There is nothing I would rather do than to be able to feel a melting heart all day long. What comes to mind is the phrase in the Tao about the softness of water being more powerful than the hardness of rock—and how the water wears down the hard rock by it’s continual flow. Isn’t that the way love works?
More and more, I have moments when I feel that flow of love. Often it is not purposeful, but just a kind of outward flow of emotion to anyone and anything that gets in its way.
Unfortunately the feeling I am talking about is not there all the time—it comes and goes. I still have moments of anger and depression and experiences of many other emotions as well but this softness of heart is the feeling I relish.
I wonder if a life lived in a constant state of light is possible—or if it’s necessary to have nights at the end of each day. Maybe a life lived in a continual state of grace would be too much for a man like me. I think of all the gurus—ones I know and others I’ve heard of—who seem to live in that state. I may be wrong, but I think of them as almost sedentary—unable to move about in the world—with no need to actually do anything, living a life of freed of desire.
Which is not me. I am someone who lives in perpetual motion. But this thought of expanding the softness of the heart, perhaps it would help if I slowed my life down and sort of melted into the universe. Just the thought of that, how nice that would be, melting into life while softening the value of the heart.
Sometimes, it’s not as easy as it sounds—letting something go. But when we do it, doesn’t it feel great? It’s simpler when we think of it as just a beginning. It’s standing on the end of a diving board and pushing off.
What happens next is up to God and Nature. Gravity takes over. No need for further involvement from us.
Why can’t we make it simple? What is most important about letting of is the decision—what do we want to let go of? What are the things, which deserve to exist beyond our control?
When I was in the hospital—just a day after my biggest operation, the quadruple bypass, I felt so much pain, both mental and physical, that I had the thought I’d just like to die—the ultimate act of letting go. It lasted only for a second, and because the experience was so real and so scary, I pulled back almost immediately. My thought of pulling back was so strong, it was like rolling a movie film backwards—so I went flying up out of the water onto the diving board again. I didn’t want to die and I wanted to make sure my Higher Power knew I'd made the wrong choice!
Letting go of the result of things—of outcomes—is a good choice for me. I’ve sent off my book to a movie agent in Hollywood…now is the time for me to just let go…and let God and Nature take over. I need to constantly remind myself where the power lies—and that is certainly not with me.
After witnessing all the stages the world has gone through with this most recent war, I am more convinced than I’ve ever been, that the only way to facilitate change on the planet as a whole is to influence one person at a time. And the first person is me!
Each of us must simply deal with war and peace within our own heart. In this way, peace will always prevail for none of us wants to be at war with ourselves.
We all can do with beginning the conversation now—about what is really important to us. Once we know, once we are convinced, then it is easy to follow our bliss.
Every time I am engaged in a discussion of politics these days I seem to end up with a headache. That is because the solution to what works for societies, for cultures, for countries, is so complex there is no simple answer.
As complicated as I am—as just one of the billions of human beings on this earth—it is no easy matter just to find out what is good for me alone. When I do, when I know that, I will tell you and then you can see if what I have found works for you too. This is as complicated as I want to get right now.
I told of a small chapter in my story yesterday, that made the audience laugh—so I’ll share it here… It happened in 1967 the year I left college to follow my bliss. I had been expelled from Syracuse for something I’d written during an exam, something never intended for the eyes of the post graduate intern who grabbed it out of my hand as I was attempting my escape from the examination hall.
After I’d fought my way back in to school, with a plea about free speech to the Dean of Students, I quit.
I ended up back home, living with my parents. The question of "just what was I going to do with my life?" was resolved in a heated discussion with my father in the front yard. "I want to be a motion picture director," I told him.
"Fine," he said in his well-connected way, "I’ll call Eliott Hyman at Warner Brothers." Mr. Hyman was the sole owner and President at the time.
Days later I was ushered into a seat in front of the biggest desk in the biggest office I’d ever seen. It was at Warner Brothers headquarters in the Pan Am Building in New York.
Just like in the movies, Mr. Hyman reached into a drawer and pulled out a humidor. Just like in the movies, he said something like, "Cigar, kid?" I politely refused. He lit up what looked like a foot-long cigar. "So I hear you want to be a director?"
