Dealing with the News

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

On my Yahoo 360 blog I have been recounting the Ten Grave Precepts. Today's precept is the fifth which asks us not to cloud our minds. Usually this is taken to mean not to drink to the point of not being sober. It is also a invitation not to ingest drugs or other toxins that will injure us or otherwise cause harm. Thich Nhat Hahn, the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk and Peace Worker has suggested that this precept includes taking things into us such as images or information which will poison us. Poison us with greed, hatred, and delusion.

This morning's news included a piece on the killing of Mr. Tom Fox, a Quaker and a Christian Peace Worker in Iraq who was taken hostage. Reports are that he was beaten, cut, and then shot in the chest and the head. Bound, his body was dumped on the street.

There are several "Friends" on this list. My deepest condolences to you.

My sense is that to avoid news can be harmful, as harmful as hiding one's head in the sand. The problem isn't the news or the images, but in what we do with them. If the images and the news causes hatred and anger, big problem. If, on the other hand, the information invites us to examine ourselves, our feelings, our relationships, our own actions, and thereby causes us to stand upright in the face of these three poisons, then we are being bodhisattvas.

The Buddha invited us to sit in a graveyard and be with a decomposing body. The image, the scent, the processes of decomposition are all "poisons" to those who seek nothing but the flowers of life. Yet all flowers eventually lose their bloom, wilt, keel over, wrinkle-up and die. They then become part of the environment, enriching it with nutrients for the next seed beginning to grow.

When we stand apart from the natural cycles of living and dying, loving and hating, we are not able tro help, we lose touch, live in a fantasy, and become incapable of connecting to others.

So, we should sit with this atrocity. We should invite our feelings to enter us, process them as we would the presence of a decomposing body in our living room. Turn away the eyes and you become salt. Care for the body and you become a bodhisattva.

It is most challenging work.

Be well.