Indigo Lantern

I posted last summer about the forgiveness practice I engage in every morning, reciting the following lines:

I pardon, I pardon, I pardon
all those who may have hurt or harmed me,
knowingly or unknowingly,
intentionally or unintentionally,
through deed of body, speech, or action.

I seek pardon, I seek pardon, I seek pardon
from all those whom I may have hurt or harmed,
knowingly or unknowingly,
intentionally or unintentionally,
through deed of body, speech, or action.

Sometimes when I say these lines, I “feel” them. I feel forgiving and contrite.

Other times, though, I feel defiant or squirmy or unapologetic. Since the benefit of a practice such as this is to pay attention to what one is feeling, I thought I’d spend some time bringing the light of day to these less savory aspects of my personality.

Whereas asking for forgiveness doesn’t always elicit the nicer parts of my personality, I’ve noticed it seems rather easy to forgive. I don’t know if that is because I am actually generous in my own forgiveness or more blind to my shortcomings in that area.

When it comes to asking for forgiveness, my reactions are pretty much the same as the ones I had when I was a kid:

1. It’s not my fault.
2. It’s too hard.
3. S/he started it.

When I am in a “not my fault” phase, I feel sullen and don’t actually mean the words as I say them. When I am in the “too hard” phase, I feel plaintive and put-upon, as if too much is being asked of me.

I am embarrassed to say how I realized that I engaged in a “s/he started it” mentality, but I shall anyway. I noticed that instead of saying “I seek pardon from all those whom I may have hurt or harmed…”, I sometimes caught myself saying, “I pardon those whom I may have hurt or harmed…”

In my head, it’s as if it were the other person’s fault that I was unkind to them. Essentially, I was blaming the victim. I felt abashed when I realized what I had been saying.

It has been useful for me to look at these thoughts more closely, because they are the same ones that come up in my everyday life when I feel guilty or ashamed of something.

Even though owning up to these negative emotions has been hard, the next part of the exercise is even more difficult, which is to “be” with them. My first inclination is to push these thoughts away. I’d rather think of myself as loving as kind, not as petty and small-minded. Of course, it never does any good to push thoughts like these “away” because there is no “away” in the psyche. It is always with you.

I have found instead that it is best for me to spend time with the aspects of myself that I don’t care for. The only way this is effective is if I don’t hold any expectations or hope to “get rid” of this part of myself. Rather, it is a question of acknowledging that these thoughts and attitudes are a part of me. And then… something happens.

I’m not trying to be mysterious, but it is hard to describe what happens. It’s as if the negative charge that these emotions have is diffused. The emotions become a part of me, but in a different way.

What an awkward explanation I am giving! All I can say is that when I go through this process, which can take quite a long time (weeks, months, or years in some cases), I am no longer ruled by my reactions. It is very freeing.

The irony is that when I do the process of spending time with the negative emotions I cannot have any anticipation of how I will feel when the negativity is resolved. Furthermore, I cannot have any judgment of myself because I have these negative feelings. If I am anticipating the future or judging myself, then I am taking myself out of the present moment, and it is only in the present moment that transformation can occur.

For this process to work, I must be completely in the present moment. I can’t be “waiting” for something to happen. It is very like meditation in the sense that some meditation requires one simply to observe what is happening, not to judge nor to ascribe values to the experience. Simply experience what is happening.

With this practice in addition to the forgiveness practice, perhaps I shall eventually be kinder.

I was wondering the other day, what is finite and what is infinite?

I understand that everything around me is finite. After all, no one lives forever. Material things (except for Tupperware) decompose. The cycle of life dictates that we’re born, we grow, we die, we decay, etc.

On the flip side, though, there is the idea that energy is constant–it’s just its form that changes. When we look at an apple ripening on a tree, from green to red to overripe to rotten, we are seeing state changes of energy. According to some ways of understanding our physical world, the underlying energy remains constant.

According to this view, energy can take one material form (e.g., a leaf) and over time changes into another material form (e.g., humus). At the end of the day, the energy remains relatively constant.

If this is true, it means that each of us is as old as the hills. After all, if the same energy has been around since the beginning of the earth’s formation, shape-shifting through time, then we are part of this grand shape-shifting. We are comprised of matter that is energy that’s been around since the earth began. We’re all senior citizens… ;)

May 2010 bring you delight, wonder, and ease.

For Lisa

When she was born, her fairy godmother gifted her with a pair of red shoes, for when she was grown.

Her mother died when she was a toddler. Her father remarried.

Her father died a few years later, and her stepmother remarried.

After years of unhappiness, she ran away from home. She fled to a distant town, where she apprenticed with a dressmaker. She learned the trade and did well. Met a young man and married. Kept working as a dressmaker. Was happy. Had a baby, then a second. Happy.

Yet something was missing.

She returned to the village of her birth and went to her old house. Her stepmother, an old woman now, recognized her immediately. “I suppose you’ve come for the shoes,” her stepmother said.

