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Found Exhortation
In the health food store across the street from my friend Suzanne’s yoga studio in Saratoga Springs.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
In the health food store across the street from my friend Suzanne’s yoga studio in Saratoga Springs.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
The other day, after having worked, been on the phone, and continued in the social whirl of the holidays, the thought sprung up in my mind that I wanted to “go to the place of no words.” It felt absolutely essential that I go into the space of deep meditation. It was not so much for escape, as for rest. For me, meditation can provide more of an opportunity for my mind to rest and renew than can sleep. I rarely have dreamless sleep, and when I am very busy, my dreams get more so. My meditations, like everyone’s, can be full of thoughts and words. Thoughts will inevitably arise. What is different in meditation, though, is that even when my mind is full of thoughts, I know I do not have to follow them. I can just let them be — as if there were some radio or television program on that I just allow to be on, but to which I do not give my attention. It is this rest from paying attention, from having to follow and direct thought that I wanted so that when I returned to active thought there would be more clarity, discrimination, and, where needed, detachment.
We hear the stories of a the tragedy unfolding in Japan, and our hearts cannot help but cry out. This is a wonderful aspect of humanity. A friend sent me an insightful article from Caroline Myss in which she very articulately lets all her readers know why we need to work to ensure that we do not have nuclear weapons (and, I would add, new nuclear power) with which I wholeheartedly agree.
The unfolding tragedy also drives home for me how important it is that we speak out against the wars in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and on the verge in Libya and for sustainable environmental policies. On the 11th of March, I wrote this in my journal: “Mother Nature is wild and fierce no matter how much control we try to exert. I pray that a nuclear disaster does not follow. U.S. military is working with [later note: I think that was just an offer] the Japanese to share experience and skill to get in back up power to bring water in to cool the reactors. Peaceful military work, I am behind. Some fearful reflection of Hiroshima.”
My question is this: why are we sending money to those living in the third largest economy in the world (Japan’s own citizens are reportedly wondering why their government is not doing more to help–sort of how people like us wondered and may still be wondering about the lack of assistance from the government of our wealthy country after Katrina)? We are denying money on a societal level to help those in the poorest countries or perhaps are not making offerings on an individual level (or not speaking to our elected officials about such topsy-turvy, anti-compassion policies?) Why do we send our hearts and prayers to those suffering from a sudden natural disaster, but forget to do so for the tens of thousands and their families our own country has killed or wounded? Why do we spend or allow to be spent in our name billions on killing, but let it be determined that we do not have millions on aid for the suffering or for enhancing life through the arts, education, taking care of our cities, our parks, the natural beauty around us?
I, like all of you, am filled with a sense of horror and loss and love and compassion and an impulse to help. How I am choosing to use the energy of my upsurge in awareness of suffering from the unfolding disaster is to give more than I usually give to organizations that work to heal the environment and to prevent new damage by virtue of the current political policies, to seek the end of war, and to give humanitarian aid to the poorest of the poor who are dying and suffering every day at home and around the world in numbers far exceeding the sudden loss in Japan, and to support the increase in light through the arts and education and parks.
What do you think is the best way you can transmute the natural compassion you have been feeling from reading the news of Japan into making the world a better place?
