Back in April 2007, I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to Maui to see the Dalai Lama speak for two hours. I have always been into Buddhism but I would not call myself a "practicing" Buddhist. I do not chant everyday, nor do I take part in any of the other rituals in which other buddhists from various sects take part.
However, for the last ten years, since moving to Hawaii, I suppose, I have become more interested in Buddhism for a few reasons. First of all, there is the idea of peace. In Buddhism, there are many devout believers who are able to remain at peace with themselves and with the world, no matter what horrible events they have happening in their lives, or whatever is happening in the rest of the world for that matter.
I have always wanted to feel that calm, reassuring sense of peace that comes with the knowledge that despite what might be occuring in the here and now, things will ultimately work out for the greater and/or lesser good. Using the words greater and lesser is not really even appropriate as most buddhists would not characterize good as being anything but essentially Good. There does not seem to be degrees of good and evil. Both exist simply as they are. I have never felt that sense of calm, cool reassurance in the way it seems a truly devout Buddhist feels. I guess I am more of the classic Obsessive/Compulsive personality, one who is always trying to see around the corner before I even get anywhere near it, the one trying to see what awaits me before I ever get close to making the turn.
Secondly, there is the Buddhist's treatment of their fellow human and all other sentient beings on earth. They believe that no person, nor any other living thing, should be harmed for really any reason. It goes way beyond their practice of being vegetarian though, believe me. The Buddhists I have talked to tell me that they feel that much of the world's ills could be cured by people regaining their inate sensibility, and once that happens, then they can find themselves remaining calm and able to constructively talk through their issues with those with whom they might feel they are in conflict. A lot of people might read this and think it sounds easy enough, but have you ever tried to sit down and reason with someone who is SUPER PISSED at you? It is damn near impossible. Here in the West, most of us are conditioned to believe that conflict is not only a by-product of clashing civilizations, but is in fact, a necessary part of life. We are even told by our government that war is a "necessary evil". Most people would even say that having an argumentative nature is somehow genetic and cannot be helped. Therefore, the idea of putting much of this Buddhist thought about letting go of fear and anger into practice is certainly a challenge for those of us who grew up in the Western way of thought. After all most of us grew up hearing all the stories with our crusading Christian ancestors cutting down the non-believers and claiming to be the sole group who will inherit the Earth AND Heaven whenever God decides we are fit enough to run it. For example, look at the Bible, in particular most of the Old Testament, and it is clear -- In the Judeo-Christian tradition, there is battle after battle along with incest and other depravity, Fathers being driven to the brink of killing their own children by a jealous God who needs a human's love for Him to be "proven" (Abraham), Kings, supposedly chosen by God to do His "work" on earth, having the husbands of the women they want to sleep with murdered so that they can be with those women (David), along with all kinds of other lewdness happening mostly by the hands of those who are supposed to be the "authors" of the early Jewish, and then eventually the Christian, faith. Then, when God finally gets mad, he then crushes all of mankind (because somehow the sin of a few is the sin of all, I guess), by flood or the collapse of cities like Sodom and Gomorrah, creating enough destruction to show his omnipotent wrath so that people, those left over after the destruction, can start over again and try to make a go of it. Does not seem like many of us have gotten the message yet, because each time the world ends, the world that takes its place seems to grow progressively worse.
However, living under that sort of history has made us a bit nonchalant about things like wars, famines, and all the other things that befall humankind. We are not moved by genocides in Rwanda or the Sudan, nor are we moved by the child soldiers who are packed with so much dope they fight like animals and never get the chance to simply play as children should play. Yet, people just see it happening and say, "It is God's Will.", or some other profoundly STUPID statement like that.
Oh, but do we ever get upset about the conflicts in which we have a "vested interest" and often, we send out our own Crusaders to crush the "evil-doer's". If we do not send out our own Crusaders then we certainly are not above hiring them from somewhere else to do our dirty work.
