Why are you so afraid of life?
Why do you distrust it so?
Why must you control
Every aspect of
The environment around you?
Why must you defend yourself
Against another's words or actions,
Regardless of how trivial?
Why?
My relationship with violence has always been very fractured - its layers have had a deep influence on my life - immense and autobiographical. I have meditated on its layers and its a deep metaphorical undercurrent in (my) our everyday being.
Its omnipotence is mesmerizing - physical, mental, social and even sentimental (now that was a cheesy one:-). In the higher realms of consciousness, there is never a good ground for it - its always rooted in abuse, and there is never ever a good justification for force. Buddhism and Zen abhor violence for the very reason that it sustains the karmic recycling.
But....shift the perspective to the animal kingdom and the larger universe, and in sudden contravention of the above - violence is all around us under the guise of entropy, in the guiles of the charming attacker, in the fear hidden within the prey and most importantly in the process of dying.
If we agree and believe that we all are dying all the time, then violence is a deep rooted symphony within the seat of that process - its almost essential. A cancer, a snake bite, a slaughterhouse, genocide, infanticide....and then of course we living beings inventing incest, rape, war and pillory - all are karmic aids fuel the cycle.
If dying is essential to the living, then violence must exist - and funnily it finds its invariably way to snake itself in. Remember we are never more than 60 seconds away from our next violent act. (Think mosquito swatter!! as an example)
Deep rooted in Zen, is the belief that one should abhor violence, since it essentially creates more entropy, but conversely...... and counterintuitively - it also states one must not resist violence. Death by cancer, the shame of incest, the ignominy of loot and the carcasses of war - they come because we inflict themselves on us. Not in a fatalistic way, but in a more connected world sort of way. The world is us, just like the cancer of the body is our body taking its sweet revenge on itself.
If my body is being attacked by cancer, and cancer is essentially cells of my body, then my body is attacking my own body - where is the cancer, where is the violence, what am I running away from? If on the other hand the cancer is outside my body, then where am I?
Finally, undeniably the world is indeed a sadder place due to violence. As an example, we kill a hundred thousand farm animals daily.....and that unfortunately is the bloody circle of karma.... that manifests itself via cancer, senseless wars, rape and not to mention abuse.
Who pays the real price..... the dead are blessed. They are churned into their own ashes. The "surviving" and the "living" are consigned to reliving the violence every day. And that is our fatal punishment. Live and burn through the re-imagined horrors of the past. This is our fate !!
Its easy for the couch artist in me to sit and pontificate within the confines of my brilliant living room - the real incessant war, on the other hand, is being fought everyday on the street..... and I dont participate in it. I sit there - meekly gazing - completely sterile, muted and numbed by the tribulations. Sometimes I weild my pen as a poet, but then its the ......Arm chair warrior I.
"Happily ever after" ends
and we have been poisoned by these fairy tales....
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end....of the innocence.
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