"Yessir."
Without wasting time with small talk, he picked up the phone and told someone on the other end that he was sending me over for an interview. The man’s name was Jim Feller, and he was—I found out when I got across town to his office on 9th Avenue—the head of the shipping department. The interview was a sham, just like in the movies. I knew, from the way Jim Feller treated me, that I had the job way before he ever told me I did.
Although I was not exactly on a movie set, I found out after a few days on the job, that I was in the right place. Everybody that worked in the shipping department was going to be a director! Except for the secretaries, that is, who all dreamed of being an actress.
I resigned myself to doing the best job I possibly could. I was promoted three times during my short tenure. The fact that I’d been hired by the president of the company might’ve had something to do with the promotions.
Unfortunately, it was 1967 and I had lost my "2-S" status, so I was drafted into the Army, which cut my movie career off before it began. Two years later, when I returned from Vietnam, I was too much in shock to even remember the career I’d begun. Years later, I found out that Warner Brothers would've been obligated to hire me back.
But being back in the world—and alive—was good enough for me. I was on my way out to California with my friend David in his white Mustang convertible with a cooler of beer in the trunk, in search of hippie chicks and free love.
It’s 36 years later now, and I’m ready for the movies again. It’s time to make a movie of the novel I’ve written. Last night I found myself asking my son Andrew, "who do you think should play me?"
Today I had a wonderful opportunity to tell my story in front of a group of about 50 people. I found myself splitting my life into two parts—the first part being that of a child and young man almost completely cut off from reality. My avoidance of pain and my shyness served to enliven my fantasy world to such an extent I transformed the real world around me into my own.
It wasn’t until "Part II" of my life, the part that begins with my starting therapy for Post Traumatic Stress and starting life over as a sober adult, that I began to become productive and put my fantasy world to use—as an artist and writer. In Part I, I couldn’t ever get things together enough to succeed for very long at any one thing. I was great at beginning things but terrible with follow-through!
Now that I have written two books, had a successful career as a photojournalist and exhibited and sold my art, I feel it is time to give something back to my fellow humans. What I have to give back is the map to my path of becoming more and more open. People seem to respond heartily to this. When I stand and share my light, I receive their light in return. The feeling is magical. It is one of total fulfillment, happiness, grace.
I finally think I’ve found the secret to life. It is living unbounded by anything. Opening up, knowing anything is possible—anything at all.
Remember that tagline that Greyhound used to use? "Take the bus and leave the driving to us." Driving back and forth to New York City yesterday, with my son asleep on the seat beside me for most of the way back, I thought he certainly had the right idea—how much nicer it is to let someone else drive.
So, of course, the thought immediately expanded into the idea of letting someone else do the driving for my life. If I were to do this, whom would I trust? Would I let my Higher Self drive? Or Buddha, Christ or Krishna? I guess I’d let any one of them drive.
God has been good to me in this life. I am filled to overflowing with the view of this incredibly beautiful planet. I feel it is my duty to share my journey with the world—to describe my life as openly and honestly as I can—to give it back.
We all have our own views of things, and mine is no more important than yours. Although my particular experience is uniquely mine, it is something anyone can relate to. What I have to offer—like we all have to offer—is my personal perspective on what I see. When I share what I see, I somehow feel more human.
"Leaving the driving to us" makes all the sense in the world on so many levels. The more I leave the driving to someone else, the more time I have to enjoy the view—and the more I have to share.
The more I think of it, the more I like the idea—at this stage of my life—of just stepping aboard a rickety old bus and going along for the ride.
It seemed as if we were on a trip together. Way back when I’d just returned from my first heart operation—the quadruple bypass—I was feeling lost and vulnerable. I’d begun the journey of blogging with "you"—the invisible audience of people I am sharing with. Looking back, it’s been only six months, which is hardly a blip in the big scheme of things. I felt as if we, together, had climbed aboard some sort of old bus (the Merry Pranksters maybe, or an old white church bus maybe). The bus was filled with those wonderful smells of having been used, having been places… places we might be seeing soon. Since I’d just survived a major heart operation—one where they put me on a heart-lung machine to keep me alive, there was plenty to talk about. A man who’d been miraculously strong and energetic all his life, suddenly I’d been brought to my knees with this broken heart. During the days and months afterwards I didn’t feel completely "myself". Even now, I don’t have the stamina I once had.
