Middle East in ways that might have been avoided, had he chosen instead the path of wisdom and compassion. Clearly we needed, at that moment, to do what was necessary to protect ourselves from further attack: I personally think that a forceful response to Al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters in Afghanistan was necessary, if regrettable--not as an act of vengeance, but rather as a practical strategy for self-defense.

The invasion of Iraq was a different matter entirely. It could not have been achieved, I think, without the provocation of 9/11. I don't believe the American people would have tolerated the aggression without the exploitation of their emotional reaction to the 9/11 attacks. As a nation, we were still hot with shock and righteous anger, and still grieving those thousands of us who had died. In our rage, we were persuaded to overlook the well-established truth, that violence breeds only violence, and that vengeance never fails to wreak as great a devastation on its perpetrator as upon its victim. Compassion was the last thing on our minds as we surveyed the wreckage of the World Trade Center, deprived of even the bodies of the dead to bury.

Had we done more to address the root causes--among them, the genuine feeling in the Muslim world that the West was out to exploit their resources at the cost of their cultural and religious heritage--we might find ourselves in a very different situation today. Had we been just a little more Buddhist--or more Christian--in our response, we might now have more friends than enemies in that part of the world. Had we really paid attention and fully realized the role of oil in all this global instability, we might have begun to address our own addiction and be headed, already, toward a diminished dependency and a less threatened planet.

Instead, we chose vengeance. And what a powerful chain it has proved to be. We have yet to learn the lesson of Ingrid Betancourt. "We're human beings. We think different, we act different, but we are [all] human beings."

"God for Harry...

... England, and St. George!" Shakespeare's blood-summoning rallying-cry from his famous depiction of the start of the Battle of Agincourt comes to mind as we hear about our present-day Harry warrioring over there in Afghanistan. To judge from television interviews, he seems like a very decent young man in search of not only of adventure, but also some measure of independence, some sense of himself independent of the heritage of his birth. It must be a weight to have to carry around, along with all the exposure to the public that goes along with it.

I have not explored the political blogs, but I imagine there must be considerable backlash against The Drudge Report for outing Harry. It seems like an ungallant thing to have done, when the young man himself was exhibiting a gallantry of his own. Clearly, the revelation has put both him and his comrades at risk, setting him up as a juicy target for the Taliban, and this morning I hear that he will likely be withdrawn from the fighting lines at the front. More's the pity, if only in the sense that his presence there put the families of our American rich and powerful to shame. There are many things that I have admired about John McCain, and one of them is that he stands apart from virtually every other member of Congress in this respect, allowing his own family to stand in harm's way, as he himself did in his younger years.

(That said, let me quickly add that I oppose everything McCain proposes in the way of policies for the future; and that I note, sadly, that he has turned away from his purported principles on many important issues--even torture.)

Back to Harry and Afghanistan. Obama's right. It's here that the "war on terrorism" should have been pursued from its earliest days. The reported resurgence of the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies is a frightening reminder that we are very far from winning what, as it's currently conceived, is an unwinnable war. I heard on at least one report that they have regained a full one-tenth of the territory which they once ruled--thanks to our intervention in their struggle with the Soviet Union--with ruthless barbarity and medieval religious fervor.

And once again, I find myself in a distressing moral landscape. I despise war and violence, I despise the imposition of one person's will upon another, one country's will upon another; and yet when I see oppression of the kind once exercised by the Taliban against their own people, when I see the threat of ethnic cleansing and genocide, I find myself unable to embrace the full meaning of pacifism. I have to concede in such cases that armed intervention can become the desirable option.

As a recovering Brit, I take note of some silly remnant of national pride in that our prince Hal is fighting the right war. Even though I can't believe that "God" is for anyone, even Harry, England, and St. George, something in me admires the warrior in him. I could wish his warriorship might be manifest in actions other than the old-world, violent kind; but along with many others, I suspect, I am frankly pissed at Drudge for interposing what I judge to be his own self-importance into matters more weighty than his trivial report.

Slightly confused Metta to all this Friday! May we all find true happiness and peace in our lives.

The Buddha Diaries Recommends

Click here to read The Buddha Diaries review of "An Arrow to the Heart: a Commentary on The Heart Sutra" by Ken McLeod.

