The Roots of Suffering

You probably sorted out the kittens from the stuffed animals in this charming photo in a blink, without even trying, based on what you know.  Live animals are not blue.  Kittens have heads with a pattern, noses and ears and eyes shaped like that.  But a baby would not know how to sort this out if nothing moved. If you held her over this bed she would reach her hands out for whatever appealed to her, and be astonished if it moved.

This small example goes to something much larger, and that is that we also sort people out as "real" (like me) and "other" (not me, not my brother).  That is a distinction that allows us to kill other human beings.  All of us, including Adam Lanza.  I believe that to Adam those he killed were not real in the way we commonly understand reality.  His mother had become a monster in his eyes, a threat to his freedom.  It looks like he had come to see the children as his enemies; perhaps his mother gushed over them, but didn't seem to love him.  But let's take this more generally to the issue of gun violence, and to our own spiritual work

My example is a story going around this season.  Since you can pause and read it here on Snopes, I won't bother to retell it.  As you see, Snopes can find no evidence that this is a true story.  But that's not the point.  The point is, it's a myth some people love and are circulating, not just men, but women, too.

The woman who posted this on Facebook has an adult son who is an alcoholic with a long history of problems, a guy who might, in a drunken moment, snatch a purse like the guy in the story - who is gunned down by a woman with six shots in his back.  The woman's daughter added her comment that she would commit that execution in a flash.  Maybe the waitress needed every penny that purse was carrying, she said.

This young woman is married to a soldier, and the story had come from an unsavory web site I won't give any publicity to here, which mixes hatred and pornography and violence with the conviction that Americans should have the freedom to own weapons.  Unfortunately, those things do seem to mix well.  I can tell you that page has some 70,000 "likes" while the Dalai Grandma Facebook page, which advocates spiritual practice and compassion, is just struggling toward 100.  Well, okay, there is work to be done.

A number of rights are guaranteed by the American constitution and its amendments that are all essential to freedom, including freedom of the press, of speech, and of religion.  If any of these is most important, maybe it is the right to justice, that is, to be tried for any crime you are fairly accused of, as opposed to being murdered by someone defending her purse or home as you are running away.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck shows off one of two rocket-launchers turned in during the Dec. 26 gun buyback program. (Jay L. Clendenin, Los Angeles Times / December 27, 2012)

The above photo and accompanying story were in the Los Angeles Times and many other news sources.  But it is instructive to go to the I Acknowledge Class Warfare Exists page and read some of the comments.  There you can see the complexities of this issue, which I think actually is in part class warfare.  We have to keep asking as citizens of free countries what makes other citizens so distrustful of their government?  What makes them believe it won't protect them, that they need to be heavily armed?  Is it, in fact, the same paranoia and simmering rage that motivated Adam Lantz?  What is the rage about - having to work for a minimum wage too low to live on, and no health benefits?  This is not just their problem - it is ours. 

How to Have Happy Holidays in Spite of it All

With empty hands, I take hold of the plow

The last couple of days have been hard for me, with a major weather system blowing me away yesterday, as it can fibromyalgics.  Three days ago, Wednesday, I came home from collage to find Tom at the kitchen table looking stressed, with a bloody gauze pad on his forehead.  He had fallen and hit his head on a corner of the hutch.  He may have been saved from being blinded in that eye by the fact that his glasses initially took the blow.  We are so close that I "lose it" when I am frightened for him.  Lose my equanimity and become all a-tremble.

I was already shaken.  My beloved women friends and I had been sharing the general pain of the Sandy Hook shootings here in America - 20 schoolchildren, six teachers, and two mentally ill people all died.  The mentally ill people were Nancy Lantz and her son, Adam.  Nancy owned at least five weapons, including the semi-automatics that can kill a lot of kindergartners in a minute, whether you can aim or not.  But Adam knew how to aim -she'd taken him target shooting.  And he knew where to get his hands on guns.  Nancy was a brand of everyday walking-around paranoia, a survivalist, who'd stocked up on food and water and guns. 

A lot has already been accomplished.  I read this morning that various of the United States, including my own Ohio, have passed funding for the treatment of autism. So many of us have petitioned the White House that President Obama has replied via a video.  People are turning in guns in Connecticut, where they understand now that people with guns kill people.  But the work is far from done.

It is our work as people of good will, Christians, Buddhists, atheists, all citizens, to stay with this work, but not to let it destroy us.  I awoke this morning realizing that I need to bring myself back emotionally from too much empathy and emotion.  It is a very good motivator, but the work of change needs a clear head.  So there's a Zen koan, "With empty hands I take hold of the plow."  I can actually visualize this, hands relaxed on the plow.  (The painting above is one of several van Gogh made of ploughmen.) 