But, somewhere, fairly recently, I lost the thread of my blog. There are lots of reasons that might have caused it, but it would most likely take a long time to find them. I feel like I got off the bus to take a pee and it went on without me!
But I feel that—having lost the thread of my journey—luckily I've arrived back in that "lost and vulnerable" state I was in at the beginning. I am able to admit, once again, that my life is feeling unmanageable. I like the term, "out of sorts." That’s what I’m feeling right now.
But, being a hopeful kind of guy, this is what today looks like: I am standing on the side of the road. It is hot and dusty; I feel my pack leaning against my right foot. The familiar old bus is pulling up. The driver opens the door right in front of me. I am welcomed by the driver’s broad smile. I notice the worn black rubber mats on the steps going in. A good sign, I think—tit reminds me this bus has been places.
I pick up my pack and climb aboard, I smell the old familiar smells. I take a seat near the front by the window. The window is open letting the hot breeze in. The driver looks in the mirror checking to see if I’m seated. He’s pulling the door closed and putting the old crate into gear. With a bit of a jolt, we’re off again, I can feel it. I’m not at all sure where we’re going, but I’m just happy to be in motion once again.
As I conquer my anger and my fear I immediately feel confidence building.
It comes with confidence. It comes when we are no longer afraid to shine. That’s when we make a decision to let our light out—to let the light from others in.
It comes as we grow more comfortable in our own skin. It comes from knowing we are connected to everything (living and not) on this planet, in this solar system, this galaxy, this universe and all other galaxies and universes.
We human beings are small, no, we are right-sized but we are huge enough to contain universes within us.
Whatever the source of our light is—maybe it is only a simple 60 or 75 watt bulb—or maybe it is our sun or billions or trillions of stars shining, that creates the light within us. Whatever it is, however we perceive it, it is our Higher Power Light, our God Light, and as such there is really nothing we need to do to let it shine, other than to acknowledge that the light switch is love.
I found someone who has given me great hope towards dealing with my anger.
Her name is Sandra Eagle; she practices something called Transformational Therapy. According to Sandra, my anger was originally caused when I came, at some point in my past, to a conclusion that doesn’t serve me—that doesn’t allow me to be standing in my wholeness. Because I came to the wrong conclusion, this mistake fragments me. My anger keeps coming back as if it’s trying to get my attention.
Sandra said it is offering me something. I think what my anger is offering me is protection from a perceived harm. I give my anger life because I have made a decision not to trust. So my core belief is "I am not safe." Instead of "I am safe."
When I feel afraid, my anger rises up as if to protect me, even when it is not needed. Almost always it is not.
Sandra had me picture my anger which I immediately saw in my mind's eye as a big, round, ugly reddish-pink, fearsome but also cartoonish, character.
Her powerful visualization went on from there but I don’t want to give away too much of her procedure which includes more visualization and sound.
What I will say is that dealing with the anger has already had a powerful effect. I feel I have come to the right place and am doing the right thing. After years of having my anger rule me, I have finally located it. I can see it, and am learning how to deal with it by knowing its root cause and knowing that it’s something I—at least under usual circumstances—no longer have use for.
I am thinking, as I begin to write this, that where I begin writing is often far from where I end up. I start with one thought, which then leads to another and another and suddenly I’m on a journey. I’m going somewhere. And what is so interesting, as with all the best journeys, since I don’t know where I’m going to find myself in the end, I can simply let go! The process of journeying takes over and becomes the reason for everything.
At some point along the way the destination—and the whole reason for getting there—becomes subservient to the trip itself. When I get a stomach ache or something happens which requires immediate attention, that overpowers any thoughts of the place I am going to end up. Suddenly the destination is gone and forgotten.