Thanks to this article by RJ Eskow in the current Tricycle (I think you have to subscribe to the online magazine if you want to read the whole article, but the magazine itself is a wonderful investment: consider this a plug!), we at The Buddha Diaries have been thinking a bit about Buddhism and blogging, and whether the twain should meet. Before The Buddha Diaires there was The Bush Diaries, the political blog that Peter started---like RJ Eskow--immediately following the 2004 re-election, and for the same reasons. Something had to be done, and the only thing I knew how to do was write. You'll find some further thoughts on the matter--and on the Democratic presidential race on Eskow's Huffington Post blog. It's an interesting debate, and one in which I engage every time I feel moved to respond, in these pages, to political events.

Cardozo, meanwhile, my trusty sidekick, turned up this wonderful site, where a bona fide warrior with a conscience fights the good fight against the senseless spilling of blood. Cardozo writes:

Pen and Sword

Jeff Huber, a retired U.S. Navy Commander, has been blogging about the Iraq War and other misadventures of the Bush administration since 2005. The voluminous archives of Pen and Sword exist as a compelling database of the illogicalities and deceptions that have characterized Bush II.

As Huber wrote in the blog's introductory post, by pursuing a "fist-first approach to shaping the rest of the world in our image, [we may] collapse under the weight of our own hubris..."

Pen and Sword is driven by a passion born from patriotism, and tempered by an encyclopedic knowledge of national security issues. The blog url (zenhuber.blogspot.com) hints at a connection to Buddhist thought, but we could find no confirmation of this apparent influence within the posts themselves. Perhaps Mr. Huber leaves it to the reader to draw the natural link between Buddhist teaching and his unflinching critiques of the neo-cons' propagation of war and U.S. global dominance.

Please drop in at Pen and Sword to pay a visit to this military man with two boots planted firmly on the ground.

To which Peter merely adds, Amen.

Hell (Part II): In Iraq

Speaking of hell, I have been promising to write about Aidan Delgado’s book, “The Sutras of Abu Ghraib: Notes from a Conscientious Objector in Iraq.” As the title suggests, it’s the personal—very personal—memoir of a young Buddhist man who had the extreme misfortune to be in the process of enlisting in the US Army on the very day those Muslim miscreants chose to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He had, in fact, signed his enlistment papers only minutes before hearing the news.

It was a rash act, for someone ready to declare himself a Buddhist, and plainly out of integrity with his still rather tenuously held beliefs. Delgado's father was a diplomat. As a boy growing up, he was exposed to a number of different cultures throughout the world and was easily bored by the academic tedium of a small Florida college. Judging himself out of place in that situation, somewhat supercilious in his attitude and dismissive of his class mates, he decided to enlist partly out of youthful rebellion and partly out of simple boredom and unease.

Would he have chosen differently the following day? Surely, in view of his experience in Iraq, he would later have chosen differently with the wisdom of hindsight. It is to Delgado’s credit that he does not gloss over the mistakes he makes, nor offer excuses for them. He writes this book, he says,

because I want to share a lesson I learned in the desert, in the hope that it will inform [the reader’s] view of the war in Iraq, of politics, of religion, of all the choices you make as a moral person… I want this book to serve as a hanging question about what it means to be an ethical soldier, to live an honest life…

He learned his lesson the hard way. Delgado’s descriptions of life on active duty, at times under mortar or heavy arms fire, at times in fear for his life and always, always, in extreme discomfort--from the sand that finds its way into everything to the cold at night and the raging heat by day--are eloquent, often truly appalling. Trained as a vehicle mechanic, he was not in the front lines of warfare, but he was witness to the boredom, the rage, the xenophobic distrust, the religious intolerance and the racial hatred among American troops that led to the outrage of Abu Ghraib, where he was stationed at the time of the atrocities. Without in any way condoning them, his book helps us to understand how it came about that otherwise decent but poorly educated young American men could become complicit in such dreadful acts of torture and humiliation.

Delgado also learned the hard way about the Buddhist path, which he acknowledged too late having abandoned. It took one of those epiphanic moments, in his case the sight of dead and dying insects on a window screen and “a strip of putrid flypaper coated in glue” to bring him to the realization of his fundamental error. “I can honestly say,” he wrote in that anguished moment, “that I am the worst Buddhist in the world...”

