Being Peace...In Continuum

I asked the noted Tibetologist and Buddhist Scholar Prof. Robert Thurman recently what one must do to counteract the militarism so rampant in today's world. He responded, and I paraphrase: "One must live up to the individual truth and justice to the fullest extent." I pressed. What is one to do about the war in Iraq, built on lies, and is utterly unjust. Don't we need to do more?

It must be somewhat similar to the times of Nazi Germany where the 'Good Germans' simply didn't or couldn't do enough to prevent the holocaust. I have never been able to understand as a school child encountering European history, how the people of Germany and occupied territories allowed the systemic extermination of millions of people, happen in their own backyard. In many ways now, I feel I understand. I feel one of them. Ineffective, voiceless, agency-less, frustrated yet denying the reality of the disappearing people in the name of homeland security, the stripping away of individual and immigrant rights, the total lack of accountability of the government (Where is Saddam now? What is happening to him? What about the people in Guantanamo Bay?), the operations of the USA that target wives & children and extended families of wanted Iraqi men, the utter lack of respect for an ancient and truly honorable civilization and culture. I wept the day the books burnt in Iraq. Somehow the gentle rustling sound of ideas burning were more thundering than the thousand pound 'bunker-busters' they dropped so that eventually they can find the man in a shallow grave, and almost dead to his former self.

We need to do more! Individual truth & justice, yes. But what more can we do? I have been to every single major war protest in the east coast. When war broke out and found me in Los Angeles, I went to war protests there rousing with me the people I met at a dinner party the night before. Protested alone at the Academy Awards carrying a sign" Hollywood Don't Take The Fifth", for which I got physically handled by the police and narrowly missed the cracking of heads owing to the kindness of a bevy of women, who pulled me out of the raining blows and pointed the direction home. But none of this takes away the nagging feeling that one needs to do more. But what?

So for the last two weeks I have been sitting in a window box on 42nd street in New York, along with the accrued faces of American Soldiers brought forth each day and then retired on to the back wall, offering them meals that I otherwise would have eaten, in proportion to the number of soldiers who died the day before in Iraq. Alternately meditating and ritualizing mourning in front of the soldier, who also represents twenty dead Iraqis to me, I move to the corner of the box, I call Iraq, and become the woman whose child played with a sparkly piece of a cluster bomb. Sitting inside an empty frame and sometimes outside of it, I let the grief overwhelm me, and become an unsightly spectacle. Balls and balls of grief come up and I let them reach through the glass and envelop the people who stand mesmerized, somewhat fascinated, alternating their attention between the Iraqi woman with a ratty teddy, and the sporadic sprinkle of war brought home to them when they least expect it, on their way home, or to Broadway to catch a happy musical.

The effect of unexpected and unpredictable starvation (my food intake depends on the life and death of soldiers) combined with extended periods of meditation and the channeling of grief of an Iraqi mother, has made me somewhat porous. A friend remarked how I have become like the soldiers themselves, in not knowing when and where they may be able to eat, surrounded by grief and the rotten spoils of war. The body has achieved an extraordinary level of transparency and awareness in that I jump at the slightest movement of hand as the waves of the motion pass past the range of hand and through me. Imagine then a young soldier with a hand on the trigger.

Tomorrow is the last day. My body ignores food readily on days I sadly could not eat, and craves madly when I can eat but suffering intensely on the subsequent over-fullness. Almost animalistic. The first night I dreamt of what I imagine might have been Iraq. With fighter planes flying over head like dark angels, and empty houses of middle-class wealth, and unexploded roadside bombs with a human face.

It seems that I had inadvertently entered a realm of alternate consciousness that only the soldiers are privy to. Prof. Thurman had remarked about this in his lecture. For instance a military trains the soldier ultimately to kill. And this training involves extreme measures to 'toughen' them up, and so in periods of war, or simulations of war during training, these soldiers very regularly experience extreme states of awareness and an alternate state of consciousness. The soldiers are ultimately risking their lives in order to kill people (which is their job). Watching soldiering movies like G.I. Jane gives one an idea as to the sheer extent of such training. Prof. Thurman had suggested that in order to counteract the effects of militarism, one has to be willing to enter into such states of awareness intent on peace. We then need an army of people who are willing to risk their lives in order NOT to kill people.

I did not set out to enter this state of alternate or heightened awareness intentionally or knowingly. Inhabiting it for peace, and entering into it by soft means, bringing this reality of war to the passersby of Times Square has been exhausting yet enlivening. I realize the connection now. It doesn't matter how or where we enter into this heightened state of awareness as long as the means are peaceful and of peace. In burning with intensity for truth, for the peace of truth, for the love of peace, and the peace of love, peaceful means
manifest to inspire us to create and relate. I only ask that you try. We need a soft army of peace…are you willing?

Vennila nr Kain is an actor, poet and yogini. She may be found at www.vennila.net.

Being Peace (1/24/04)

Being Peace...In Continuum (1/30/04)