Thich Nhat Hanh Working Too Much Family Is Dispersed

WORKING FOR PEACE

Reprinted from Being Peace (1987) by Thich Nhat Hanh with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California, world wide web.parallax.org

Working for Peace

In Plum Village in French republic, we receive many letters from the refugee camps in Singapore, Malaysia, Republic of indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, hundreds each calendar week. It is very painful to read them, but we have to do it, we have to be in contact. We try our all-time to assist, only the suffering is enormous, and sometimes we are discouraged. Information technology is said that half the gunkhole people die in the sea; merely half arrive at the shores in Southeast Asia.

There are many young girls, boat people, who are raped by body of water pirates. Even though the United Nations and many countries endeavour to help the government of Thailand prevent that kind of piracy, sea pirates keep to inflict much suffering on the refugees. I 24-hour interval we received a letter telling united states about a young girl on a small boat who was raped past a Thai pirate.

She was only twelve, and she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself. When y'all kickoff learn of something like that, y'all get angry at the pirate. You naturally accept the side of the girl. Equally you expect more deeply you lot will see it differently. If you have the side of the petty daughter, then information technology is easy. You but have to accept a gun and shoot the pirate. But we cannot do that. In my meditation I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same weather every bit he was, I am now the pirate. There is a great likelihood that I would become a pirate. I cannot condemn myself so easily. In my meditation, I saw that many babies are built-in along the Gulf of Siam, hundreds every day, and if nosotros educators, social workers, politicians, and others do non do something about the situation, in 20-five years a number of them will become sea pirates. That is certain. If y'all or I were born today in those fishing villages, we might get sea pirates in twenty-v years. If yous take a gun and shoot the pirate, y'all shoot all of us, considering all of us are to some extent responsible for this situation.

Later a long meditation, I wrote this poem. In it, at that place are 3 people: the twelve-year-old girl, the pirate, and me. Can we expect at each other and recognize ourselves in each other? The title of the verse form is "Please Phone call Me By My True Names," because I have so many names. When I hear one of these names, I take to say, "Aye."

Exercise non say that I'll depart tomorrow because fifty-fifty today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I get in in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the centre of blossom, to be a precious stone hiding itself in a stone.

I still make it, in order to express joy and to cry,in society to fear and to hope, the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes,arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear h2o of a swimming, and I am likewise the grass-snake who,approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the kid in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks, and I am the artillery merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old daughter, refugee on a pocket-sized boat, who throws herself into the ocean afterward being raped past a body of water pirate, and I am the pirate, my middle not nonetheless capable of seeing and loving.

I am a fellow member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor army camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm information technology makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain is similar a river of tears, so full it fills up the iv oceans.

Please phone call me by my true names,and then I can hear all my cries and my laughs at one time,so I can see that my joy and hurting are i.

Please call me past my truthful names, then I can wake upwardly, and so the door of my eye tin be left open, the door of pity.

*        *        *

There is a Zen story about a man riding a horse that is galloping very quickly. Some other human being, continuing aslope the road, yells at him, "Where are you going?" and the man on the horse yells dorsum, "I don't know. Ask the equus caballus." I recall that is our situation. We are riding many horses that we cannot control. The proliferation of armaments, for instance, is a horse. Nosotros have tried our all-time, but we cannot control these horses. Our lives are so busy.

In Buddhism, the well-nigh of import axiom of all is to live in awareness, to know what is going on. To know what is going on, not but here, but there. For instance, when yous eat a piece of bread, you lot may choose to be aware that our farmers, in growing the wheat, use chemic poisons a little too much. Eating the bread, we are somehow co-responsible for the destruction of our ecology. When we consume a piece of meat or drinkable booze, we tin produce awareness that 40,000 children die each day in the Third Globe from hunger and that in order to produce a slice of meat or a canteen of liquor, nosotros have to use a lot of grain. Eating a bowl of cereal may exist more reconciling with the suffering of the world than eating a piece of meat. An authority on economics who lives in France told me that if only the people in Western countries would reduce the eating of meat and the drinking of alcohol by 50 percent, that would be enough to change the situation of the earth. Only fifty percent less.

Every twenty-four hours we exercise things, we are things, that take to do with peace. If nosotros are enlightened of our lifestyle, our style of consuming, of looking at things, nosotros will know how to make peace correct in the moment we are live, the nowadays moment. When we pick up the Sunday newspaper, for instance, nosotros may be enlightened that it is a very heavy edition, maybe 3 or 4 pounds. To print such a paper, a whole forest may exist needed. When we pick up the paper, we should be aware. If we are very enlightened, nosotros can do something to alter the grade of things.