When I look at [the fly strip], I want to cry. A trapped and dying insect moves me almost to tears and here I am in this great and victorious war. I’m supposed to be a soldier, some kind of tough guy, and here I am writing about a poor moth. I hate it. I hate seeing any living thing suffer, I can’t stand it…

This is only the start of Delgado’s peculiar hell, the moment at which he understands that, to be back in integrity with himself and his beliefs, he must file for discharge from the Army as a conscientious objector. Word of his action soon gets out around his unit, and he falls victim not only to the pangs of his own conscience but to the fury and contempt of most of those he serves with. He survives a hostile assault by dint of resorting, himself, to violence—defending himself against an aggressor with a timely remembered martial arts move—and seems to gain, in this way, a certain grudging respect from his fellow soldiers. He recognizes the irony in having to earn it with his own act of violence.

Some of the toughest—and most poignant—moments in this book come at the time of a rebellion amongst the detainees at Abu Ghraib, in reaction to overcrowding, inedible food, and generally abominable living conditions. In watching his fellow countrymen respond with deadly force to defenseless, unarmed prisoners, Delgado is brought face to face with the glaring racial and religious hatred that contributes to their rage; and must confront the bitter reality of the intolerance that fuels it, despite his own growing awareness of the shared humanity of people on both sides.

In too many ways, this is a heart-rending book. The story is told without fuss or frills, without pretense or dissimulation. It acknowledges its author’s responsibility in the tragic passage of events in a war that, later, as a veteran, he will come to denounce for its needless inhumanity. At the same time, in its own terrible way, it does help to “make sense” of it all. It places us, as readers, slap in the middle of the action, gives us a feel for that “band of brothers” loyalty between those men who serve and who bond together in a powerful compact of love, and lets us know what it is to share the fear and rage.

I was writing just a couple of days ago about Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s uncompromising rejection of violence. Delgado is one “Buddhist” who came to an understanding of the precepts too late, and who seems, now, to want to devote his life to making up for that mistake. Non-violence is a difficult practice in a violent world, and Buddhism proves a salvation fraught with personal sacrifice and agony. Delgado has done an excellent job of showing us just how hard the path can be for one who takes it seriously. He has also done a service to the country by adding this personal experience to the ever-growing mass of evidence of the human fallout from the US invasion of Iraq.

Buddhism and the Pacificst Dilemma

I finished Aidan Delgado's book, "The Sutras of Abu Ghraib" over the weekend, and I do want to give it some thought in these pages. I need to take a bit more time, however, to let it all sink in, and don't want to write about it under the kind of pressure that Monday morning inevitably brings as we prepare for the return to Los Angeles from the beach. So please stay tuned. I know that I'll have something to say a little later in the week.

In the meantime, yesterday was the monthly visit to our sitting group from Thanissaro Bhikkhu. It's always a great pleasure and a great learning experience when Than Geoff comes. He leads us into an hour-long sit with guidance that is by now long familiar, but which is still a helpful reminder of the meditation practice that he teaches. After the sit, he answers questions for another hour--always with patient wisdom, a profound sense of humanity, and often just plain good sense. Gifted with a wry and generous sense of humor, he often has us laughing at the predicament of simply being human, at ourselves and our pretensions, even at himself.

He brings books, too. He has written so many of them that I sometimes suspect that he's up every day at four and has another one ready for the press by eight. They are all give-aways, their production and distribution made possible, I suppose, by the generosity of those who support the Metta Forest Monastery of which he is the abbott.



(This beautiful photo comes from the monastery's website.) Aside from the books, Than Geoff's articles are constantly appearing in Tricycle--and probably other journals of which I'm unaware. A naturally quiet and scholarly man, he seems to have some kind of inner fount of wisdom that is inexhaustible. Added to which, I'm sure that the focus and concentration developed through years of intense meditation practice enable this incredible creative flow.

I asked him about Buddhism and warfare and, thinking of Aidan Delgado and, of course, Burma, whether it would ever be permissible for a practicing Buddhist to engage in military action. His answer was a clear "No." He was critical of those Burmese monks for stepping beyond that line in marching in the streets. The monk's true moral authority, he said, comes from the ability to turn his bowl upside down in a gesture that refuses alms--and the blessings and implicit approval that the donor can expect to receive in return. That gesture, in a Buddhist country like Thailand or Burma, is itself sufficient reproof and political protest. To march in the streets, as Than Geofff sees it, is to sacrifice a good part of that moral authority.

A fellow sitter asked about the history of the samurai warrior and Zen Buddhism: was this not a warrior tradition with Buddhist underpinnings? Than Geoff argued that the samurai myth was an invention of 19th century Japanese revisionists, who needed for political reasons to discredit the pacifism inherent in Buddhist teachings. Interesting. Was there anything, ever, I wondered again aloud, that would justify a true Buddhist taking arms? Than Geoff remained clear and unambiguous: nothing. Ever.

