Off the Cushion

…So I’m not even going to try. Here he is:

Please come to the bone marrow drive at the Dharma Seal Temple in Rosemead, CA, next Sunday, February 26th. It’s an incredibly important cause, as the fliers below indicate.

On this subject, see also a past post at my personal website, “Buddhists Represent for Mixed Marrow”.

My home institution, University of the West, will be hosting the great Ven. Karma Lekshe Tsomo on campus for a lecture on the subject of “Buddhist Women and Social Justice.” The event, which is free, will be held on March 1st, from 5:30 – 7:00pm in the Exhibition Hall at University of the West, 1409 N. Walnut Grove Ave., Rosemead, CA, 91770. A PDF flyer is below.

For the uninitiated, the Ven. Karma Lekshe Tsomo is an American nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition; Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego; co-founder and current president of Sakyadhita International Association of Buddhist Women; and director of Jamyang Foundation, an initiative to provide educational opportunities for women in the Indian Himalayas and Bangladesh. In addition, she is the prolific author and editor of such books as Buddhism Through American Women’s Eyes; Buddhist Women Across Cultures: Realizations; Buddhist Women and Social Justice: Ideals, Challenges, and Achievements; and Into the Jaws of Yama: Buddhism, Bioethics, and Death, among many others.

The UWest community owes our adjunct faculty member Dr. Michaela Haas a huge thank you for making this happen. I hope to see you at Ven. Karma Lekshe Tsomo’s talk!

Joshua Eaton.

Joshua Eaton is the editor, writer, and translator who founded the visionary Dana Wiki (www.danawiki.org) — an online resource meant to aid Buddhist Americans in community service work. A graduate of the Master of Divinity in Buddhist Studies program at the Harvard Divinity School, he also served as editor-in-chief of Cult/ure: The Graduate Journal of Harvard Divinity Schoolduring his time at the institution. Today, among other things, he is a contributing scholar at the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue’s State of Formation. Joshua is also an active, must-follow Twitterer @joshua_eaton.

In addition to all this good work, Joshua has been a steady, devoted Buddhist presence in the Occupy Wall Street movement. I’ve wanted to do more about Buddhism and #Occupy, and knowing Joshua to be a great interview, I couldn’t resist asking him to spend some time talking to us about the two. What follows is our e-conversation.

On behalf of our readers… Thank you, Joshua — and keep up the great work!

*

First of all, could you tell us a little bit about your own involvement in the Occupy movement?

I’ve been involved with Occupy Boston since its first General Assembly, before there was even a camp. I didn’t actually camp much when we had an encampment, but I was there almost every day. I’ve been most active with Occupy Boston’s Media Working Group, where I help out with social media generally try to help keep things organized. I’ve also been planning some autonomous direct actions with members of the Protest Chaplains, whom you might have heard of. We put on a live-action, Occupy-themed nativity play at the site of Occupy Boston’s evicted camp for Christmas, and we’re planning some things for Lent, as well. I’ve been pretty active with Occupy Harvard, as well, though less so recently.

Aside from Occupy Boston and Occupy Harvard, I’ve spent some time with Occupy Ottawa and made a lot of connections there. I’ve also been to Occupy UMass-Boston and Occupy Kingston Ontario. (Unfortunately, I haven’t been to Occupy Wall Street yet.) Right now I’m working on a couple of articles about Buddhism and the Occupy movement, which is a topic that I also tweet about from @OccupyBuddhism.

This is very broad question, but let’s see where it takes us. From your vantage point, why should Buddhists care about and/or get involved with the Occupy movement?

My first response is personal. I grew up in a working-class, single-parent household and was the first member of my family to graduate from college. Afterward I was fortunate to get a full scholarship to the Master of Divinity program at Harvard University. I’ve just now found steady, full-time work after graduating in May 2010. And I was mostly looking for clerical work rather than work related to my degree. Like a lot of people my age, I’m afraid that we no longer live in a country where upward mobility is a real possibility. There are a lot of stories out there like mine. Most are even worse. The American middle class has been slowly disappearing for forty years now. That ought to concern everyone.