*        *        *

In my temple, I was the outset monk to ride a bicycle. At that fourth dimension, in that location were no gathas to recite while riding on a bicycle. We have to practice intelligently, to keep the practise upward to date, and so recently I wrote a gatha yous tin can employ before yous offset your car. I hope you will find it helpful:

Earlier starting the car,
I know where I am going.
The car and I are one.
If the car goes fast, I go fast.

Sometimes nosotros don't really need to use the car, simply because we want to get abroad from ourselves, we go downwardly and beginning the auto. If we recite the gatha, "Earlier starting the car, I know where I am going," it tin can be like a flashlight-we may meet that we don't need to go anywhere. Anywhere nosotros go, we volition accept our self with usa; we cannot escape ourselves. Sometimes it is ameliorate to plow the engine off and go out for a walking meditation. It may be more pleasant to do that.

It is said that in the last few years, 2 one thousand thousand foursquare miles of forest land have been destroyed past acid rain, and that is partly because of our cars. "Before starting the car, I know where I am going," is a very deep question. "Where shall I get? To my own destruction?" If the trees die, humans are going to dice also. If copse and animals are non live, how can nosotros be alive?

"The automobile and I are 1." We have the impression that we are the boss, and the machine is only an instrument, but that is not true. With the car, we become something different. With a gun, we become very dangerous. With a flute, we become pleasant. With l,000 diminutive bombs, humankind has become the most dangerous species on earth. Nosotros were never so dangerous every bit nosotros are now. We should exist aware. The nigh basic precept of all is to be enlightened of what nosotros practice, what we are, each minute. Every other precept volition follow from that.

*        *        *

Nosotros have to await securely at things in order to encounter. When a swimmer enjoys the clear water of the river, he or she should also be able to be the river. One 24-hour interval I was having dejeuner at Boston Academy with some friends, and I looked down at the Charles River. I had been away from abode for quite a long time, and seeing the river, I found it very beautiful. So I left my friends and went down to wash my face and dip my feet in the water, every bit we used to do in our country. When I returned, a professor said, "That'southward a very dangerous thing to exercise. Did yous rinse your mouth in the river?" When I told him, "Yeah," he said, "You should meet a doctor and get a shot."

I was shocked. I didn't know that the rivers here are and so polluted. You may phone call them dead rivers. In our state the rivers get very dingy sometimes, but not that kind of dirt. Someone told me that there are so many chemicals in the Rhine River in Germany that it is possible to develop photographs in information technology. Nosotros tin can be adept swimmers, but can we exist a river and experience the fears and hopes of a river? If we cannot, so nosotros do not have the chance for peace. If all the rivers are dead, then the joy of swimming in the river will no longer be.

If you are a mountain climber or someone who enjoys the countryside, or the green woods, you know that the forests are our lungs outside of our bodies. Withal we take been acting in a way that has allowed 2 million square miles of wood land to be destroyed by acid pelting. We are imprisoned in our pocket-size selves, thinking only of the comfortable conditions for this small self, while we destroy our large self. One mean solar day I of a sudden saw that the sun is my heart, my eye exterior of this body. If my body's heart ceases to function I cannot survive; merely if the sun, my other center, ceases to function, I volition also die immediately. Nosotros should be able to exist our true self. That means nosotros should be able to be the river, we should be able to be the forest, we should exist able to be a Soviet citizen. Nosotros must do this to empathize, and to have promise for the time to come. That is the non-dualistic way of seeing.

*        *        *

During the war in Vietnam we young Buddhists organized ourselves to help victims of the war rebuild villages that had been destroyed by the bombs.

Many of us died during service, not just because of the bombs and the bullets, but because of the people who suspected us of being on the other side. We were able to understand the suffering of both sides, the communists and the anti-communists. We tried to be open to both, to understand this side and to sympathize that side, to be i with them. That is why we did non accept a side, fifty-fifty though the whole world took sides. We tried to tell people our perception of the situation: that we wanted to stop the fighting, but the bombs were and then loud. Sometimes we had to burn ourselves live to go the message across, simply even then the globe could not hear us. They idea we were supporting a kind of political act. They didn't know that information technology was a purely human action to be heard, to be understood. Nosotros wanted reconciliation, we did not desire a victory. Working to help people in a circumstance like that is very dangerous, and many of us got killed. The communists killed us because they suspected that we were working with the Americans, and the anti-communists killed us considering they thought that we were with the communists. Merely we did not want to give up and have one side.

The situation of the world is still like this. People completely identify with one side, ane credo. To understand the suffering and the fright of a citizen of the Soviet Union, we accept to become 1 with him or her. To do then is unsafe-we will be suspected by both sides. But if we don't practise it, if we marshal ourselves with ane side or the other, we will lose our chance to work for peace. Reconciliation is to understand both sides, to get to one side and describe the suffering being endured by the other side, and and so to go to the other side and describe the suffering being endured by the beginning side. Doing only that will be a great help for peace.