A Visitor

He struts ahead
pompously, chest
thrust forward, head
nodding, nervous, eyes
alert for danger, past
our house. A touch
of self-importance there,
I judge. I have
a question for this
crow: why walk
when you can fly?

And...

Do you think that the US would have more leverage with nations like China, India and Russia on the Burma crisis, had we not blotted our international copybook so badly with Iraq--and with our generally arrogant, world-strutting attitude, these past few years? Just wondering... It's frustrating to see us so weak and ineffectual when monks and other citizens are being beaten and done to death by those intolerable generals and their military minions. Would we have been so completely powerless had we not squandered the goodwill extended to us at the time of the World Trade Center attacks?

Kicking Ass

I realize I'm a bit slow in responding to this one, but frankly I was expecting everyone else to. Naive me, I thought there'd be some kind of an outcry when it was widely reported that the man who sits in our Oval Office boasted to the Prime Minister of Australia that the U.S. is "kicking ass" in Iraq.

Now I'm no prude when it comes to language, and "ass" seems to me a relatively inoffensive word anyway. But in this context, it's what it suggests about the attitude of the man who used it that bothers me. On the one hand, it suggests a kind of high school locker room mentality that unhappily no longer shocks with this particular individual. We've heard enough from him to know that his grasp of the subtleties of language is less than one might wish from "the leader of the free world." We've seen enough of his antics to understand that his sense of humor is, well, boyish at best. We have grown used to, if not weary of, his immaturity.

Worse still, though, is the delusional quality of his observation. "Kicking ass," in all its pathetic boastfulness and arrogance, suggests an ease of victory, an ability to impose one's will on others that simply appears absurd in the context of the war in Iraq, where progress--if indeed one concedes such a concept in the first place, has been slow and painful at best. It continues to be slow and painful. Whose ass exactly, I might wonder, are we kicking. The insurgents'? Al-Qaeda's? If so, they show a remarkable resilience to having their ass kicked, since they are still pretty much as virulent as ever. With American troops and Iraqi civilians being killed by the score each day, the concept of our having "kicked ass" in that environment seems wildly off base. Does this man really believe the words he lets so casually slip?

And worst of all, of course, is the fact that he's talking about human lives and limbs. In this context, the casual humor is--sorry, I'm not humorless, but really--inexcusable. What it has to say about the man is deeply troubling, even if it isn't news. The fact that it passes by with barely a ripple of critical response from press or public is a sad commentary on the state to which our society is reduced. (I have not checked the political wing of the Internet yet, but I'm sure that here I might find some of the outrage I'm looking for. Naive me, I just wish that the entire nation would rise up in anger.)

The Buddhist concept of "Right Speech" seems useful to me here. Would that the man who currently poses as our president might have learned a small piece of that wisdom.

WHERE IS EVERYBODY?

There they were, a million strong, in Washington DC, holding candles in their hands and joining in song: "All we are saying, is give peace a chance." A million of them. Think of it! Think of the power of it!

We were watching the DVD of "The U.S. Versus John Lennon." How this one man, among many, back then, had the courage to stand up for his beliefs and speak them out loud. John Lennon singer, songwriter, pop star, intellectual, performance artist, genius, clown... Not many, of course, had John Lennon's name, nor the platform he had to reach millions throughout the world. Not many--none other, perhaps--could attract the international media to his slightest move, his zaniest pronouncement. And yet millions did stand up for their opposition to a senseless, senselessly protracted war. There was hardly a campus, back in those days, that was not in active revolt.

So where is everybody? We know from well-publicized polls that opposition to Bush's folly in Iraq is widespread, even passionate--and yet we all sit on our duffs or peck away at our computer keyboards, hidden behind the multiple monitors in virtually every house. (I say "all," but that's not entirely true: there are a few hardy souls, like those who stand in protest every Saturday near the boardwalk in Laguna Beach. I honor them.) Where--the question is by now familiar--where is the outrage? Where are the million people flooding Pennsylvania Avenue?

The John Lennon documentary is brilliant, by the way. Our current fiasco is barely mentioned, but you can't watch it without making the comparison all along the way. And the persecution of this cheeky, iconoclastic singer by the entire weight of the United States federal government is an indignation-inspiring tale that will get your emotions roiling in sympathy. What is remarkable is that John managed to survive it. But of course he didn't. Not eventually. It took the bullets of a crazed, gun-wielding lunatic to get him, but he died for the balls he had to stand out and be heard. If you haven't seen the movie, I'd suggest you rent it... It's great just to hear those songs.

