Ask Parvati 3: Awakening to Disaster
My husband’s niece was killed by her husband last week, leaving four small children behind. I have always believed that we choose our experiences in this birth, that we choose our birthplace and parents/siblings and, to a certain extent, our death and time of death. Given the horrific way this woman’s life ended, I have a hard time believing that we would actually choose to die in such a way and also leave four children behind having to deal with this traumatic experience. Can you explain more about the cycle of birth and death?
the ultimate question of using nuclear power. Do we really need it? The earthquakes show us that our planet is agitated and overtaxed. The tsunami shows how interconnected we are, how one thing leads to another like a domino effect. What are we doing to ease the stress and suffering in ourselves and on the planet? Are we willing to see the interconnection?
The Christian St Francis of Assisi peace prayer is a personal favorite of mine and of many:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith,
Where there is despair, hope,
Where there is darkness, light,
Where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much
seek to be consoled as to console,
not so much to be understood as to understand,
not so much to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we awake to eternal life.
This poem by Thich Nhat Hanh embodies what he calls “interbeing,” the inner connectedness of all things. This excerpt is from his book: Peace is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life.
“In Plum Village, where I live in France, we receive many letters from the refugee camps…. It is very painful to read them, but we have to do it, we have to be in contact. We try our best to help, but the suffering is enormous, and sometimes we are discouraged….
There are many young girls, boat people, who are raped by sea pirates. Even though the United Nations and many countries try to help the government of Thailand prevent that kind of piracy, sea pirates continue to inflict much suffering on the refugees…
When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply you will see it differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But we cannot do that. In my meditation I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, there is a great likelihood that I would become a pirate. I saw that many babies are born along the Gulf of Siam, hundreds every day, and if we educators, social workers, politicians, and others do not do something about the situation, in twenty-five years a number of them will become sea pirates. That is certain. If you or I were born today in those fishing villages, we may become sea pirates in twenty-five years. If you take a gun and shoot the pirate, all of us are to some extent responsible for this state of affairs.
After a long meditation, I wrote this poem. In it, there are three people: the twelve-year-old girl, the pirate, and me. Can we look at each other and recognize ourselves in each other?…
Call Me by My True Names
Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.
Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.”
- In which way do I resist this moment?
- What is this resistance showing me about what I fear?
- What do I need to do to release my attachment to that fear?
- In which way is the fear an obstacle to my growth?
- What does loving myself look like?
- What does loving others look like?
- What simple, self-compassionate action can I do today that would help my life feel more fulfilled?