Buddhists aren’t any different. If our practice gives us an identity that sets us apart from others—whether they be our friends, our classmates, the people we work with, or our fellow Americans—then it isn’t working. In fact, it’s doing the opposite of what it should do. My primary teachers are always emphatic on this point: our practice should make us ordinary, down-to-earth, simple, and engaged with the world around us. It should make us more human, not less

My second response is intellectual. Buddhism relies on society for its continued existence. Even monastics, who intentionally withdraw from social institutions, depend on lay disciples for their physical needs. Dharma centers depend on their members for financial support and volunteer work. Teachers depend on students for their livelihood. In order for Buddhism to be healthy, society has to be healthy. It cannot exist in some rarified spiritual bubble that’s isolated from society’s problems. If we want the seed of the dharma to sprout and grow in the West, then we have to plant it in good soil.

This is basic interdependence. It’s why the Buddha often gave financial advice to his lay students. It’s why the Buddha and other teachers who came after him so often advised kings on what social and economic policies would be most virtuous. We don’t often hear about these teachings on politics and economics, but there are just tons of them in every school. Buddhism also preserved and transmitted a lot of medical knowledge as it moved throughout Asia. This is because people have always recognized that you need a healthy body and a healthy society to practice the dharma. This body, this society—there’s nowhere else for us to practice, nowhere else for us to escape to, nowhere else for us to go.

What resources in the Buddhist traditions have been helpful/inspiring/motivating for you in terms of thinking about economic justice?

There are several scriptures and other texts that have helped me connect Buddhism and economic justice. One example is chapters 3 and 4 of Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland. Among other things, Nagarjuna tells the king to whom he’s writing to implement universal health care, to build public works, not to overtax his subjects, not to hinder foreign merchants, to implement restorative criminal justice, to abolish capital punishment, and to live a simple and modest life devoted to his subjects.

I’m actually writing an article about Buddhism and the Occupy movement right now based on one of my favorite texts, the Scripture Requested by Surata. In it, the bodhisattva Surata walks into the middle of the royal treasury and upbraids the king of Sravasti for his greed, arrogance, and failure to protect the poor. It’s a really beautiful text, despite the fact that it’s largely unheard of.

The teachings on karma and dependent origination have helped a lot, too. Everything that exists and everything that happens relies on causes and conditions. That isn’t just an expression; causes and conditions are two separate things. Take the example of a flower. The cause is the flower seed and the conditions are the right soil, the right amount of sunlight, the right amount of water, the absence of pests that would destroy the sprout, etc. The flower could not exist without either.

Similarly, we all carry with us both very good and very bad karmic seeds. When and how they ripen depends on all of these other conditions, both internal and external. Poverty is one of those conditions. A healthy, prosperous society is, too. So we need to pay attention not just to the seeds we’re planting but also to the soil we’re planting them in, to how much we’re watering them, to how much sunlight they need, all of those things. Peter Maurin, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, use to say that he wanted to create a society where it was easier for people to be good. We can discuss what sort of society creates the best conditions for virtuous seeds to sprout and flourish, but I know one thing: it’s not a society with lots of poverty, gross wealth inequality, few opportunities, and little upward mobility.

Finally, let me say something about “economic justice.” It’s the most readily available and convenient term in English for what we’re talking about, but I’m not certain that it’s the most accurate. A lot of Buddhist writings focus just as much on how good it is for the ruler to be less greedy and callous as they do on how good it is for the subjects. They aren’t as much about what’s right as they are about what brings out the fullest potential of everyone involved. Instead of “social justice,” perhaps we should say “social virtue” or “social flourishing.” I don’t think this means we have to stop saying “we are the 99%,” because most of us who say that are. We just have to start being the 99% who know that what’s best for the 99% is best for the 1% too. And we have to start telling the 1% that.

There has been a lot of writing recently about next steps in the Occupy movement and so on. Looking to the future, what do you see happening next?

I should confess that I’ve put a lot more time and thought into the practical, day-to-day operations of Occupy Boston than into the bigger picture. I might be able to say a couple of things, though.

First, I don’t think there’s any way we won’t see a lot of re-occupations come spring. I think they’ll be much, much wiser, too. As one of my friends often says half-jokingly, “The next time we set up a tent city in the middle of a financial district, we’re going to do it so much better!”

Second, I think that a combination of the winter and losing our encampments has made a lot of occupations much more inward-focused. This may have been necessary to some extent, but I hope we’ll begin to pivot to a more outward focus. In particular, I hope that occupations will begin to engage in more and more marches, rallies, and other nonviolent direct actions. And I hope we’ll refocus on issues of economic justice, as important as related issues are.