Which brings me to Katrina. Ellie and I had watched, the previous two nights (we've been doing a lot of Netflixing!) the epic Spike Lee documentary on the hurricane and its aftermath, "When the Levees Broke." Not surprisingly, it's a film about the abandonment of a city and its people by every level of government. It's about the discrepancy between the fine words some Americans speak and the fecklessness of their actions, or inaction. It's about the unique history and traditions of a truly great, truly individual, truly American city and the callous neglect with which that history and those traditions were snubbed in the wake of natural disaster. It's a depressing story of the indifference of those in power and their betrayal of the trust misplaced in them.

And then last night I heard on the BBC World News that the United States is now rated forty-second in life expectancy among the nations of the world. Forty-second! A statistic not shared, to my knowledge in any of the American media. And then in this morning's New York Times I read Bob Herbert's column on the dramatic growth in urban crime and the bloodshed left in the path of disgracefully uncontrolled guns. And I read the letters on the Editorial page about our country's failure to provide health care for forty-five million of its citizens, including millions of children, and the ruined lives that result from this criminal neglect.

And I remembered that man who stole the Democratic presidential candidates' debate last week--the one who wept before and audience of millions with the shame and indignity of being unable to provide, in his senior years, for health care for his wife; and who asked, choking with emotion, "What has happened to America?" And I hear the familiar chorus of voices that keep inanely bleating that old cliche, the "This is STILL the greatest country in the world," and I wonder...

Ellie reports that she has been sleeping poorly for the past few days. Today she decided that it was likely due to her distress in watching those movies before bedtime--two days' worth of Spike Lee and, last night, John Lennon. What kind of a country have we become, she wondered aloud? What's happened to America? I myself had woken grumpy, and "got out the wrong side of the bed." When I heard what Ellie had to say, I could understand why.

Oppression Stories

"May I be free from oppression..."--The Sublime Attitudes

I have been traveling. In my mind, that is. I have been reading novels. They have transported me effortlessly through time and space, and given me hours of out-of-this body experience. It has been a while since I spent so much time in novel-land, and I had almost forgotten what a pleasure it can be. Let me tell you...

... about my trip to pre-World War II Europe with Alan Furst, who writes about the period as though he had lived it (he can't have done: he looks much too young and besides, his website informs us that he was born in Manhattan.) His characters move typically not at the center of historical action, but at the periphery; not primarily in the familiar theaters of war--Germany, France, England--but at the uncomfortable edges, places like Spain and Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria; and they are drawn in by the centrifuge of history into the mass of small intrigues that fuel it. I first learned about Furst from my son--thank you, Jason--and just recently finished the third of the three books I have read, "The Foreign Correspondent," whose central character is an underground Italian journalist, engaged, with a small coterie of associates, in the dangerous work of keeping the flames of freedom safe from the oppression of fascism with the small-circulation Italian newspaper that he covertly writes and edits. It's absorbing to accompany him on his missions through the crowded cafes of Paris, the seedy hotels of Hitler's Berlin, and the oppressive back streets of his Mussolini-dominated homeland. It's Furst's instinctive grasp of the history, of the diverse national identities, of the currents of power and cultural detail that sweep me into the experience of an historical period from whose example we should now, in the present, be learning about the dangers of secrecy and the seizure of civil rights.

I have also made a painful journey into the heart of Afghanistan, courtesy of Khaled Hosseini, whose first book, "Kite Runner," was the gripping tale of a boy growing up in that cauldron of the current Middle Eastern struggle with its own history, and the conflict of its religious and cultural traditions with the modern age. "A Thousand Splendid Suns," Hosseini's second book, follows the dreadful, ever worsening fate of two women through the recent history of Afghanistan--from the quasi-medieval pre-contemporary period to the Soviet occupation and the armed resistance of the mujahadeen, to the expulsion of the Soviets and the arrival of the despicable Taliban, and the eventual rout of the Taliban after jihadist attacks on New York's World Trade Center. Theirs, too, is a story of oppression--by a society traditionally dominated by men, whose sense of honor, entitlement and religion justifies any abuse they choose to visit upon their wives and daughters, from the deprivation of education, to virtual imprisonment, all the way to physical abuse and murder with impunity. The two brave women at the center of this story--one of them from the country, barely educated but innately sensitive and intelligent, the other from the city, secretly educated by an enlightened father--are married to the same monster of a man, to whose abuses one eventually succumbs, while the other barely survives. This, in the context of flying bullets and raining morters, destroyed lives at times near starvation. The reader is relieved, at the end, by a note of hope and the miraculous survival of love--along with the realization that the post 9/11 American intervention in that country was truly an act of liberation, but one from which, tragically, our own country was distracted by the ill-thought invasion of Iraq. To any reader of this book, the notion that the Taliban might be permitted to reestablish power in Afghanistan is an unimaginable nightmare.

