Letters from NYC

10/23/01

 

Living in the New Global Community

 

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

 

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