What I just said about nonviolence and economic justice are at the forefront of my hopes for this movement. This year has already seen street violence in Oakland, thought it’s important to note that the Oakland Police Department is in danger of being placed into federal receivership because of their ongoing pattern of brutality. The G8 and NATO summits in Chicago, the DNC, and the RNC are still ahead of us. They all risk devolving into the violent black-bloc tactics that marked the late 90s anti-globalization movement.

It goes without saying that violence against people or animals is totally out of the question. I don’t actually oppose destruction of property, in principle. Still, I think it should be reserved for (1) extreme situations where it is necessary to defend human life, or (2) small, controlled protests like destroying nuclear warheads or burning draft files. Black bloc tactics are neither. They dehumanize the police, who don’t need any help in that department. They frighten and intimidate bystandards. They put nonviolent protestors at much greater risk of police brutality. They’re wrong, plain and simple. On a more practical level, smashing up storefronts and waging pitched street battles with the police will dry up all our popular support and destroy our movement. We cannot go down that path if we have any hope of creating a better world.

In addition, the people who are the most endangered by black bloc actions are the same people most hurt by economic injustice: poor and working-class people, undocumented immigrants, teenagers, LGBT people, and people with a history in the legal system. Those are the people we least want to hurt, and they’re the people most at risk when black bloc protestors co-opt nonviolent actions.

The focus on economic justice is also critical. We live in a country that talks about race and gender a lot, even if we are bad at it. We almost never talk about class as a separate category. This was a huge problem for me while I was at Harvard. My courses spent a lot of time on race and gender, which is part of Harvard Divinity School’s mission statement. Class was absent, both from the mission statement and from the curriculum. Unlike most of my former classmates, I don’t come from a middle-class background. That made me feel isolated and angry from the moment I stepped on campus. There was no place for me to talk about that, and no one gave me any words to talk about it in. For a while it made me hostile toward the women’s groups on campus. I could never figure out why until I joined Occupy Boston. As soon as I had an outlet to talk about my experiences with class all that anger toward feminists just melted away. I think talking about class is integral to struggles against racism and sexism because ignoring it just breeds racial and gender hostility. Occupy Boston has been healing for me in that regard. The Occupy movement can heal our country in the same way, if we’ll let it.

Other than simply “come Occupy with us,” what recommendations would you have for sympathetic readers who might want to support the movement somehow?

First of all, people’s prayers, dedications of merit, positive aspirations, and well-wishes are always welcomed. Just hearing people say “thank you” makes all of the frustration, all of the sleepless nights, and all of the hard work worth it.

Secondly, a lot of occupations have seen a drop in funding now that their camps are gone. Ironically, this is right when they need funding the most for indoor office and meeting space. So, if people have the means to give a little money to their local occupation, no matter how small, that would be amazing.

Third, we need prophetic witness within the Buddhist community. We need Buddhists willing to take a public stand against the truly awful things that are happening in our society, as the bodhisattva Surata did in his. This could mean showing up to a protest in dharma robes. It could taking your meditation group to a march and holding a banner with the group’s name on it. It could mean convincing your dharma center to move its money to a local credit union. It could mean, if you are a monastic or a teacher, joining a local clergy organization that does advocacy work. Bhikkhu Bodhi, who really is an American Surata, has been so singular at Occupy Wall Street. We need more courageous voices like his.

I couldn’t agree more — especially about Bhikkhu Bodhi. Thank you, Joshua.

This from the International Campaign for Tibet today:

If you live in the United States, please send the following message to your Senators and urge them to cosponsor Senate Resolution 356, which:

• mourns the death of Tibetans who have self-immolated;
• calls for China to allow unrestricted access to Tibet to journalists, foreign diplomats, and international organizations;
• asks for an accounting of Tibetans detained for peacefully protesting, and of monks forcibly removed from Kirti monastery;
• requests the Department of State to continue to seek a U.S. consulate in Lhasa, Tibet, and to not consent to the opening of any Chinese consulate in the U.S. until one in Lhasa is established.

Send a message to your elected officials here.

For updates about all that’s been happening within Tibet in recent months, I recommend checking out (for which I also blog).

I can’t say it better than the boilerplate provided by Planned Parenthood…

I’m disappointed Susan G. Komen let anti-choice groups pressure them into ending funding for lifesaving breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood health centers. Women’s lives can’t afford to be caught up in political battles. I stand with PP and hope you will too.

Give to the Planned Parenthood Breast Health Fund right now and Mayor Mike Bloomberg will match your gift.