Ah, yes. And then Australia, where Richard Flanagan's "The Unknown Terrorist" takes place, in a society depicted in a way that the American reader cannot but make comparisons with our own. Flanagan's Sydney is a city whose denizens are obsessed with materialistic notions of well-being and success, where the media become the willing vehicle for product promotion and the expansion of corporate control, where politicians cynically distort the truth in order to satisfy their egos and consolidate their power, where the police capitulate to the whims of the politicians and the media, where the rich parade their wealth and the poor descend into despair, prostitution, drug and alcohol abuse, and degradation. Against this backdrop, the book's main character and focus, the Doll, a pole dancer in a strip joint, falls victim to lies, calumny and innuendo in a momentary bout of civic hysteria about a supposed terrorist plot (non-existent, as we eventually discover) to attack the city. We follow her as she becomes, innocently, more and more deeply entangled in the twisted schemes of evil men who claim to have the interests of the homeland at heart, and accompany her in a tragic descent into a finally inescapable destiny.

"The Unknown Terrorist" is a compelling read--one of those books you want to read at a single sitting--and one that offers a terrifying picture of the current state of the world, dominated as we are by genuine fear and pumped-up paranoia, and where we all too willingly surrender our rights--along with our good sense--to the hysteria of the moment. Fear itself, readily exploited by those hungry for wealth and power, is the oppressor; and the book is a timely reminder of our need to remain conscious and alert to the ever-present danger of being swallowed up in the nightmare.

As a part of my daily meditation practice, I include that wish from the Sublime Attitudes: May I be free from oppression... May all living beings be free from oppression. These three books make that wish all the more urgent, all the more needed, all the more real.

Conversations: What now?

Note: I'm taking over conversations temporarily, while Peter is away in Europe - Cardozo

Last night, the local news reported the death of an American soldier in Iraq, who hailed from nearby Torrance. I don't know why, but this death seemed like the last straw. For a moment I really thought I was going to pack my bags, leave my apartment, and figure out a way to stop the war. I'm pretty good at conflict resolution...why couldn't I do it?

Of course, the moment passed and I realized that my powers of persuasion are actually pretty limited (with the exception of a time-tested pout that works on my mother and my girlfriend). I was left feeling as powerless as ever in relation to the tragedies that are prosecuted by the American Government with my (admittedly minuscule) tax dollars. This is a problem, because of my dream of a life lived in tribute to my conscience. I'm not Iranian, British, or Cuban, so I don't accept any personal blame for what happens in those countries, or others. But I live in America and participate in its Democracy, so America's antics are my own, in part.

All of this is leading up to a question I'd like to pose to readers of The Buddha Diaries. Do you think that any of this really matters? If we are, as they say, spiritual beings having a human experience, should premature death really be considered a tragedy...something to disrupt the pleasure of life? Are we obligated to pursue a just world, or does it all just "come out in the wash" since we humans - like everything else - are just temporary conglomerations of molecules.

I guess the question becomes, do we have a soul?

Pax et lux offers an interesting discussion of the apparent futility of social action.

One Day Blog Silence

I do plan to participate in the "One Day Blog Silence" tomorrow. The Buddha Diaries will go dark. The notion for the day of silence was prompted by the rampage of violence on the Virginia Tech campus, but my own observation is motivated also by the needless death of more British and American soliders this weekend in Iraq; and by the mindless murder of innocent people throughout the world, particularly the civilians being slaughtered in sectarian violence in Iraq and those suffering from the latest inexcusable episode of genocide in Darfur. Having just read the Jeffrey Gettleman article in today's New York Times "Week in Review" about the recruitment and abuse of children as killers in several African nations, I include these boys and their victims in my intention to observe the day of silence.

