JournalNews column
It’s not been a good week for pacifists.
In the weeks and months leading up to this war, I’ve remained steadfast in my belief that this should not be happening. Our country should not be so aggressive as to pound another part of the world with such force, to expect armies to stand aside while our military bullies its way to the capitol. There’s an arrogance and a hypocrisy to our nation’s foreign policies that sickens me.
We tell our children that two wrongs don’t make a right, then send them off to battle to kill the evil dictators of the world and the innocents who get in the way. We should not have let the situation in the Middle East degenerate to the point where there is no other option than “shock and awe.”
My pacifism is not a political belief, but a moral one. It’s wrong to do violence. It’s wrong to kill. It’s far better for humankind to exercise its capacity for love and mercy than its bloodlust. I’m not against the Iraqi war. I’m against war.
Is this idealistic? You bet it is, but if we don’t have ideals of world peace, then we — all of us, not just Americans — have absolutely no hope of ever overcoming the part of us that insists on greed and violence.
I get a lot of e-mails and phone calls when I express my utopian desire that we should all just learn how to get along. Most of my correspondants thank me for having the courage to speak out for my faith and my beliefs, but there are those who ridicule me, even threaten me. I’ve been called “ignorant” and “a big fat nothing,” and I’ve received anonymous e-mails from people forwarding stories about journalists getting kidnapped and killed.
Being called ignorant doesn’t bother me a lot, except that I feel sorry for people who have been so hardened by the world that they feel like they can make those judgments about someone they don’t know.
It does bother me that people will call me “un-American” for speaking my mind, because I’m being very American, believing our founding fathers who wrote about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
The love of “life” — and not just my own — is the foundation of my anti-war beliefs. Dropping bombs and shooting other people only deprives them of their life, so how does that kind of violence harmonize with being a good American?
“Liberty” is my right to express my beliefs, no matter how unrealistic — or ignorant — they may be. To those who say, “America: Love it or leave it,” I have to say: “America: Love it and work to make it better.”
I can only imagine that “the pursuit of happiness” is going to get more and more difficult while living in increasing fear of terrorists and other nations who do, indeed, hate America and Americans. “You just don’t understand evil,” one reader e-mailed me. Maybe I don’t, but I understand that we reap what we sow, that death and destruction leads to more death and destruction. We may take out Saddam Hussein and bring democracy to Iraq, but we’re also giving the next generation of terrorists another reason to hate America.
The only righteous way to fight evil is with love. I saw on CNN that each one of the Tomahawk missiles our military shot into Baghdad cost over a million dollars.
In my idealistic view, I can only imagine how much food a million dollars would buy. And I would rather have a young Iraqi growing up remembering how when he was hungry Americans gave him food than remembering how when he was oppressed, Americans killed his father.
JournalNews column
I didn’t know that looking inward would be such a workout.
More than 20 seekers turned out for the Hamilton Zen Center’s first introductory workshop on Saturday to receive instruction from Zen Master Dae Gak from the Furnace Mountain retreat, located in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge. The local Zen Center is a sort of grandchild of Furnace Mountain by way of the Cincinnati Zen Center, where Fairfield Township residents Dennis and Robin Kurlas have been practicing for the last 10 years.
I like that they call it “practicing.” It implies that you’ll never get it right. Even Master Dae Gak said that after practicing Zen for over 30 years that he still wonders why he’s doing it, what he really gets out of it.
Although Zen grows out of Buddhist traditions, it is a spiritual practice, not necessarily a religious one. It doesn’t matter what your beliefs are, the practice of Zen can enhance a search of spiritual enlightenment, a way to get closer to your own personal Jesus. Indeed, its easy to come up with Biblical verse to support Zen practice. Psalm 46 is a good place to start: “Be still and know that I am God.”
I attended a seminar at a local church a few weekends ago where the speaker spent a great deal of time talking about how to hear the voice of God in the quiet moments of your life.
Until you know what the voice of God sounds like, you’ll never be able to hear it above the din and drone of everyday life, he said. It’s like trying to find a distant radio station late at night when the dial is full of static and the signals seem to shift frequencies.
Practicing Zen as a form of prayer helps hone in on the right frequency. But it’s not the kind of prayer where you complain to God or seek relief for yourself and others. Rather, it’s the kind of prayer where you learn to listen.
Indeed, Master Dae Gak’s philosophy is all about listening. On the Furnace Mountain website (www.furnacemountain.org), there’s a link that appears to be Dae Gak’s biography, but when you click on it, there’s a photo of him on a motorcycle and the only text is his variation of some Zen verse:
All beings cry out ...
Listen
All mistakes point the Way ...
Listen
Everything is Truth ...
Listen
Put aside self interest and help others.
Robin and Dennis told me that they felt the need to organize a local Zen center partly because they’ve met a lot of people in the area who want to know more about the practice, but don’t want to make regular trips to the Cincinnati Zen Center in Oakley.
But we live in dark and dangerous times and many people are searching for inner peace in order to deal with the violence and sadness we are constantly confronting.
“We get the feeling that a lot of people are searching right now,” Dennis said. “Times are changing and people are unsure about where to look for answers other than the escape of reality shows on television.
“Our culture always seems to be looking at the outside. Zen is a way of looking inward.”
Mostly by sitting still. And it does take practice. After six hours of sitting, my legs felt the strain the following day, the same kind of sweet ache you get from a healthy work-out, a reminder that you’ve made progress.
And I’ve learned there’s only one way to condition the muscles from suffering from such aches: Practice.
