The Buddha On Love

Previous installment: "The Buddha and a Culture of Violence"

by Jack Lawlor

We haven't heard the word "love" used genuinely in our political discourse in the United States since Dr. Martin Luther King -- despite torrents of skepticism and doubt from all quarters -- changed this nation profoundly by both preaching it and practicing it.

In the West, Buddhism tends to be known for its remarkable focus on the practice of meditation, perceived to be the cultivation of wisdom. But although raised to be a warrior by his father, the local king, love is the essence of the Buddha and his teaching. After approximately 45 years of teaching up and down the dusty roads of northern India, the Buddha stated that he teaches but one thing -- the liberation of suffering -- out of his love and compassion for all beings.

Some witnessing Buddhist peace demonstrations in the Chicago area have encountered recitations of the Buddha's Discourse on Love and report utter disbelief that the text is 2,500 years old, its language and our need for it is so contemporary:

The Discourse on Love

"He or she who wants to attain peace should practice being upright, humble, and capable of using loving speech. He or she will know how to live simply and happily, with senses calmed, without being covetous and carried away by the will of the majority. Let him or her not do anything that will be disapproved of by the wise ones.

( And this is what he or she contemplates ):

May everyone be happy and safe, and may their hearts be filled with joy.

May all beings live in security and peace -- beings who are frail or strong, tall or short, visible or not visible, near or far away, already born, or yet to be born. May all of them dwell in perfect tranquility.

Let no one do harm to anyone. Let no one put the life of anyone in danger. Let no one, out of anger or ill will, wish anyone any harm.

Just as a mother loves and protects her only child at the risk of her own life, we should cultivate boundless love to offer to all living beings in the entire cosmos. We should let our boundless love pervade the whole universe, above, below, and across. Our love will know no obstacles. Our heart will be absolutely free from hatred and enmity. Whether standing or walking, sitting or lying, as long as we are awake, we should maintain this mindfulness of love in our own heart. This is the noblest way of living.

Free from wrong view, greed and sensual desires, living in beauty and realizing Perfect Understanding, those who practice boundless love will certainly transcend birth and death."

Next installment: "The Suffering Caused By Misperception"

Drones vs. Up-Close-and-Personal Reality

This content has been moved to: "Drones vs. Up-Close-and-Personal Reality" at Scarry Thoughts.

The Buddha and a Culture of Violence

Previous installment: "The Buddha Meets the Drone"

by Jack Lawlor

Although a life-long idealist, the Buddha was no stranger to cultures of violence. As a youth, his father -- a local monarch -- insisted that he train to be a warrior. But the Buddha kept his own counsel.

Years later, after the Buddha left his father's palace to become a spiritual seeker, he encountered the armies of two adjacent kingdoms massing on the banks of the Rohini River to clash over disputed water rights on the occasionally parched plains of northern India. Did the Budddha linger to side with the kingdom that was historically allied with his homeland? Did he walk away?

No, the Buddha didn't walk away from this highly charged situation. He did something rather interesting. He walked up and down the assembled ranks of both armies, and talked to the soldiers. He then essentially mediated the situation. He had asked questions of both sides about the significance of the water rights in question and the value of the lives of the young men in each army and the amount of treasure it took to assemble troops, warhorses and equipment in place on the field of battle. He then reported to each side the attitudes of the other side. It proved that neither side thought it was worth viewing the water rights as an "all or nothing" issue, and shared water rights were successfully negotiated.

The Buddha did not always succeed in such efforts, but in many instances -- including disputes within his spiritual community -- he was able successfully to sow seeds of empathy, of being able to know and see deeply into other people, not limited only to what is wrong within them but what his right, what is healthy. He did not gain these insights through the use of drone aircraft thousands of feet above the earth, but by meeting with people and spending time with them, exploring their deepest, most genuine desires and aspirations. And this often led to defusing and disarming difficult situations. Are we even capable of such empathy today, in the wake of Bush-era political leaders who made fun of empathetic people, implying they are are weak?

Were the assembled armies along the Rohini River made stronger by avoiding violent conflict? Or would they have been stronger after battling each other, contributing their blood to the Rohini? Is our nation stronger or weaker in the wake of the war in Iraq?

What compass was the Buddha following? How would his source of guidance approach the subject of drone warfare?


Next installment: "The Buddha On Love"

Drones: Am I Responsible?

This content has been moved to: "Drones: Am I Responsible?" at Scarry Thoughts.

The Buddha Meets the Drone

by Jack Lawlor

From time to time, we need to experience how what is wise and compassionate is indeed possible.

My family attended a lovely retreat with Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh in 1989 which included not only adults, but also children. As is often the case, Thay ( the Vietnamese term of endearment for "teacher" ) invited the fifteen or so children in attendance to perform a skit one evening after dinner. The children chose the unlikely topic, "The Buddha Meets the Jetsons", which actually proved to be as telling as one of the retreat's many fine Dharma talks. Why? The children at the retreat portrayed 25th century-ish Jetson adults as stressed, overburdened, rather hyper and erratic beings who often ignored what was obvious in front of them and who often were caught in misperceptions of what was actually happening, leading to error and injury.

What the children were portraying so accurately, of course, was their own 20th century parents. It was obvious that the children were very diligent and accurate in perceiving adult behavior. So was the other character in the skit: the 6th century BC time-traveling visitor to the Jetsons, Shakyamuni Buddha -- whose demeanor, depth of character, and attentiveness compared starkly to the distracted, hapless, and overwrought George Jetson. It was interesting to see the Buddha attempt to instruct the Jetson family in such ancient practices as sitting meditation and walking meditation, all based on the primal practice of awareness of the breath. The Jetsons shook, strained and complained loudly about being exposed to this form of teaching, but without question in the skit these mindfulness techniques had their intended effect. The children attending the retreat were, in essence, submitting an optimistic report to us that in the last several days they were -- despite all their previous skepticism -- beginning to see how ancient contemplative practices were having a calming, insightful effect on their parents, who were becoming more open-minded, loving and sane.

