10/23/01
So here I am six weeks after the worst crime ever perpetrated on American
soil coping, as we all are with the aftermath. Whatever the political and
military solutions may be, these are in the hands of our government and
armed forces leaders, not I.
Thus feeling powerless, I wonder at the bigger picture.
One thing I've concluded for myself about these times is that, since my
hands can find no way to contend with the military or governmental
decisions. I still must rise to the occasion, bringing forth whatever
communication skills I have, whatever understanding I have of conflict
resolution, whatever compassion I can muster in these times of shock, anger
and hatred. My work is to transform all the emotions into love. My attempts
to come to grips with the present in my teaching and in my personal practice
are all about restoring balance and peace. This is the only place that I can
function from and be at my best. My job is to return to this place every
time I recognize I have wandered away. My hope is to help others restore
their places of peace and balance in themselves.
Why do I feel this compulsion? Why not just allow the response to flow forth
as it does from Washington and the media centers? Why raise the voice of
love, when we need desperately to seek out retribution for these heinous
crimes? Why try to calm this anger that motivates us to action?
It is because in these moments of intense anguish, we must not allow the
pain of our suffering to dictate our course of action. To respond from the
emotional outrage makes us weak, makes us victims, puts us in the control of
those who would destroy us. So much fear permeates the air of America now,
and the fear has no place to roost. We want to attach it to something,
someone, someplace and we have chosen Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and
Afghanistan. They are far away where we don't really have to look at the
consequences of our actions, like we have to look at the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon. We see their part of the world as a vast wasteland anyway,
pocketed as it is with enclaves of terrorists hiding in caves. Our
intentions are good, we say. We're fighting terrorism. We're venting our
rage where it will serve some purpose.
I want to take a moment to discuss the nature of anger. I have been teaching
martial arts for more than twenty years now. I teach it because in my life,
I grew up with enormous amounts of repressed anger. I had no avenue to vent
the passion of my rage, yet it was there in me, eating me from the inside
out. I also believe that I have to learn to 'love my neighbors as myself.' I
believe I have to love whatever creative power there is that made my life a
reality. To do this, I cannot express my anger as my anger would have me do.
The destructive capacity of anger is enormous. When I've done things in my
life to destroy things around me, I have had to live with the consequences
of my actions. The consequences always extended far beyond the brief moment
of satisfying violence.
I have learned through relationships, and in helping others as a healer to
individuals and couples, that resolving the inner conflict, allowing the
pain one is feeling to be heard by the other, opens the door to healing the
pain. I have learned to balance many conflicting emotions simultaneously, to
take in all the complexities of the issues that divide people in order to
restore balance, to come to compromise and renew peace again. If one does
not bring about peace in a relationship, the conflict will continue ad
nauseum, throughout time, without break. It will only be buried deeper in
the bedrock of the relationship, finding its way back to the surface in
nasty subconscious ways such as sniping, condescension, disrespect,
disregard, dislike, even hatred.
Relationships can and do go on in these conditions. Most of the marriages of
my parent's generation and their parent's generation endured through such
tortuous circumstances. They did so by force of commitment. In spite of the
nasty animosities that permeated their lives, they stuck out their
marriages. I concluded quite early, that this was not the way I wanted to
live. The question was, how could I avoid it?
Thus began my life's work. As a child I could not bear being without my
father. My mother could not bear to be with him, because, as was the case
with so many men of his day, he was not there. It seems my father could not
endure the bonds of family. As a young boy growing up in the terror of Nazi
Germany, he had struggled hard to remove himself from his emotional
attachments. He never knew when his family might disappear, or be taken from
him at any moment, without warning. Somehow in my parent's lives, so great
was their love of me, they chose to sacrifice their own desires to keep our
family together. It was a difficult marriage for both of them. But they
endured and I am grateful. Throughout my life I have continued to try to
help them cross the divide that separates them. In recent years, I am happy
to say, they have started to truly find their way to each other. This is a
great success.
Part of my contribution to them has been to help each of them see their
partner from a place of compassion. I say all this about their marriage to
demonstrate that, even in the most loving and close of relationships, it is
difficult to make work the ways of the open heart. It is so much harder when
dealing with those we don't want in our lives.
It's easy to live in judgment, because our eyes are shut and we see only
ourselves. I don't have to acknowledge the other if I am closed to your
pain. It's easy for me to be an "instrument of expression," whereby I vent
and speak and pronounce my position. But we are not just instruments of
expression. We are human beings. We have the capacity to listen and to hear.
Our abilities to listen and understand are great gifts we've been given. We
did not invent them. We were, by the grace of creation, provided with this
amazing talent. We can hear. We can comprehend another person. We can take
in other experiences as witnesses. But we must use the gifts. We need
practice. We must learn to listen--not to make the other person right, but
so that both of us can be heard and understood. From understanding, we can
make choices about how to move forward, TOGETHER.
You see, we are in this life together, whether we like it or not. We are
social creatures. We need companionship. We cannot endure isolation. We were
born of mothers, not out of the ether. We were conceived by two parents. We
do not exist alone. We were born depending on others for our survival. Even
more, we know that the greatest torture is total solitary confinement--so
much so, it has been made illegal in our prisons because it is cruel and
unusual punishment. (By law, prisoners are granted at least some minutes
each day out of their confinement.)
Since we exist as a species in community, we have ever attempted to find
ways of managing our collective lives. We've had tribal elders, township
leaders, kings, emperors, parliaments, congresses--all kinds of leadership
and governments--to provide us the necessary form for creating the rules of
living together.
In America, we believe that each person should have an equal voice in this
process. Because of the magnitude of our society, we work through a
representative government where powers are distributed to a restricted few.