The empty hands mean we work from our understanding of the universal, of all the dynamic and potential of life.  So we need to be refreshed by spiritual practice and by celebration, by love and friendship and our understanding of the constant miracle of birth.

Botticelli, The Birth of Christ (attended by the animals)

Why The Dark Knight Shooting Happened

I feel compelled to comment on the Dark Knight massacre that took place last night, because I read a column by someone asking, How do things like this happen?  He was saying, in part, that he just couldn't understand a mind like that.  That's true.  Psychosis is a different country.  I know.  I dropped into that place with my second manic episode.   This took place over two years after a really bad psychiatrist named Roslyn Pariser misdiagnosed the first mania, and the suicidal depression that followed.  I'm pretty sure she's not practicing anymore, and may have died.  Not by my hand.  I don't own a gun.

But I could if I wanted to.  I imagine any records of me as a mental patient all those years ago are lost in time, and predate the universal medical databases now being started.  I could walk into any gun store and buy whatever I wanted, just like that poor, sick kid, or get a friend to do it for me.  There's no national database to kick out a name when someone buys 6000 rounds of ammunition.  The NRA doesn't want that.  So here's reason #1 why that massacre happened:

In America, anyone can get a gun.

It is well-known that most Americans favor stricter gun control than we have, and that it is the "lobbying" of the NRA that makes politicians shy away from the issue.  I want to define that word.  Lobbying = money.  The wealthy give politicians money through one device or another, and they have access to politicians.  And it takes a lot of money to win an election.  That's what it means.  Otherwise, the voices of ordinary citizens like me who don't want our grandchildren killed in driveby shootings would result in change.  And that's why I give what I can, which isn't much, to support candidates I believe in; the little people have to pool our voices to be heard over the loud voice of money.

And here's reason #2:

Too many Americans admire vigilantism.

If you don't think so, watch the trailer for "Dirty Harry" above. Check the box office for such films as "Dirty Harry."  Count the explosions in "The Dark Knight" (I won't be seeing it).  And think about the Trayvon Martin case, how the vigilante who killed him would have gotten away scot-free if his parents had not had the internet and the ability to publicize the scandal.  And think about what this has to do with your neighbor's admiration of those who get wealthy, even if they did it by outsourcing his job to cruel sweatshops in China, because he agrees with the American Myth that anyone can do it if they try.

This problem is not just about vigilantism and greed, though.  Here's reason #3:

A significant number of Americans don't want to pay taxes.

What does that have to do with it?  It is our pooled money, gathered in taxes, that pays for our mental health agencies.  And when the budget gets tight, they are among the first things to get cut.  If anyone had noticed this guy's behavior, the resources it would take for someone to visit him, even the systems to do that don't exist.  They cost money.  It is money - taxes - that builds our roads and sewers and the systems of law and order, and mental hospitals and agencies.  Building a decent, safe society costs money.  We gather that money through taxes.

Moving from the political to the personal and spiritual, here's reason #4:

Nobody was paying attention to that guy.

Last count, according to ABC news, James Holmes had bought four guns, one of them an assault rifle, and 6000 rounds of ammunition - what, nobody adds this up?  A brilliant student, he'd dropped out in June.  Why?  Did anyone talk to him?  Did anyone in his program care about him?

I was a grad student myselfl in fact, I was admitted to OSU on a Presidential Fellowship, which is fairly prestigious. Yet nobody ever took me aside, talked to me, mentored me, or gave a damn when I said, at graduation, that I didn't want to teach anymore.  Even my director didn't ask me why.   And I foundered around for a couple of years, but was lucky enough to find my way.

That kid didn't.  His dropping out was a sign something was wrong; some teacher should have called him, talked to him, showed that they cared, tried to find out what was going on, whether he needed help.  I hope we come to learn that someone tried.  His own mother is quoted as saying "You have the right guy."  I'm sure other people could see what she apparently saw in her son.

James Holmes had been psychotic for a long enough time to stockpile weapons and protective gear, and elaborately booby-trap his apartment.  Now neighbors are saying he was strange, he was reclusive.  But did anyone take a coffeecake to his door?  I haven't heard of it yet.  Did anyone smile at him on the stairs and  say hello in the parking lot, or did people turn away because maybe he seemed a little unfriendly?

This tragedy is just awful.  And it's one of a long string of these things.  All I can do about it, other than support political candidates who might change things, is ask myself who I know that might enjoy a little kindness, at least a friendly smile and a greeting.  Is there anyone I shy away from or avoid because they're different?  I really hope not.  I'm going to be watching.  I hope we all are.