Gazing in the Mirror

December 16 - Equanimity in Living

The warrior is never amazed.
If somebody comes up to you
and says, 'I'm going to kill you
right now', or 'I have a million
dollars for you', you are not
amazed. You simply assume
your seat in the saddle.
~ Trungpa, "Shambhala:
The Sacred Path of the Warrior"

Evil is but an obsession and –
from the standpoint of eternal
reality – a complete illusion. ...
evil flees before reality and to
the mind which knows it,
evil is not.
~ Ernest Holmes

I have an online acquaintance who lives in Newtown CT and so he felt more personally than most of my virtual friends the impact of the tragic killing of 20 schoolchildren there in 2012. The children were all between the ages of 6 and 7. That year was when I first wrote this essay and at the time, I felt such a deep sadness about that event - it was almost like despair or a depression - as I could not make sense of what was senseless to my human heart's understanding. My acquaintance who is a thoughtful person and a Unitarian atheist (that is actually how he defines his own self) offered the quote from Trungpa that I have shared with you at the top of this essay but there was actually more to it than I have shared thus far. That was only the last bit of the quote my friend shared with me at that time of sorrow.

I have been attracted to the warrior's way since I was only in my 20s. I had originally encountered the concept of a warrior through the writings of Carlos Casteneda. The other part of that quote from Trungpa comes from page 75 of "Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior". Here is that quote – "The warrior's awareness is not based on the training of ultimate paranoia. It is based on the training of ultimate solidity — trusting in basic goodness. That does not mean you have to be heavy or boring, but simply that you have constant joyfulness; therefore you can't be startled. Sudden excitement or exaggerated reactions to situations need not occur at this level. You belong to the world of warriors. When little things happen — good or bad, right or wrong — you don't exaggerate them."

The night before I wrote this essay, I had a long conversation with my husband. I needed to relieve the heaviness in me. I reached the same conclusion as the friend who shared the above quote. That in some sense Trungpa is saying that even murder is a "little thing". And my friend and I came to the same conclusion – both that such killing at a global level is all too commonplace and that we all die eventually. I have long understood that each lifetime given us does not come with a guaranteed length of time. In a very real sense each of these children were granted a lifetime of only 6 or 7 years. Many children die each year of illness or accident. This is the reality. Many parents suffer the unthinkable loss of a child during their own lifetime.

My husband shared with me why we have guns in our household even though Peace is precious to both of us and he even avoided being drafted during the Vietnam War – partly because he had a high number and he and his parents made certain he would not be available by sending him on a trip through Europe for the duration, when he was at risk as an additional "protective" strategy. One of our guns had been the property of one of his grandfathers and was used for killing squirrels to eat. Another gun had been purchased by my husband in his youth for food security. But the third gun was purchased by my husband's father for "protection" because for he had experienced the murder of his own brother at the hands of a deranged man who knocked on the door of the family home one day. The knock was answered by my father in law's nephew who then had the difficult experience of witnessing the murder of his father right in front of his eyes. My father in law therefore lived his life in such a manner as to never cause anyone to feel so angry at him that they might kill him. He was genuinely a bit fearful throughout his life because of things that had actually happened to family and acquaintances. He lived very quietly and once when my husband and I were involved in a local political dispute, our involvement did worry my father in law deeply.

The truth about incarnated reality is that creation and destruction are in some sort of Divine balance. Since the beginning of sentient life there have been predators and prey. As humans our most dangerous predator is often a member of our own species. As prey we can only attempt to reduce the risk of our life being taken from us due to that natural order of things. It is difficult for me to hold out much hope that the cessation of violent tendencies in humankind will occur in my own current lifetime, though my heart's mind would choose quickly such an outcome if that were solely in my own control. In a recent Sherlock Holmes inspired movie titled "A Game of Shadows" Professor Moriarty is quoted as saying "You see hidden with the unconscious lies an insatiable desire for conflict. So you're not fighting me, at all, as much as you're fighting the human condition. War on an industrial scale is inevitable; they'll do it themselves within a few years. All I want to do is to own the bullets and the bandages".

Another one of my friends mentioned a metaphor which she took from a writer she had read, though I cannot match the quote to any author via a google search, it captured my own naturalist's heart immediately. "I'm knee deep in the river and there's no turning back because having come this far has been the most amazing and wonderful experience EVER. However, I'm eager to go deeper – so deep that I can no longer see the banks and I'm completely immersed." Maybe the quote is actually my friend's own thinking created from concept. It matters not really. I am knee deep in the reality of Life and that is wonderfully OK with me. It is what I came into this existence to experience. I continue to seek equanimity with what is for my own relief and comfort.

~ perspective

Within my own self I seek a centered
balance and that I might be the eye
in the swirl of a hurricane of human chaos
to perceive the swirl but remain at peace.
I seek to understand that the nature of
Life is that incarnation is temporary and
without guaranteed length nor foreknowledge
of how it will end, only the certainty that
it will.
I see a warrior's way that apprehends Reality
without denying it nor hiding from it.
I wish to accept all that Life is while I have
the blessing of being incarnate on Earth.
I comfort my own heart with spiritual
awareness and temper my joy by knowledge
of form and it's brevity.

#atheist #death #despair #fear #grief #murder #paranoia #sadness #understanding #violence