These few people operate in different areas of the decision making process
in such a way that no single person or arena of power can dominate the
others. We have separated the government into executive, legislative and
judicial branches. Each is given its own range of indomitable power to keep
its sister branches from toppling the tree.
We have further gone on to separate religion from governance. Since beliefs
are not negotiable, and cannot be argued through rational debate, religion
needs to reign supreme in its orbit. Our founders have wisely kept the
factions of extremism apart from the debate of secular government. It has
not kept the individuals in government from their beliefs, so religion's
representation in government is there through the moral fiber of the people
in places of power. This is a much wiser way to include the influence of
faith in government.
We have attempted to come up with our best effort at collective decision
making. There are still innumerable flaws, but until we can improve on the
structure we have, I propose we continue to work with it as is.
Somewhere deeply incorporated into the principles of this American system of
government, are notions about the rights of man (read human beings). Each
person has certain "inalienable rights," that is, certain rights that cannot
be abridged by any law, person or organization. These rights underlie the
construction of our democracy. They are the principles this system was
designed to protect above all else. When we lose sight of these principles,
we have lost everything that America is. The rights are simple enough: All
people are created equal; all people have a right to their views and
beliefs; all people have the right a voice in their government; all people
have a right to pursue happiness. If we can live up to those ideals, we will
be doing pretty darn good.
We, in America, sometimes lose sight of the fact that the truths we hold
self-evident for ourselves, we don't hold for others. At one time, we didn't
hold these truths for people other than white male people. Today, we've
equalized the laws about people of all colors and genders, but we still
don't hold it equally for people in all parts of the globe. Though our
government exists only in this hemisphere, not worldwide, and we have no
right to dictate what other governments can do in their countries, WE should
treat people, all people as we would be treated ourselves.
This ideal is not conditional. We can't treat people badly because they
treat us badly. We must still treat them with respect. This is not to say we
must lay down and let them walk on us. No, we have our right to our dignity.
But we cannot have our own dignity at the expense of someone else's. We
cannot mistreat others because they have mistreated us. Two wrongs will
still never make a right. We sometimes behave as though we could elevate
ourselves by putting others down. But that only lowers the standard for
everyone.
We need to recognize that the oppressor is also a prisoner of oppression.
The oppressor dare not release the oppressed for fear they will rise up
against him. But most often, the oppressed do not rise up against anyone.
When they rise, it is only to breathe more deeply the air of freedom.
If we can bring greater freedom to the world, not by enforcing it, but by
inspiring it, we can serve well the people of the world. To do that we must
respect them, as they are. To do that we must listen to their grievances. To
do that we must address their concerns. To do that we must open our hearts.
As I mentioned, I have been teaching martial arts for some time, and what I
have discovered on this journey is that vulnerability is not the same thing
as weakness. Most often people misinterpret it that way. True vulnerability
is the capacity to stand in the face of the conflict and not back down and
not press forward. There is neither aggression, nor retreat. By standing my
ground, I can come to know my opponent. Once known, my opponent ceases to
have power over me. His power depends on my reacting to it. When he attacks,
he anticipates a reaction. When the reaction is not forthcoming, his plans
are disrupted. At the moment of his attack, he simultaneously creates a
weakness elsewhere. I simply occupy the area, he has relinquished. Suddenly,
without attacking, he finds that I have surrounded him. He has lost all
advantage. If he continues to attack, it is only a matter of time before he
is defeated.
If he chooses to cooperate, we play. How much better is that?
There is evil in the world; surely there is. It wouldn't be the world if it
didn't exist. But evil is not a person. It is not group. It's not a place.
It's not an emotion or an idea. Evil exists beyond objects and thoughts. It
simple is. And the worst of it is, it is in us.
We cannot effect any change on another person. This is what we believe when
we believe in free will. Each person has to change inside. Therefore, we can
change only ourselves. If we want to reduce the amount of evil, or anger, or
hatred, we have to rid ourselves of it. The only amount we can eliminate is
whatever is in ourselves.
To thus expose ourselves to the same standards we hold true for others, we
are required to make ourselves vulnerable. Being vulnerable is the only true
safety. For so long as we protect our hearts with the armor of hardness and
cruelty, we lock ourselves inside that armor. Trapped inside, the hardness
and cruelty will consume us as easily as protect us. The very things we use
to defend ourselves will turn on us. They have no wisdom about who to
attack. These qualities will destroy us from within.
We cannot effect any change on another person. We can kill them, but we
cannot change their hearts. Our country is engaged in a war. It is our
response to the acts of these few terrorists who were able to disrupt the
greatest nation on earth. They did so with clever, patient planning and
suicidal determination. In response, we changed ourselves. We became united
as a nation. This is good. I hope that we can continue to unify ourselves. I
hope that wisdom prevails. I hope that justice is done. I hope that freedom
is served. I hope that the innocent are spared. I hope that we save the
world.
I cannot stop the war now. It has begun and it will play out its course.
This is the way it is in the world today, six weeks after September 11.
Fears and rumors run rampant about new potential attacks. Anthrax is being
delivered by mail. The treachery is in our homeland. We cannot bomb here.
What will we do? Eventually the war will end, whatever that means. In the
past wars that have ended have not really ended. The conflicts in the middle
east go back eons. The eastern European conflicts are thousands of years
old. Our own Civil War is still alive in many people's hearts. Even after
the battles have been waged, the people on the losing side hold their
grudges. So when we defeat Afghanistan and Iraq and whoever else we fight,
we will not have restored peace, as much as conquered the weaker force.
Conquering nations and winning hearts are very different matters.
Marc