Why have we given up on what could be a favorable outcome? Is our cynicism that hard, that deep? Can't we, as Christ urged, become more child-like in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, which according to the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, "is spread before us but men do not see it"? Is there room for robot drones that attack civilians in foreign countries in such a Kingdom, such a world? How did we come to need to use drones in this way? Forty-two years ago I came upon Tolstoy's following description of a boyhood friend and the thrill of the possible, which still challenges me today:

"It goes without saying that under [his] influence I involuntarily adopted his outlook, the essence of which was a rapturous adoration of the idea of virtue, and the conviction that man's purpose lies in continual self-improvement. To reform all humanity and eradicate all human vice and unhappiness seemed plausible enough to us at the time, just as it seemed an easy and uncomplicated matter to reform ourselves, to master all virtues and be happy...

God only knows, however, just how absurd those noble dreams of youth were, or who was to blame that they were never realized...."

Leo Tolstoy, Boyhood. Childhood and Youth

Next installment: "The Buddha and a Culture of Violence"

The Apostle's Creed as a Focus for Thinking About Drones

This content has been moved to: "Do You Know What You Believe? (The Apostle's Creed as a Focus for Thinking About Drones)" at Scarry Thoughts.

Call to Confession

by Susan Soric

The following Call to Confession comes from a service that  Rev. Loren McGrail and I did  at our home church of Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ.  This Confession became the inspiration for the name of our blog Awake to Drones.  I invite you to be in touch with how the use of  robotic warfare is affecting you. Trust your gut instincts.

Hear My Cry

A few months back, when our daughter was a little over a year old, we were watching an extremely innocuous, usually very comforting and quaint little British children’s show called Postman Pat. It was about an ordinary and uncomplicated man named Pat who loved his job in the village, loved his wife and son, and was truly very happy. But one episode contained an unusual character. Postman Pat was overwhelmed with all the packages he was delivering and wanted to find a way to get some help, so he created a robot, which he was demonstrating for Mrs. Goggins in the post office one day. When our little girl saw the boxy, bug-eyed, gangly can of metal lurching and flailing, smashing windows and knocking things over; she started to panic. Aaaah aaah! AAAAH! She cried, and of course I stopped the show very quickly.

I have pondered that moment, taking to heart the terror in her voice, her innocence, her lack of understanding of the world and of human creations; and
yet for all that innocence there was something primal, maybe even instinctual, something real and deeply human in the fear she expressed at that lifeless, yet moving, machine. My theological mind turned immediately to the lack of humanity in the robot: the absence of something familiar, reassuring, comforting. Inhumanity, non-humanity. Disembodiment. Perhaps she was expressing the lack of connection one feels to something that is not of you.....not your kin.....But why did I not feel 
that way about the robot? Yes, I’m old and jaded, but maybe I also wasn’t tuning
in to a place within myself that our daughter could touch immediately. What was happening in that place deep in side me that numbed me to the horror of a lifeless imitation of humanity?

And that brings me to our focus for today. Robots of death. Death by
 drone. Killing by remote control. Since taking office, President Obama has been undertaking a personally-directed, CIA-administered, high-tech assassination campaign in Western Asia (particularly in Yemen and Pakistan), using drone technology to target what he describes as terrorists. Some reports estimate that Obama has personally ordered hundreds of assassinations by drone since he took office, striking out at supposed Al Qaida targets while also killing innocent children and adults. Technology is not always bad. It can be life-saving, but in the hands of the powerful, it can also be an abomination.

Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich warns us that the executive power
of the presidency is now unleashed, and our system of justice is being radically altered. “I feel that we have had a kind of psychic dismemberment from our foundational causes of nation,” says Kucinich. “How did the nation, that was founded under such egalitarian principles, find itself running a killing bureaucracy? How did that happen? How did we make that journey? This is clearly a story of a nation that is losing its way in the world to a mixture of fear and hubris,” Kucinich said.

I believe that fear is a natural instinct, and sometimes we do need to protect ourselves from trauma. But our faith also reminds us that we also must do the opposite. We must sensitize ourselves to the fear and trauma and suffering around us so that we can be of help; so that we can promote an end to violence and the establishment of peace.

Some of our United Churches of Christ once used the crucifix in worship. This is one such crucifix that a suburban UCC church was giving away at a recent wider church meeting. Gone are the wretched bodies of Jesus once mounted on
 our crosses, and for good reason: Jesus is no longer dead, but alive. Resurrected.
 But our faith also calls us to remind ourselves that death is real; murder is real. Assassination is real. Real flesh-and-blood bodies die. People made in the image of God die every day at the hands of other human beings. This crucifix reminds us to be fully human. It reminds us that when we kill others just because they are vigilantes, because they are different, because they are a threat, that we are destroying a part of the very God we profess to love and part of ourselves as well.

“I think,” says Kucinich, “the people of the United States would be horrified if they actually understood how many innocent people are being swept up in the maw of these wars. So people are just permitted to sleep. And it’s going to be 
very disturbing for the American people when they awake from the slumber to look out upon a world where there’s carnage everywhere that’s created by our nation without any legal process, without any constitutional basis and without any articulated justification.”

I have been asleep. Where have you been? Is there any justification for this kind of killing: either killing by cross or by drone? When will we awaken and cry out about the horror of it all? And once we reach that place of gut-felt anguish, what will we do about it?

Susan Soric

image from Patrician Sotarello and AFSC