[UPDATE: This morning, Susan G. Komen for the Cure issued a statement in which they apologized and said, "We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities." As has been pointed out, though, this "Komen’s statement that Planned Parenthood will be 'eligible' for new grants is a new development, but it commits Komen to nothing." In this case, we might view this as "a PR move, not a policy reversal." So keep pressure on Susan G. Komen for the Cure, everybody!]

Araia Tesfamariam

Araia Tesfamariam is an independent film and TV producer who has worked with, among others, the preeminent American pastor T.D. Jakes. In addition, Araia is an old and dear friend of mine from college days.

Araia is currently at work on a documentary entitled Big Araia. The film will focus on his late father, whom Araia never knew and about whom he knows very little. (In an incredibly powerful gimmick, Araia built the first trailer for the film out of literally all the images and information he has about his father, underscoring the extent of the mystery.)

Beyond the dramatic personal story here, Big Araia will also have a unique focus on Eritrea — the country in the Horn of Africa from which the eponymous “Big Araia” hailed. As Araia notes in the promotional material for his documentary, “Eritrea is a country few people know about. The small East African nation holds within it a people and culture that has survived an epic war and built a brighter future in its short, but extraordinary existence.”

After seeing the trailer for Big Araia and talking to my friend about his project, I decided to interview Araia for this blog. While there’s nothing in what follows about one of our focuses (Buddhism), there’s certainly plenty that’s relevant to the other (social justice).

Here is our discussion. On behalf of our readers, I say to Araia: Thank you, haway.

*

The trailer for Big Araia is very powerful, in that it begins by noting that you’ve not had much knowledge of your father beyond what we are shown: his name, his country of origin, the photographs we see, and what we hear in the recorded phone call. You write that Big Araia is “a reclamation of a lost connection with a very personal history.” Would you tell us about your father? What have you learned about him in the process of making this film so far?

First, the film has not been shot yet. The trailer that is online now is being used to promote the fund raising effort to hire a film crew. I will will being traveling to Eritrea for the first time in July of this year and I want to make a documentary of that experience.

This project is a reclamation of a lost part of my own story. My father, Araia Selassie Tesfamariam, immigrated to the United States from Eritrea in the early seventies. I am not exactly sure how old he was, even my mother never really knew his age. From the time I was a small child until today, all the information I had about him was from stories. Even when I met his relatives that live in the US, they had little to give in the way of new information because they had been small kids living in a village when he left Eritrea as an adult. What I do know is that he was a well respected and well liked guy with a great sense of humor. He had attended Central State University for a time and also worked at a gas station. I just don’t have very many facts. By the time I was old enough to really ask my mother questions about the man I called Big Araia, all she could give me were hints of memories, emotional flashbacks, and a some funny stories. What I do know is that he loved my mother very much and that he loved his country and always wanted to return there.

The goal of this project is to learn more about him, his people and his culture. Hopefully, I will be able to piece together this jigsaw that is my father’s story by meeting relatives in Eritrea that really knew him.

Can you tell us what happened to your father?

My father died in a car accident in North Carolina in march of 1978, three months before I was born. I don’t have much detail beyond that. He had recently moved there ahead of my mother to get the new house ready and start a new job. My mom was in the process of packing up their old house when the police came to her door to tell her he had passed away. That is all I know about that incident, it is probably all I will ever know.

You write that the film will be “about diaspora.” We’ve just talked about the personal quality of the film, but can you talk about this aspect?

Many African-Americans have a hunger to learn more about their cultural and genealogical ties to Africa. Some even get blood tests done just to get an idea of what part (or in most cases, parts) of the continent their ancestors came from. Knowing where you are from and what you are is part of what makes you whole. For those peoples and nations that have that knowledge, they take it for granted because it has always been there. But, for African-Americans, we have had to piece together a cultural identity and history without any documentation, or religion, or even an oral tradition -the raw materials by which a culture can build upon. When people say that slavery was such a long time ago, the inference is that its significance and effects are no longer relevant. In truth, that period in our nation’s history robbed an entire race of people of their identity. Over the course of several hundred years African-Americans have built a new and dynamic society to replace what was lost, but many of us hear the call of our forebearers back home. That cry is in a voice so faint that even when we strain to listen, we can’t find our way back without an effort of oddyssian proportions.

What do you hope to see more of in terms of work helping African-Americans learn more about cultural and genealogical ties to Africa. What kinds of things do you see as being most beneficial and needed?