Like writing, painting a painting is the same, or writing music—any creative process—or having a job or (let’s go for it) even an entire lifetime. I mean, with a life, what is the point in looking forward to the final destination? Doesn’t it make much more sense, to look to each day, to each hour, to each single action?
I’ve been struggling as of late—losing the thread of my life and having to search for it, pick it up, tie it back together and then continue to follow it onward. Vita of Vitalingus.com, was perceptive enough to mention to me that she saw this happening. In my reply to her I said that I felt like I had to "go slow" right now, in order to "minimize potential damage" as they say in military speak.
As I wrote, I felt myself witnessing the solution to the problem. Instantly I began to feel more alive than I have in awhile.
My life is usually fairly intense. I travel at blurred-vision kind of speed—way too fast, I think, for a human to be safely in motion. It seemed for awhile that my three heart procedures might have possibly had the effect of slowing me down, but at it turned out—this hasn’t been the case in the least! Strangely enough, following my last operation, which took place in February, I have become even more "driven". I think it’s because I’ve got this very intense "every minute is precious because it may be my last" feeling.
I believe that the only thing that’s going to save me is consciously attempting to travel more slowly—to move mindfully, one minute at a time.
I’ve always loved what an early mentor of mine, G. Scott Wright, once told me. Walking is the perfect speed for humans to travel. It’s by moving at walking speed that we don’t miss things. Even going a little bit faster, like riding a bicycle, things start to blur.
I am connected to the universe—so well connected that there is no discernable difference between me and you and anyone else. We are all of the same mind. We are all descended from the same set of original cells. We all breathe the same air, we all awaken each day beneath the same sun.
Wars happen over differences, when some of us believe in the illusion of things being not the same. Maybe we need to feel the urge to judge in order to feel who we are—to make ourselves feel special, as in "I am better than you" or "I am richer than you" or "smarter than you." But if we remember who we really are, that all of us breathe the same air as our ancestors breathed including Jesus and Krishna and Buddha and Mohammed—then what, exactly, is there to war about?
I am no better than you who and you are no better than me. And the reality is, there is no reason to compare us because we are all of the same flesh anyway beginning "way back when" and continuing way into the future.
Peace.
I have seen that my experience of the universe, the earth the sun and the stars, and all that goes on around them and on them—all of this is contained in me. It’s all part of my consciousness. Knowing this makes me both sigh in relief and feel a shiver run up my spine. It’s comforting to know that everything I witness going on around me, is really just "me" in disguise. The world, and all around it, is my vision of how things are. As Maharishi says, "the world is as we are." Our own state of being creates our perception of things.
The part that’s scary is that what this means is that in a sense I am also my own High Power—my own God. I know this seems like a contradiction, but the more I learn of life, the more I learn there is more to learn. And one thing I am learning is that there are contradictions—at least there are for me. And I just have to allow them to exist, to accept them. Everything in life cannot be put in neat little boxes. It seems people like me like to do that—to line things up in rows in order to simplify and make sense of things. Sometimes when I don’t, there is too much chaos and, at least for me, too much chaos means I get a headache!
But the reality is, the bigger part of our Nature, that is Nature with a capital "N", is what is REALLY in control whether we perceive it as part of us or not. An example that comes to mind is flying over Florida, you see how developers make streets in an orderly fashion and how neatly they divide up the lots along the streets. The whole thing looks even and nice. But then what happens? Hurricane Andrew comes along and moves it all around! Our bigger Nature, our Higher Power shows whom is really in charge here. But, what is interesting is that Higher Power is part of me as well.
Last night, on the way to a book signing, my small self was busy imagining a huge turn out. I’d done my homework, I thought. The store had publicized the event, sent out cards. There was a big poster of me just inside the door. But what happened was the US troops in Iraq toppled a statue of Saddam Hussein and everybody in America became glued to their television watching Saddam fall, over and over. The store manager called to tell me this. The store had had no traffic all afternoon. When I called her just as I was leaving home, she warned me not to expect anybody to show up.
But alone in my car, the place where many of us do most of our thinking, I tried to visualize what the turnout was going to be like. There were at least 50 or 75 people at my last signing. I walked in to an audience eager to hear me speak! So why wouldn’t I find the same sort of crowd awaiting me at my second?