“Yes,” she answered, not knowing what her stepmother was talking about.

“They’re not yours anymore, fairy godmother or no,” her stepmother said. “I took care of you when your mother died. I took care of you when your father left me behind. So they’re not yours, they’re mine.”

“I want to see them,” she said.

“Well all right, but they’re not yours.”

Both women knew you can’t hold a fairy gift hostage. They always find their way to their rightful owners.

The stepmother brought out the dusty shoes. The red was faded, yet they were finely made, with fur-lined leather and a sturdy heel. They looked just her size.

“I want to try them on,” she said. She took off her scuffed, misshapen shoes and stepped into the red shoes.

Immediately three memories came to her. First, she remembered her mother, holding her and singing to her. Second, she remembered her father smiling at her as he picked her up and swung her around. Third, she remembered the coldness that had settled in her heart after her parents had died.

Her stepmother fidgeted. “Take them off. They should be mine.”

“All right,” she said. She took off the red shoes and placed them in her stepmother’s waiting hands. She put her shapeless shoes back on, turned away, and began the walk home.

She didn’t look back, and she didn’t see the red shoes crumble to dust in her stepmother’s hands.

As she made the long walk home, she began to hum her mother’s song, smiling.

Yesterday, President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. Earlier this week, the president announced that he will be sending 30,000 more troops to fight the war in Afghanistan. As some journalists noted, there was a certain irony to Obama’s acceptance of the Peace Prize as he was engaging even more heavily in a war.

A common understanding of peace parallels the Wikipedia definition, that peace is “an absence of violence”. However, my understanding of peace is more closely aligned with Merriam-Webster’s definition: “a state of tranquility or quiet”.

(Wikipedia’s definition is semantically problematic. As I learned in fourth grade, it is inadequate to define a term by what it is not. Saying that peace is an absence of war or an absence of conflict does not tell what it is, only what it is not. Merriam-Webster defines peace in the positive, which is more effective at communicating what it actually is.)

Obama’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize made me begin to think more about peace. Although I’ve aspired to be a pacifist, I haven’t been able to answer questions from friends about just what exactly I’d advocate doing if my own home were under attack. Would I still profess pacifism and nonviolence, or would I acknowledge that violence in self-defense is acceptable?

When asked, I’ve only been able to answer, “I don’t know.”

We have a modern example of pacifism in face of invasion: by and large, Tibetans have not resisted the Chinese invasion of their homeland militarily. And where does that get them? Invaded.

Whereas one could argue that nonviolence “worked” for Ghandi–his nonviolent leadership helped bring about an end to British rule–it doesn’t seem to “work” for Tibet–China doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

The question becomes, which is more important, protecting one’s loved ones, one’s home, one’s welfare, or practicing nonviolence?

I think only if we have a concept of salvation or enlightenment can we make an argument in favor of nonviolence when facing a direct threat to one’s loved ones, home, or welfare. Only if we have an idea that there is some numinous or nirvanic essence beyond our immediate understanding of the world can it make sense to abdicate one’s sense of self-preservation.

On the other hand, there are arguments in favor of nonviolence that suggest that since the cost of conflict (in terms of human life as well as resources) is so high, there must be a better way to effect resolutions. Wikipedia calls this “pragmatic” or “consequentialist” pacifism. Pragmatic pacifism seems more economic in its approach, rather than stemming from a moral or spiritual foundation.

Proponents of war often argue that a “just war” is defensible. If killing a few people now will save many, many people being killed later, isn’t that the better thing to do? Isn’t it better to act now than to have the future deaths of many on one’s hands? How can we sit by and do nothing while others are slaughtered for want of our involvement?

Radiolab has a podcast (entitled, “Killing Babies, Saving the World“) that puts the question to us: would we kill our own infant in order to save an entire village? This question takes the line of reasoning of the “just war” to an extreme.

The problem I have with the concept of the “just war” is that we don’t know what is going to happen in the future. If I conclude that Person A is going to harm… one person, one hundred people, one thousand people (whatever the number is that warrants triggering a “just war”), and I kill Person A, I have now removed from the Person A the ability to make a choice.

In some ways, this is a greater violence, because I have prevented Person A from being able to choose a loving path, to choose not to kill.

I understand that x times out of x+1 times, Person A will kill. But if I kill Person A to prevent them from killing others, I have eliminated the possibility that they will be able to make the choice not to kill on that x+1st time.

Additionally, I have killed. I have made a violent choice. In my effort to keep someone else from killing, I have performed the very act that I condemn. This is strange.

In her book All About Love, bell hooks suggests that if as a country we choose love, great things can happen. I believe this, too. However, I also acknowledge that there is a danger in believing this. If we are to give people the opportunity to choose love, that means they also have the opportunity not to choose love. And if someone chooses violence instead of love, there are consequences, sometimes tragic consequences.

But as I see it, there is no other way. There can be no possibility, no opportunity for us to live fully loving lives if we preclude the opportunity for everyone to make loving choices. When we choose to kill, we forswear peace.