Finding those lost connections with your African ancestors is an imposing task. Many African-Americans who attempt to trace their lineage do well if they can go back as far as a relative who was a slave. It requires a lot of money and time to research and collect data from whatever scant info is available about your family’s history beyond the 20th century. It would be great to see a collective effort from several major universities to build an online registry for African-Americans who want to attempt to discover more about their family’s past.

Why is a special focus on Eritrea so important — to you personally and to audiences in general?

For me, the focus on Eritrea is personal. My father was from there, and going back affords me the opportunity to complete a circle that has been broken for four decades. He left his country, his family, and his story when he came here. Now I will go back to do what few African-Americans ever get to do, hold their own history in their hands.

But this is more than a personal narrative, Big Araia is a film about the desire many of us have to understand more of the past that help make us into the people we are today. Eritrea itself is a large part of the story. It is a nation that few people in the West know about, and yet with its proximity to Somalia and Saudi Arabia it is now more geopolitically significant than it has ever been.

Finally, how can interested readers help you finish the film?

This film project will only succeed if I am successful at raising enough money to meet my goal on Kickstarter.com. It is a website that helps fund creative projects through crowd sourcing. In a traditional attempt to raise enough money to make a film, I would have secure large sums of money from a few wealthy donors. That strategy tends to come with it’s own set of restrictions and pitfalls, like the loss of creative control and profit driven marketing decisions. The crowd sourcing model allows for the film maker to control their own project while getting the funding they need to make their artistic vision a reality. In simpler terms, instead of getting five people to give me $10,000, I am trying to get five thousand people to donate $10.00. It’s a beautifully simple concept, and Kickstarter.com has an interface that makes it easy for creatives and their supporters interact with each other. If your readers are interested in learning more about the Big Araia film project, they can go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bigaraia/big-araia.

The author at University of the West, Rosemead, CA, January 14th, 2012. Please visit justicefortroy.org.

Over at my website, I just blogged about how last week I had a lot of people on the street stop me to ask me what my shirt said. (You can see it just to the right.)

A video appeared online last Wednesday that shows four U.S. Marines urinating on three corpses in Afghanistan. At least two of the Marines have been identified, according to a BBC report; Reuters was the news organization able to identify their battallion through an anonymous tip.

Responses were appropriately swift. Among them, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said:

[What this video shows] is absolutely inconsistent with American values, with the standards of behavior that we expect from our military personnel, and that, you know, the vast, vast majority of our military personnel, particularly our marines, hold themselves to. So, I know [U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta] has ordered a complete investigation of this incident. Anyone, anyone found to have participated or known about it, having engaged in such conduct, must be held fully accountable.

As Secretary Clinton suggests with her remarks, finding the appropriate measure of accountability in this situation is especially important. Indeed, as The Guardian noted in a recent report:

Despoiling of the dead is illegal under the Geneva conventions as well as under US military law.

I don’t really want to speculate or opine about appropriate censure in this situation, though. In fact, I’d like to talk about another aspect of this whole issue that came up for me in Rep. Allen West (R-FL)’s public response to the video.

Rep. West, a veteran of the U.S. Army, sent an email to The Weekly Standard shortly after news of the video broke. In this email, he writes:

I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart [sic] and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.

It’s quite right, I think, to point out that it is very difficult for those of us who have not served in the military to truly understand the unique pressures of being a soldier, and the exact ways war changes a person. We all do well to have some perspective in this regard. (Though, to be fair, the military itself understands these pressures and changes and still expects that those within its culture will not commit acts like those captured in the video.)

That said, I do have problems with Rep. West’s response — specifically, the “shut up” part.

The first paragraph would seem to insinuate that public response to incidents in which American soldiers are on the receiving end of unlawful conduct in war is somewhat muted. This seems to me (1) unfair, (2) misleading, and (3) not on point. It strikes me as unfair in that it seems to question the sympathies of anyone critical of this situation; misleading in its claim that there was no similar moral outrage to incidents in Somalia and Iraq (really? Among other things, SGT2 Randy Shughart and MSG Gary Gordon received posthumous Medals of Honor, the larger story of which they were a part inspired the bestselling book and the hit film Black Hawk Dawn, and a U.S. Navy battleship was named for Shughart. In addition, the deaths of the four Blackwater contractors in Fallujah, and subsequent release of photos and video of their bodies, in the words of even Wikipedia, “[caused] outrage in the United States,” which was certainly apparent at the time in news coverage and opinion-editorials. And, of course, the deaths of those contractors was still in the news as recently as the beginning of this month, when their families, after seven years, finally reached a confidential settlement in the wrongful death suit they filed against Blackwater’s corporate successor); and not on point in that what’s at issue here is that the U.S. military has always aspired to a very high standard of conduct — higher than those we would call enemies. I don’t know that I personally believe war can ever be that civilized, but we have established rules of war that were broken here. This is about expecting better from ourselves and living up to our values, irregardless of the actions of soldiers elsewhere in the world. We love to say that as Americans we do things better, and we haven’t here. We need to talk about that.