Well, as much as my small self imagined it, my bigger Self walked into the store to meet with reality. I walked in and found a single couple—delightful people—the Wards. The store manager introduced them as "My new best friends." We engaged in a lively conversation—along with Lee Fleming, Stanley Thompson and Jack Disbrow, all loyal old friends who showed up late.
Learning to believe in my big Self—the Higher Power inside me—is something I have to do over and over again. It is all about acceptance: learning that the War in Iraq is part of me, and so are the people watching it on television that didn’t show up at my book signing.
What keeps things interesting is that my internal God always seems to be one step ahead of me. But the more I begin to let go and accept every circumstance as just another part of the puzzle that is me, the calmer—the happier—I become.
I watched, as much of the world did, as some U.S. troops tied a noose around Saddam’s neck and then struggled to topple the statue (it was only a statue). The statue was stubborn of course and it didn’t want to fall—just like Saddam the man. But as the truck pulled harder and the body finally did come apart, the statue did a final undignified dive sliding forward off the pipes that had held it in place.
As soon as Saddam was down and on the ground he was instantly engulfed by an exuberant crowd kicking and beating him. It gave me at least a small sense of how evil the leader must have been. After all, what else would have caused such a huge outpouring of pure joy in people watching a statue fall.
We Americans are lucky. Those of us born here have not experienced what the Iraqis have. Regardless of the decisions, which brought us to Iraq I can’t help but feel pride in our country at this moment. "Happy, jubilant people" is the way a reporter characterized a crowd which greeted our troops come to free them from the oppression that had held them in the grip of fear.
After all, this is what we Americans are good at. We are still the only country that will stand up to oppression and take the flak from the rest of the world. I have held onto this thought many times when I have been overcome with guilt and shame I experienced from fighting in Vietnam. But, looking at the joyous faces and hearing the shouts of years of oppression being released, how can anyone not want to share in the good feeling of the Iraqis?
As someone who has experienced war, I probably have as great a dislike for it as anyone on earth. I hate the idea of it. I hate the memory of it—of what it did to me and to my friends. But seeing this crowd of people cheering our soldiers—even for those of us who know its power—I wonder if war is not a necessary evil.
What is really dumb, in my estimation, is that "doing my best" is a scary thought for me. Because it means that when I strive to be better, to stand tall, to be a leader, I feel the fear of failure standing right behind me, breathing down the back of my neck. Fearing failure is what is scary. But if I turn around and face the demon, I see he’s not there. There is nobody judging me—there is nobody who really cares except me!
I realize there is nothing to fear because I don’t have very far to fall. I’m 6’1" but even at that height, it’s not all that far to the ground. Recently I was forced to consider that distance, which has helped me to feel "right sized" as they say.
The day I left the hospital following my last heart procedure, I nearly fainted. It was a simple thing caused by one of the medications I was taking, the one for lowering blood pressure. It slows the blood flow to the brain so that when you get up quickly, it takes longer than usual for the blood to be pumped up to the head. As a result you can get light headed or dizzy or, if you really jump up quickly and out-race your blood like I did, you start to faint.
I found myself leaning against the open door to my room struggling to stand. My legs went weak, my vision was—well I hardly remember being able to see anything out of my eyes. My fingers clawed unsuccessfully to find a hold on the smooth surface of the door and I started to keel over. Luckily, a nurse was witnessing this whole thing "from the outside" and ran down the hall and caught me in her arms before I hit the floor.
Her instruction for handling such a situation on my own was simple: drop to the floor. In other words, move towards the floor yourself before gravity does it for you and you keel over and land on your head. Makes perfect sense but is something I never would’ve thought of on my own.
So in a very simplistic way, I know the way back down is simple so what is there to fear about standing tall? Not much. If I start to fall, even with no nurses around, I know the way back down.
My heart operations have been a wake up call. As a result of all this medical stuff happening to an otherwise fit and healthy human specimen, I now have gained a kind of urgency in my life. I feel like I’ve been given this body to use only for a limited time—kind of free rental car agreement—so I’d better get on with whatever I have to accomplish with this gift.