I know it is all not as simple as this but it is damn near that simple.
People talk constantly of Operation Iraqi Freedom being a new kind of war, but, really, is it all that new? Or were we just pissed off after the actions of the terrorists of 9-11 and did we decide that this angry state of mind was the only Rule we needed in order to conduct a "Just" War?? After all, it seems to me we have thrown out the whole rulebook concerning just what does constitute a just and fair war...we have thrown in straight out the window.....at least those in power who ever had the rulebook and bothered to read it in the first place. Due to our refusal to acknowledge any other way of thinking, the world has now become a place where if someone steps on your toe the wrong way, then we feel we have a right to admonish them in whatever heinous way we find suitable. It is also a place where, especially if you are American, you cannot even go and travel to certain parts of the world without the serious threat of becoming the target of the hatred and anger of other people....anger and hatred, I am afraid, inspired by our own hate-filled activity.
Buddhism on the other hand teaches that life IS suffering and there is nothing you can do to get rid of it. It teaches that before we can let go of suffering or even fight it off, we must recognize that it exists and know that there is no way to fight it off. However, we can learn to live with suffering by letting it go. This does not mean it is going to go somewhere else...letting suffering go means we simply do not let it worry us into a frenzied anger or depression or any of the other million states of mind that focusing on suffering can bring on to a fragile human mind.The only thing any of us can do, after all, is learn to live with suffering while keeping a tight grasp upon the happiness that IS NATURALLY ours (unlike Anger mentioned above) and keep it protected from the ills brought on by holding onto suffering much too tightly. There is no God who wants us to suffer or go to hell for any reason; yet, the buddhist believes that God lives within each and every single one of us. However, I think that the god inside of us gets covered up with the muck of the world, and all its pain and suffering, and that is how we lose sight of what is beautiful and good. And once we lose sight of these important ideals, that is when we feel we have to physically fight to regain the happiness that comes from knowing that the world:
A) is full of beautiful and good things, and
B)we can be happy about knowing this without having to OWN everything that is beautiful and good.
Why? Because all that is in the world belongs to all of us. Yet none of us own it nor can it be possessed. It is ironic, isn't it, that we feel we have a right to fight for something that is not ours to begin with? That is why, to regain the happiness and acknowledge the holiness that lives in all of us, we must learn to talk to each other and work our problems out peacefully.
People say it is hard to go into combat and I agree. It is a scary thing and you do not know if you will be dead or alive from minute to minute. The first time I ever heard a real explosion in the military, not the kind they use in training exercises but a REAL BOMB...I nearly had a heart attack. So, no, combat is not easy......but fighting a war is a damn sight easier for those in power than it would be for them to sit down and resolve their differences in a productive and peaceful way. So, that is why they send people like me, a mere pawn, out to do the dirty work they do not want to do. Yet, they do not want to do the clean work either because it is waaaaaaaay toooooooo hard. What a bunch of COWARDLY PRICKS we have in Washington, DC...
I never really figured any of this out until the day I heard the Dalai Lama speak, but you know something else impacted me more than anything else I heard him say that day. And it goes like this......
A friend of mine who was there suggested that we go stand by the fence at the stadium where the Dalai Lama was to speak and, if we stood there, he thought we would have a good shot of shaking the Dalai Lama's hand as he walked by to take his place on stage. My friend had gone to the first appearance the day before so he had seen all these other people down at the fence getting to meet the Dalai Lama, and so he thought it would be a kick for both of us to go down there and see if we could get close enough for a handshake. Now I have never met anyone "famous" in my life. However, my image, at that time, of meeting a "famous" person was that he/she would speed along the fence sort of slapping everyone's hands and then that would be it. Man was I ever wrong.
This man, with a few thousand people waiting for him to start speaking and with another couple hundred waiting along the fenceline to shake his hand, had the CLASS to actually shake everyone's hand who had come down from the stadium stands to greet him. He did not do that slap-on-the-hand thing you see when those boy bands go on MTV and they just slap whatever hand happens to be sticking out in front of them. They probably do that more to get the hand out of their way as they pass by, rather than understanding that there are human beings attached to those hands.
