With palms together,
Good Evening Sangha,
For those of you who are thinking about commiting a crime tonight, please re-consider. Violence against people and property is never a good idea. Health and well-being are precious and cannot be replaced. Property comes and goes and never brings us the satisafaction we imagine it will. For those of you who will be victims of crime tonight, before you seek an eye for an eye, ask yourself if you want the world to be blind.
I have both commited crime and been a victim of crime. In my life I have stolen, lied, cheated and killed. I have also been robbed and assaulted. I have been shot. I have been molested. Being on both sides of the highway is a challenge sometimes, but it certainly gives one some perspective on behavior. I know when I was a kid and stole from stores, it felt good and I was able to get candy, chips, sodas and cigarettes. I wish I had never stolen, especially the cigarettes.I have lied. I have told people things that were not true in order (I think) to protect myself from loss or disapproval or some other imagined thing. I have cheated, inflated my income or deflated my income depending on the paperwork. I have killed people in combat, one was a friend who got in the line of fire. An awful tragedy which tore my heart in half and caused me to lose faith in myself. As a victim, I've been robbed several times; house broken into, things taken. I was assaulted by a friend, held at knifepoint, and another time punched. When I was younger, as a child skipping school, I was sexually propositioned by a man in a public restroom. As a young adult, I was sexually assaulted by a man. Oh my, the list is long.
Today I see that these things, awful as they might be, are no longer real. They exist only in my memory, a memory now being assaulted by a disease related to my combat experience. I am comfortable with this. I have seen clearly the nature of the universe. All things come and go. What is important is the process.
A priest now, I have taken solemn vows to be with all beings in their suffering as long as it takes to bring all beings out of suffering. An infinite task and one not to be taken lightly. Tonight there are people in harm's way, soldiers, poor people, starving people, people deathly ill. Tonight there are people who are going to die and there are people who are going to be born. It is our work to make this planet both a safer place and a better place for people to live. There is enough suffering, we need not add to it with our selfishness and our self-centered needs.
When we take up the practice of Zen we enter into this vast stream, this eternal process of life and as we enter we open our eyes. It takes great courage to do this and to also stay in the stream.
What will you do tomorrow?
Be well.
2 comments:
Hello. Thank you. I do suffer from PTSD, and specialized in the treatment of PTSD for a very long time. The thing is, trauma seems to change everything at such a foundational level. Its rather like losing your viginity. Zen is the same. It cuts through the crap and demands we see clearly what's what. Helpful? Maybe. I firmly believe the Refuges are the real treasures in this regard. Zen may be a means of making it OK for trauma survivors to lay in the lap of the Buddha.
Be well.
I have.. well let's just say even zen or anti-sichotics cannot do much about it. After so many years I have come to get used to it. So I am in tears of happiness that someone like you can openly say that all those things can still be left behind for something better. Sadly, to me, tomorrow is just another day to welcome people to my nightmare. The good thing is that most "people" like me we burn out at an early age. And about the crossed fire, don't be too hard on yourself about it, I know for a fact(And I am not lying) that this happens VERY often, not just to one soldier but to entire patrols, and wathever their reasons are, the pentagon issues strict, confidential orders to officials not to report to families or the media the conditions in which soldiers lost their lives in the current conflict. So how's that for a lie. But stay clean my friend, just because Governments and Banks kill and lie every single day in a large scale, doesn't mean you should or would just because you could. I send to you my best regards and wish to you many days of happiness and peace among the ones you love.
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