Necessarily, what seems to come first, is for me to figure out exactly what it is I want to do with it. The picture I am painting for myself is this: to become someone whose life is used for the good of all—someone who will help others to succeed knowing that the only thing I keeps is what I give away. In the end I want to strive to make the world a better place than it is when I arrived.
This might seem like a lofty ideal. But for now, in order accomplish it and not be afraid of standing tall, I think I should picture the goal as being only about six feet and one inch tall.
Sunday morning, after mixing the pancake batter for my younger son and his "sleep overs", I found we were down to just a few drops of maple syrup. Although the last thing I wanted to do was return to the supermarket—I’d already been out for the Sunday paper—there was no getting around it. Pancakes without syrup—I don’t think so!
I was smart enough not to come up with a half-baked solution like using honey instead. So, leaving the batter on the island, I headed for Super Stop & Shop and the syrup aisle. I also grabbed a few other items—bananas and organic apples, ingredients for the healthy fruit shakes even my kids love, and vegetarian eggs.
I usually speak to the person in the check-out line. I try to be nice, and of course when I do, they usually respond in kind. This morning I met a young woman, identified by her badge as Lizzy, at the register and a young Asian girl about my son’s age—sixteen—bagging the groceries. Her tag read "Hai."
I avoided the temptation to joke about the pronunciation of her name, thinking half the people she met probably did. Instead I asked, "what nationality are you?" "Vietnamese," she smiled back.
"From what part?" I asked. "Saigon," she answered. "I was there, during the war." I smiled extra much, as I have every time I’ve spoken to a Vietnamese, as if I was proving I wasn’t going to harm them or some such idiotic thing.
"I was up near Quang Ngai," I told her. "Of course, that was before you were born."
Then Lizzy politely reminded me where I was at the moment. "Swipe your card, please?" "Okay, Lizzy," "I’m called ‘Liz'" she corrected me." "I have a short for my name too," I joked. "Toe", she smiled, surprising me; nobody has ever guessed it before.
I turned back to Hai. "I wrote a book about the war." I couldn’t resist telling her. "It’s called, 'Beneath Buddha’s Eyes'."
"What’s that again?" Liz asked as she wrote down the title. "I’ll have to go buy one."
On the way out to my car I’d decided I would give them each a book. Since the publisher has given me only twenty-five copies, each one is quite precious to me. I’ve given out only a few to family members and a couple of newspaper editors. Because I don’t carry copies in my car, I had to drive back home. I half expected that when I got there I’d probably change my mind and let them buy their own. But I didn’t.
I took two fresh copies off the shelf in my office, signed them on my desk—one for Liz and one for Mai—which, from that moment on, assured ownership of the books. When I got into the store I pretty much raced up to their aisle where I stopped check-out traffic for about a half a minute while I opened each book to determine which was for which.
The entire act of giving was no more complicated than that. I heard a "thank you" from Liz and maybe one from Hai as well, as I aimed for the automatic door. I didn’t really even have time to look at their faces. The way it happened was just the way I wanted it—simple and uncomplicated. In a way, my giving them the books was a selfish act because it made me feel so good.
I’m surprised that I’m even writing about this here. I think the reason I am is not to brag about what a good guy I am, because what I did was really no big deal, it is just to share how good the simple act made me feel. I suspect it probably did the same for Liz and Hai as well.
For me, this is what peace and love are all about.
I can’t help it, I can’t explain it, I don’t even want to—but this morning, watching the latest firefight on MSNBC I felt tears welling up in my eyes.
What is strange is that they were tears of happiness—mostly—not sadness, brought on by the face of the soldier caught on tape for just an instant. The cameraman was taping just over the soldier’s shoulder so you could see the tracers heading out from the guy’s M-16. You could see the bullets hitting and ricocheting. It was real—so very, very real.
I let a few hours intervene after ending the last sentence and beginning this one. Because I realized that I had to explain what my emotion was about and where it came from. After all, I’m a writer and writers explain.