The Dalai Lama, however, took the time to shake each person's hand and spend a few seconds as he would listen to the people greet him and then he would greet them back before moving on.
When he got to me, I must admit I was about to pass out. I did not know what to expect although I knew that this man had taken his time going from person to person as he made his way down the fenceline. Plus, he is supposed to be the 14th reincarnation of the original leader of Tibetan Budddhism which, I suppose, in Tibetan tradition makes Him a truly and living Holy man; so, I did not know if maybe I would burst into flames for all the bad things I have done in my life or what. Therefore, I was truly about to pass out.
However, when he did get to me, I stuck my hand out and said "Aloha" to him, which is the appropriate greeting since I live in Hawaii. I realized that I had my head sort of bowed downward, and so I looked up, and my eyes locked with his for an instant and this little, smiling man in monk's robes and with glasses on was looking straight in to my eyes and he took my hand into BOTH of his hands and said "Aloha" back to me. He paused a moment, still looking me directly in the eye, and then he moved on to my friend and repeated the same behavior. And as I watched him continue on down the line he did the same thing over and over. He was not going to be rushed by anybody, not even the handlers who were there to make sure he got on stage on time. I doubt that any of them even tried to rush him because a classy guy like that does not need to rush for ANYBODY. As well, I doubt that "hurrying up" is a concept he even is aware of. I think the best way to describe it is that he seems to move at the pace of nature and we all know how long it takes certain flowers to bloom and trees to grow. And this is the pace he has taken his whole life; yet, he managed to escape from Tibet when the Chinese were about to take it over and while they were killing monks all over the place. He has also managed to escape being murdered more than a few time which I am sure is a bane in the People's Republic Of China's Government officials ASSES. I also got that feeling after seeing all the sharpshooters, with weapons at the ready, who had taken position on the high ground at the stadium on Maui where I went to hear him speak. I doubt they were there to protect US. All I could think is that it takes one sick bastard of a person to want to kill, or hurt in ANY sort of way, a man such as Him.
I guess the point of me sitting down tonight and writing about this is to slow things down a bit for my own self and to get that moment back -- that moment when things seemed to slow down enough that I could comprehend, at least somewhat, the event that was unfolding before me. I could barely listen to what he spoke about because I was so enthralled after that handshake. After all, we have all our commercialized Holidays coming up and, even if you are like me and do not take part in the celebration and rampant, bloodsucking commercialism of the season, it still seems that things move way too fast this time of year. I always feel like I am in a hurry to do something, but I cannot figure out what it is since I have no family to worry about spending the holidays with or people to buy presents for, and still I feel so rushed and pressured. I think these feelings are spread like a virus from other people who do have all these committments during this time of the year. So I needed to sit down and remember the day I shook the Dalai Lama's hand, write about it for the first time, and really examine how it has impacted me.
And even now, when the day is not going well, or when I hear of more of our soldiers being killed in a needless war into which we were led based upon a bunch of hideous lies, or when I just cannot seem to slow my own mind down enough to think one single thought at a time, I know all I need to do is to simply remember my handshake with the Dalai Lama.
And for some reason, remembering that one event, comprising only a few seconds of my life, out of all the rest of my 36 years on this earth,well....it is the only event I can think about that automatically calms me down and, for an instant, I feel that calm, reassurance that everything will one day be all right again in the world. It is funny how a few short seconds can so dramatically impact a person's life forever. I figure if I can start thinking like that, and if I can let others know about how this event impacted me, maybe they can learn from it vicariously and maybe they can slow down and start thinking a little more slowly themselves. Then perhaps, I hope with all my heart, we can all begin to look each other in the eye, grasp each others hands, hold them in our own, and truly listen to one another
...even if it is only to say "Aloha".