Easter

Well, it was Easter Day yesterday, and I missed my entry in The Buddha Diaires. Also missed sangha--Ellie and I did our sit out on the back patio of our little cottage, surrounded by the sounds of the birds and our Buddha fountain. And missed, to my regret, Than Geoff's monthly visit to our sitting group: we joined our friends for a family Easter lunch and it lasted until, well, seven in the evening... I had planned to take a quotation from the Ariyapariyesana Sutta (pronounce that one!) to ask about, but that will have to wait for the next opportunity.

We did, though, place Easter calls to my two sons--one in Iowa City, the other in the South of France, visiting in-laws with his family. We spoke to our three grandchildren. It's a pleasure that they're all old enough now--our granddaughter, Alice, eight, and the twins, Georgia and Joseph, five--to actually have a bit of a conversation. It's hard to maintain some sense of family connection when they're growing up so far away, in England. Having treased ourselves with the idea for months now, we're planning--at both ends--to explore the possibilities of video communication. We're so often told "it's easy." It's for such reasons that I wish I were more comfortable with the technological aids available these days. For the moment, we're having enough trouble learning how to get the I-Pod working properly for Ellie.

The headline in this morning's Los Angeles Times? Ten more American soldiers killed in Iraq. And anti-American demonstrations promised for today, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad. It's maddening, to see power still held in the hands of that tiny group of men who persist in believing that this misbegotten war is anything other than a national and international disaster...

Good Friday

Ah, yes, Good Friday... I guess I have aging on the mind because I woke this Good Friday morning thinking about Jack Palance and his one-arm push-ups at the Academy Awards and then I thought about his great scenes in Shane in the black pants and the black shirt and the black hat and how he gunned down Van Heflin with a curl of the lip and a glint in his eye and how he then got his in turn from sad-eyed good guy Alan Ladd who had to ride off into the sunset to save his soul and of our avenging gun-toting Jesus-loving cowboy president who listens only to God the Father and his corporate sponsors riding to the rescue with his gang who couldn't shoot straight... and then I thought of Cat Balou and Lee Marvin and his hilarious spoof of Jack Palance in his black pants and black shirt and black hat totally soused and riding to the rescue of Jane Fonda and then I thought about Hanoi Jane and the outrage in America and how thirty or so years on it doesn't matter any more and soon I found myself thinking about this whole goddamned awful tragic mess in Iraq and the Middle East and about the simple-minded trust in the myth of the good guy gunslinger who rides in and saves us all from those who threaten us when in reality only we can save us from ourselves... and then there's that other myth of our president's personal redeemer Jesus dying on the cross and saving us from evil...

Tattoos... and Soldiers & Refugees

Please tell me what you think about tattoos... The subject came up at group last night, after one of our artists brought in two paintings of young women with tattoos--one an IV drug addict, the other a hooker. His theory--I trust I represent him accurately--is that tattoos, along with body piercings and other such practices, suggests a return to tribalism among young people in the context of a society whose systems they reject. One reader of these pages, I know, has been conducting his own informal poll about shaved heads. Are they related to the tattoo phenomenon, I wonder? I have a few ideas myself, but I'd be really interested to hear what you-all think...

***

Speaking of tattoos, there was a piece on CNN this morning about their growing appeal in Iraq, where they were previously forbidden. Some take it as new expression of freedom. Others, distressingly, believe that tattoos will help their relatives identify them in the event of their death and dismemberment in one of those all-too-frequent deadly bomb attacks. Faithful Islamists decry them as a desecration of the body given us by God. Meantime, according to the CNN report, the tattoo artists are doing good business.

I also watched the first half of Richard Engel's "War Zone Diary" after group last night--I admit I was too tired to watch the whole two hours, and I had forgotten to record it. But I found it to be a very moving account, precisely because it was so personal. Interspersed with mini-interviews with himself recorded on a personal hand-held camera, the piece took an up-close look at people in dire, life-threatening situations and listened without slant or judgment to their stories.

It was a harrowing experience, just to watch this footage. Aside from the gore, the burned bodies, the severed body parts--and there was no shortage of these--the reality of war was brought home in the "band of brothers" intimacy and courage of American soldiers separated from their loved ones, as well as in the pain and grief of Iraqi war victims. There were those who had lost or were forced to abandon their homes, the dispossessed and the refugees. There were those who were trapped by their circumstances in the middle of the battle. There were those who were maimed in body or in mind. There were those who had chosen to take up their own weapons to join in the fight. All people. All living in close, first-hand proximity with suffering and death, and seen through the lens of a camera that seemed to want to get beyond the news and beyond the emnities, to the very human heart of the matter.