But the answer is simple. The emotion, which is very real comes from the pride of knowing. The intense feeling of pride comes from the depths of what it is to be a soldier. I consider myself a man of peace; I think, for the most part, I conduct my life in a peace-loving way. Having said that, I can also say without an ounce of hypocrisy (as I expect some might feel to be true) that being a soldier is the highest calling a man or a woman can have. For who else, beside a soldier, is willing to die for what they believe in? Not most peace protesters are willing to actually put their life on the line.
But that is exactly what the young soldier caught on tape this morning is doing. Whether or not we believe what he is doing is right, he is doing it completely selflessly. He deserves all our love, respect and admiration. From me, he gets my understanding and empathy as well.
I think many who, when this war started, were skeptical about the President’s goal (I was one, and still in part am) are now having our eyes opened by knowing the atrocities that Saddam Hussein has perpetrated on the people of Iraq. It seems he truly was, and still is, a ruthless dictator. The soldier I saw, as well as all the thousands of others that have traveled to Iraq to end Saddam’s reign of terror, believe in their hearts that they are doing the right thing. These Americans and British soldiers are good people. People doing good. They are on the right side of good and evil. We who traveled to Vietnam believed the same thing.
One of the most difficult things in the world to do is to give up your comfortable life at home, travel to a foreign land put yourself in harms way where you will see some of your closest comrades—the ones who truly support you—die.
This is why it takes all the patience and tolerance I can muster, not to be angry with some of the people protesting the war right now. I believe in peace. I still believe, even, that we might have gone to Iraq for the wrong reason, but seeing the face of truth and justice this morning on that soldier who is risking his life fighting for me…well, it brought tears to my eyes.
When I saw him, I knew that I had felt what he felt. A lot of old soldiers like me have felt what he felt. It is a very, very complicated and complex set of feelings—ones which never die…never fade from memory.
During these uncertain days of war, what better battle can there be for me to fight—for all of us—than a battle with anger itself?
This is what the Dalai Lama says about anger: "If we examine how anger or hateful thoughts arise in us, we will find that, generally speaking, they arise when we feel hurt, when we feel that we have been unfairly treated by someone against our expectations. If in that instant we examine carefully the way anger arises, there is a sense that it comes as a protector, comes as a friend that would help our battle or in taking revenge against the person who has inflicted harm on us. So the anger or hateful thought that arises appears to come as a shield or a protector. But in reality that is an illusion. It is a very delusory state of mind."
Reading his words, I know the Dalai Lama is right. Because when I think of my own experience with anger, I recall that it arises when someone says something that hurts me. I am hurt, so as a protection, as though I was lifting a shield in front of me, I grow angry. My wife sometimes tells me that whenever anyone else is angry in the family, I grow even angrier than they are—my protection has to be greater.
But how do I win this battle against anger. In order to win does it mean I must learn not to be hurt? But how can I ever do that? There is no way to assure myself I will never feel hurt. So how can I feel hurt but then not grow angry? That is the question I must answer.
His Holiness tells us that neither education nor wealth nor even the law will protect us from these feelings of anger which arise. It appears that there really is no simple answer and that it is continued practice, which is the only way… The Dalai Lama says, "The only factor that can give refuge or protection from the destructive effects of anger and hatred is the practice of tolerance and patience."
So those are the weapons—tolerance and patience—which we must choose in fighting our battle.
It’s time to face our enemy, which just might be anger itself!
The world around us is at war so we’re all at war. It is affecting me, as well as everybody I talk to—and we are the ones who have NOT gone to fight in Iraq!
Since nobody seems to be able to get away from the war, I came up with an idea that might help us all. Rather than stew in our anger, why not use this time—when our country is at war anyway—to fight our own enemies? Let’s fight our own personal battles to the finish. I doubt if we’ll ever find a more perfect time for it. What with all the bombs going off and all the noise, I don't think anybody else will even notice!
This means...each of us should be able to fight our own personal battles in peace.
Think about the concept—"fighting in peace." This might be truly revolutionary, something worth exploring. Since we’re all in this together, I’d like to sign you up, recruit you. We’re going to be fighting a kind of guerrilla warfare here. It may not be easy. There will be no traditional battles fought out in the open. This war will be carried on in the shadows of our minds…in the dark alleyways…
(to be continued)