I used to know how to start these entries. Something would just come to me while I was in the shower, at the dinner table, biking around, wherever. I'd let it bounce around my head to see if it settled on its own. If not, if it found the resonant frequency of urgency, then I'd sit and type out some paragraphs. Always off the cuff, always a shooting star burning out of its own accord when I ran out of gusto or cleverness.
These days, I'm never quite sure where to begin. Where does anyone begin anymore? With the school shooting in Connecticut just two weeks before Christmas, what can me make of the world as we look it squarely in the face?
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I'm in the process of becoming a formal student in the Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen Buddhism. The founder of this order, John Daido Loori, often said that we need to take responsibility for the whole catastrophe. Another question he loved, really the same question, is: where do you find yourself in all of this?
Where do I find myself in the school shooting? Did I do nothing wrong? Are the only guilty parties the gun dealers, a poor mental health treatment program, and the shooter's friends and family who failed to intervene earlier? Can we blame reified concepts like "gun laws"? I think all of these have a hand in it, but I'm also in it too, inextricably in the mix whether I like it or not. Where the metaphysical meets the tangible, I create those patterns in the world - every time I act out of fear and anger, every time I promote an Us and Them mentality, every time I shrug off helping someone in need. These acts ripple outward. I think its what we call karma.
Yes, some people in certain situations have more direct influence. I desperately want them to awaken to the urgency of problems such as easy access to guns and poor access to mental health resources. They are not somehow more guilty than you or I, though. The moral imperative (I believe) is to live out this urgency for change and awaken to just how broken our society is. That is where I find myself, and my responsibility for this whole catastrophe.
I'm signing petitions and talking with friends and strangers. In doing so, I see it as my job to not recreate the same suffering that the shooter and now all the survivors are going through. How angry and scared he must have been, how deeply lost in the delusions of his own mind. How angry and scared the surviving family and community members are, how deeply they are immersed in the grief of this experience. I can hear the anger and fear in those who want to cling to owning guns. I can hear the anger and fear of those of us who want to decrease the number of guns floating around our country. I can feel my own fear every time I encounter someone who is mentally ill and is suffering without relief. What part can I play in easing these fears, in quenching some of the fire of hate and blame?
My mind, the same divided mind that creates Us and Them, wants me to believe that we need to find out who to blame and how to make specific changes to our laws to hopefully avoid this type of incredible violence in the future. It wants to say that I'm on the right side, and someone else (must be!) on the wrong side. It's true that we need to change, and that I want to be an agent for that change. However, I feel more and more these days that if I enter this fray with labels in hand to slap on everyone's forehead, I may perpetuate the very problems I'm wrestling with. How else might we go about it?
I'm not sure how I imagine things unfolding from here. What if we all put a little more energy into just living for peace? What would that look like? What if we all faced up to our fears and connected a little more with a person in need? What would that feel like? What if we were a little easier on ourselves and those around us? What ripples will that send out to the world? What if we keep the longer term goals in mind, and begin by accepting that right where we are is the only place to begin? Where else can we begin than this moment? What else can I do but heal and accept?