Kudos to Richard Engel for this "diary." Like this diary of mine, in its more fortunate, sheltered way, "War Zone Diary" tries to look out on the world with an honest gaze, and to take things--in a good way--personally.


LES'S GREENS: a dream

Ellie and I are visiting my good friend Les. He shows us the greens he has been cultivating in the basement of his home with great love and care, and of which he is genuinely proud. Arugula? Perhaps. They are exotic, highly prized greens, a rarity and a special culinary treat. Les has been planting them in stages: some are young and tender, some advanced in growth. As he tells us about them with great, affectionate pride, I casually reach out and pull one of the taller ones from the ground, with the suggestion that we share it three ways between us. Les is devastated. He can't believe I would be so thoughtless and insensitive. He can't see how our friendship can ever be renewed. Ellie, too, is appalled. I realize now what a dreadful thing I did, and feel mortified by my action. Les has taken refuge under one of the shelves in this greenhouse he has created, and is too distressed to speak. I try to apologize. I beg him to accept a make-up, some act of service that will restore the good faith between us. I am still unable to reach him as the dream comes to an end.

Learning to Yell

Sometimes I wish I had greater familiarity and skills with the Internet. I was driving out on a quick errand yesterday, for example, and caught just a snippet of a report on our local public radio station that I would love to have heard in full. It was part of an interview with an American trainer charged with educating police in Afghanistan to do a more effective job. I heard about sixty seconds of the piece before I had to leave the car, but I would have loved to have been able to track it down later on the computer to hear the whole thing. I tried. Alas, no luck.

The part that caught my attention was where the trainer was expressing a certain frustration in his work because his Afghan trainees possessed what he saw as a kind of cultural trait of modesty and natural--or learned--"politeness" that ran against the grain of what he was trying to achieve. "These people don't know how to yell at another person," he was complaining. (My memory of his words may be somewhat less than precise.) "You have to teach them how to yell." When you're ordering someone to surrender a lethal weapon that they're threatening you with, I guess it's not hard to see what the man means. If you can't show your assailant, in your voice, that you mean business, well... you could very quickly end up dead.

The interviewer allowed us to eavesdrop on a yelling education session, and you could see what the instructor meant. Well, rather, you could hear it. The model yell--from the American--was impeccable: a full-throated, angry, assertive, emasculating bellow. And you could hear the sincere effort on the part of the student to emulate the effect. And yet... well, the poor man just couldn't reproduce his teacher's excellently-simulated rage. You could hear the apology for being rude even as he did his best to bark out the order. His voice said, Excuse me, I wouldn't want to trouble you, but...

I couldn't help but chuckle at the contrast, but it was also at a deeper level quite disturbing. Obviously, in a life-or-death situation where you're confronted by a desperate or ruthless assailant, you've got to get results--and the American instructor's voice made it clear that there was no choice in the matter. His voice commanded compliance, unambiguous and brooking no hesitation or denial. The bully voice--and with it, certainly--the bully attitude of the American was undoubtedly what was needed for success in a combative situation. And yet the cultural comparison it invited left me with a sneaking preference and affection for his reluctant student, whose disinclination to impose his will on someone else left him open to attack--but was far more appealing, far more human in my estimation.

Okay, to repeat a lesson that I cited early on in these pages: the Buddha never said you have to be a doormat, and there comes a point where it's simply foolish to fall victim to aggression from those who wish you ill. Still, it does seem to me that we, as a country, have crossed that moral line between the righteous protector/defender and the bully. It's sad enough that in the most powerful quarters of our government, aggression seems to have become an accepted modus operandi, a reaction of choice. It's even sadder that we feel obliged to teach others--even if against their better nature--to be bullies like ourselves.

I'm not a pacifist. I lived through World War II. And while the argument that violence leads only to more violence has a dreadful and undeniable logic to it, I still believe that there are times when it is necessary. I have the sick feeling that it might be necessary in Afghanistan, where a ruthless band of fanatics is still ready to kill and maim in order to achieve its goals. But the results of violent intervention are all too evident in Iraq, where our rash and foolhardy aggression has succeeded only in re-igniting a bloody history of internecine strife that is centuries old and obviously beyond our competence and control. The lesson, it seems to me, where violence is concerned, is the wisdom that is arrived at only through thoroughly self-questioning foresight and restraint.