A Wise Life

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

The other day at the weekly Peace Vigil, I offered my support to a Quaker woman who was standing there with a sign. We talked about Mr. Fox, a Quaker Peace Worker who was taken hostage in Iraq a few months ago. She spoke of him clearly in matter of fact sentances. I saw only a few hints of admiration in the corners of her eyes.

Violence against people is such a horrible thing. It is irrational. It is hurtful. It creates pain and suffering.

Not too many years ago, some men broke into my daughter's home and raped her.

When I was younger a friend of my brother's lost his mind in our apartment in Miami. He took a large knife, raving, he huddled us together, turned on a stereo and waited for my brother to transform himself into the devil. He promised at that hour to kill him.

In the jungle in Vietnam I killed several men. One was a friend lost in the middle of a nighttime firefight.

When I was younger still a raging father, a medic in the south pacific during World War II, assaulted my mother and my brother in an alcoholic fit of frustration and anger.

Violence does nothing but scar the heart. We spend the rest of our lives attempting to make sense out of non-sense. Such things cause us to examine our relationship with God and Man. They demand a question of our values and moral compass. Trauma has that effect.

The thing is, we are each anger. We are each frustration. We are each misunderstood, suffering beings, feeling pain. When we lack the tools to deal with the pain we resort to the quick fixes: lashing out, screaming, hitting. All vain attempts to control the pain, stop the hurt, and protect ourselves. Every juvenille protective step is cause more more pain and suffering.

Until we learn to accept and surrender our need to control, we will continue this cycle of pain and suffering. Harm stops when we refuse to harm. In the refusal, we gain control. In the understanding we gain wisdom. A wise life is a benefit to all.

Be well.