I interpret Rep. West’s second paragraph to be suggesting that this incident with the Marines urinating on Afghan corpses is less deserving of attention and criticism than comparatively more horrific acts of violence perpetrated upon Americans by others, such as the murder and mutilation of PFC Thomas L. Tucker and PV2 Kristian Menchaca in Yusufiyah in 2006. Absolutely none of the opinions I have read or heard by those critical of the Marines in the video are saying that this incident is more important than the incidents against American soldiers that Rep. West invokes. Again, I think these are distinct, separate issues: responding when others violate international and military law, and responding when we ourselves violate international and military law. Both are deserving of our attention. We can do more than one thing at once, so why “shut up” about this issue altogether?

The last two paragraphs seem to suggest that, in terms of punishment, this should be handled “in-house,” under military jurisdiction, without feedback from those who have not served. This is, of course, hugely problematic, especially considering the implications here in terms of international law and international relations (Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, has condemned the actions of the marines in no uncertain terms). Realistically, this is something much, much more than simply a military conduct issue.

Lastly, it’s important to say that people should not “shut up” about this, and we need as many informed perspectives as possible. If we are going to curb and completely stop incidents like this, among our own soldiers and globally, we have to be able to talk about it.

It’s very convenient in these situations for people to say things like “let us handle our own on our own” or “these are just a few bad apples.” It’s convenient because it keeps us from looking at the systemic problems that might contribute to the horrors of war. On the one hand, Secretary Clinton is very right to point out that the vast majority of military personnel hold themselves to a higher standard than we see in the video. On the other hand, considering the ways we prepare soldiers for war, talk about war in public statements, report on it, and often just think about it, is it really any surprise that we must confront situations like this from time to time?

I’m reminded of the great David Loy‘s teaching on “The Nonduality of Good and Evil” for the Spring 2002 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review:

We all love the struggle between good (us) and evil (them). It is, in its own way, deeply satisfying. Think of the plots of the James Bond films, the Star Wars films, the Indiana Jones films. In such movies, it’s quite obvious who the bad guys are. Caricatures of evil, they are ruthless, maniacal, without remorse, and so they must be stopped by any means necessary. We are meant to feel that it is okay—even, to tell the truth, pleasurable—to see violence inflicted upon them. Because the villains like to hurt people, it’s okay to hurt them. Because they like to kill people, it’s okay to kill them. After all, they are evil, and evil must be destroyed.

What is this kind of story teaching us? That if you really want to hurt someone, it is important to demonize them first—in other words, fit them into your good-versus-evil story. That is why truth is the first casualty of all wars.

Everyone is responsible for their own actions, but we need to ask questions and talk about the ways in which we frame ourselves and others, and how those frameworks contribute to cultures of violence and war.

The sky won’t fall if we talk more about war and how horrible all of its various aspects are. Don’t listen to those who tell you to “shut up” about it. Start talking more about it more, in fact. We have to find our way back to the truth. From there, real, lasting peace might just be possible.

Cartoon by Jeff Darcy for The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

“We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing’-oriented society to a ‘person’-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable to being conquered.”

“The dispossessed of this nation — the poor, both white and Negro — live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against that injustice, not against the lives of the persons who are their fellow citizens, but against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty.”

‎”Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation. They have deplored prejudice but tolerated or ignored economic injustice.”

‎”All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America; in doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that Eichman chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows?”

‎”Middle-class values stress the importance of career and money. These were not the values which led to the civil rights movement; these are not the values which lead to positive social transformation…They [the young blacks who made history in the early 1960s] abandoned those [middle class] values when they put careers and wealth in a secondary role. When they cheerfully became jailbirds and troublemakers, when they took off their Brooks Brothers attire and put on overalls to work in the isolated rural south, they challenged and inspired white youth to emulate them.”

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
(1929-1968)