JournalNews column
There are a lot of reasons for our involvement in the Middle East, a lot of reasons why we are in conflict.
So while it’s not especially accurate to describe it as a religious conflict, there’s no denying the religious overtones of it all. Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden both see themselves as warriors for Islam, and though our nation tries to be more subtle about it it’s pretty clear than many Americans, including a lot of our leaders, believe that our conflict resonates with Biblical prophesy.
Although “Salam: Divine Revelations from the Actual God,” a new book by New York businessman Shyam D. Buxani, doesn’t address the Middle East conflicts directly, his revelations about the mysteries of the universe could have healing power if both sides would open up enough to consider them.
Buxani said that he wasn’t raised in any religion at all, but his family was very strict in its rituals of fasting and meditation for personal enlightenment.
Then around 1984, he’d reached a point of prayer and sacrifice that merited divine enlightenment and he began to write down his revelations in a notebook, which are now collected in his nearly 600-page book.
While some of the specific revelations may be subject to debate, Buxani said that his premise is irrefutable, that if we pray and sacrifice directly to what he calls “the Actual God,” without intercessors, intermediaries or visual images, only then we can attain spiritual enlightenment.
“If I tell you to worship a tree, you can dispute that, or someone who is incarnate of God, you can dispute that,” he said. “But if I tell you to worship the Actual God, you cannot dispute that.”
Although he never mentions any religion specifically, it’s easy enough to see the implications of his writing. The world’s religions, he said, are based on books that make worship restrictive and regressive rather than liberating and uplifting.
“Because of their restrictive beliefs, religions are forced to defend themselves,” he said. “They cannot alter their books because it is written within them that they cannot. It is very difficult to change people’s set thinking.”
While his revelations ultimately succumb to the very same weaknesses he describes in established religions — demanding, for instance, that unless you follow the practices described in his book, including rules about shaving and hair length, bad things will happen to your eternal soul — section 3.5.1.22, “Do Not Harm Anyone in the Name of Religion,” contains an interesting enlightenment on the subject of religious conflict.
He writes, “(D)o not vent your anger on any living prophet, saint or guru who preaches visual worship. While the teachings that person is trying to propagate may be so nasty, remember that in religion, the size of a prophet’s following is directly proportional to the sacrfices performed.
“If you were to bring any physical harm to that prophet, saint or guru, you would only be compounding the level of his sacrifices, and accordingly aiding him in spreading those evil teachings by increasing his following.”
That’s a revelation to be considered by both sides of the conflict, especially if one side feels the leaders of the other to be the embodiment of evil.
The attacks on the World Trade Center empowered our nation to wage a “war on terrorism,” so what will the consequences be when we make a martyr of Saddam Hussein. Who will be empowered then?
JournalNews column
I tried to be nonchalant about it, as if it were a perfectly normal thing for a middle-aged man sitting on a mall bench turning balloons into flowers.
This is a skill I picked up last fall in preparing for a church comedy sketch that called for me to make a balloon sculpture and get it all wrong. I figured in order to get it wrong, I ought to know a little about getting it right, so I bought a package of sculptural balloons and used the illustration on the package to figure out how to make a dog.
That was easy enough, so I set out to discover what else I could make. I explored a menagerie of balloon animals, but they never looked much like what they’re supposed to be. I liked the flowers, though. The colorful balloons and fanciful shapes seemed suited to floral designs, so I became a specialist in creating what I’ve come to call “clownflowers.”
It didn’t take long for me to discover the joy my clownflowers could bring to the world, and I started carrying a bag of balloons with me all the time. Children, especially, are drawn to clownflowers, but I’ve seen certifiable curmudgeons laugh out loud at the sight of a balloon flower bouquet.
We live in dangerous and fearful times, and I’ve come to believe that if a quarter’s worth of latex can generate a priceless amount of joy — for who can put a dollar figure on even a fleeting smile? — then I’ll gladly pay it a hundred times.
I won’t deny a selfish motive. I believe in karma, that what you reap what you sow, that if you plant a seed of joy, then bounties of joy will come back, and I need joy in my life. Who doesn’t?
Last Sunday afternoon, I put my clownflowers to a test.
I had taken my family to a nearby mall and got separated from them. I soon tired of window shopping and took a seat on a bench near a fountain to people-watch, one of my favorite pasttimes. When someone would make eye contact with me, they looked expectant somehow, as if wondering what I was doing there and wondering what was in it for them, as if they sensed I had something to offer.
So after a few minutes, I brought out my balloon bag, and even though I wasn’t putting on a show, it’s hard to be inconsipcuous while blowing up a 60-inch balloon. People look and wonder.
The eyes of the passers-by were no longer wanting, however, but amused.
I finished the first one just as a family came walking by with a little girl about 9 or 10 years old.
She didn’t seem happy about being there, trailing a few steps behind her mother and an older child. She eyed me suspiciously — the appropriate response — as I silently offered her the flower, then looked to her mother, who said, “Go ahead and take it if you want it.”
Her face brightened as took the flower, and I watched how her body language changed from sullen and mopey to cheerful and energized.
In the 45 minutes it took for my family to catch up with me, I unleashed a dozen or more clownflowers, each one carrying with it a prayer for joy. If no one happened to be walking by as I finished one, I put it in a planter by the fountain, brightening their plastic greenery with rubber flowers. But I never accumulated more than two or three, because as people would notice them and laugh, I’d say, “They’re free if you want one.” No one declined. One family gave me two bucks anyway, though the accumulation of money was not my objective and didn’t even cover the expense.
My mission was to spread joy and clownflowers, and I won.