During a retreat at the Providence Zen Center, I asked someone to express himself as a swimmer in a river, and and so later on fifteen minutes of breathing, to express himself as the river. He had to get the river to be able to express himself in the language and feelings of the river. After that a woman who had been in the Soviet Spousal relationship was asked to express herself as an American, and later on some breathing and meditation, as a Soviet citizen, with all her fears and her hope for peace. She did it wonderfully. These are exercises of meditation related to non-duality.

The young Buddhist workers in Vietnam tried to do this kind of meditation. Many of them died during service. I wrote a poem for my young brothers and sisters on how to dice nonviolently, without hatred. Information technology is called "Recommendation":

Promise me,
hope me this 24-hour interval,
hope me now,
while the sunday is overhead
exactly at the zenith,
promise me:

Even as they
strike you down
with a mount of hatred and violence;
fifty-fifty equally they step on you lot and crush you
like a worm,
even equally they dismember and disembowel you,
remember, brother,
call back:
man is not our enemy.

The only affair worthy of you is compassion-invincible, limitless, unconditional.Hatred will never let you facethe beast in man.

One day, when yous face this beast alone, with your courage intact, your optics kind,untroubled(even as no 1 sees them),out of your smilewill bloom a flower.And those who beloved youwill behold youacross ten m worlds of birth and dying.

Alone once again,I will keep with aptitude caput,knowing that beloved has become eternal.On the long, crude road,the dominicus and the moonwill go along to shine.

To exercise meditation is to be aware of the existence of suffering. The first Dharma talk that the Buddha gave was near suffering, and the manner out of suffering. In South Africa, the black people suffer enormously, merely the white people too endure. If we take i side, we cannot fulfill our task of reconciliation in order to bring about peace.

Are there people who tin can be in touch with both the black customs and the white customs in S Africa? If there are non many of them, the situation is bad. There must exist people who tin get in bear on with both sides, understanding the suffering of each, and telling each side about the other. Are in that location people doing that kind of understanding and mediation and reconciliation between the two major political blocs on the earth? Can you be more than than Americans? Can yous be people who understand deeply the suffering of both sides? Tin can yous bring the bulletin of reconciliation?

*        *        *

You lot may non be enlightened that your land has been manufacturing a lot of conventional weapons to sell to Third Earth countries for their people to kill each other. You lot know very well that children and adults in these countries need food more than these deadly weapons. Yet no i has the fourth dimension to organize a national contend to look at the problem of manufacturing and selling these mortiferous things. Everyone is too busy. Conventional weapons take been killing in the last 30, twoscore, fifty years, very much. If nosotros but recollect of the nuclear bombs that may explode in the future and practice not pay attention to the bombs that are exploding in the nowadays moment, we commit some kind of error. I believe President Reagan said that the U.South. has to continue to brand conventional weapons to sell considering if you don't, someone else volition and the U.Due south. will lose its interest. This is not a adept thing to say. It is off course. This statement is just an excuse, but there are existent factors that push him and button the whole nation to keep to manufacture conventional weapons to sell. For instance, many people will lose their jobs if they stop. Have we idea virtually the kind of work that will help these people if the weapons manufacture stops?

Not many Americans are aware that these weapons are killing people in the Third World every twenty-four hour period. The Congress has not debated this result seriously. We take not taken the time to see this situation clearly, then nosotros have non been able to alter our authorities's policy. We are not strong enough to pressure the government. The foreign policy of a government is largely dictated by its people and their way of life. Nosotros have a large responsibility as citizens. We think that the government is free to brand policy, but that freedom depends on our daily life. If nosotros brand it possible for them to change policies, they volition do information technology. Now it is not yet possible. Maybe yous call back that if you get into government and obtain power, yous can do anything you lot want, but that is not true. If yous become president, you lot volition be confronted by this difficult fact. You will probably practice just the same matter, a little better or a little worse.

Therefore nosotros have to see the existent truth, the existent situation. Our daily lives, the way we beverage, what nosotros eat, has to do with the world's political situation. Meditation is to run across deeply into things, to see how we can change, how we can transform our situation. To transform our situation is also to transform our minds. To transform our minds is likewise to transform our state of affairs, because the situation is mind, and mind is situation. Awakening is important. The nature of the bombs, the nature of injustice, the nature of the weapons, and the nature of our own beings are the same. This is the real meaning of engaged Buddhism.

Reprinted from Being Peace (1987) by Thich Nhat Hanh with permission of Parallax Printing, Berkeley, California, world wide web.parallax.org

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