Meeting War Eye to Eye
The US has just bombed Iran. The only medicine I know for such a crime is to develop a fierce and peaceful heart that is stronger than, more resilient than, more enduring than war. Maintain the No Enemy Way as if your life depends on it. It does.
From Peter Levitt, poet, Zen teacher, peacemaker
I'm so tired of these warriors. These warriors and their wars. They make being a warrior look so good to some people, but not to me. Now we have "yoga warriors" "meditation warriors" "mommy or daddy warriors" just for doing the sometimes difficult task of being a mommy or daddy, and even "stop the war warriors". You name it and there's a warrior in every walk of life, or some people want other people to think with their little Jack Horner mentality
But warriors kill. They kill and maim and torture and rape and cut out tongues and cut off living breasts and penises meant for love and they destroy innocence and futures. That's what they do. They don't just work hard, or try hard, or do yoga poses that are difficult and make people think they deserve some kind of glory, or sit in meditation retreats until their eyes turn into pinwheels and their butts start fires by rubbing on their cushions like striking flints. No. They kill and do all of the other things I listed, and more.. They do it to the mommies and daddies and yoga people doing downward dog, and meditators, and peace workers, and bakers, and grandmas who like to knit or build life-saving technologies, and they do all of it to people who don't have a stick for a house or a handful of mud to eat, and they do it to children children children. The beauties of our species. That is what warriors do because they are told to do it and they do what they are told and many of them like it. Yes. That is also true for some. Until, maybe, later on, because of their wars.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: War is War. Warriors make war. Warriors kill innocent people. Mothers and fathers and children, aunties and uncles and babies. And I am sick of the sickness of warriors and their wars.
In some cultures there is something that has been called warrior spirit. I don't defame it, or their cultures, often indigenous. I say something very simple: can we really not find a better way to express that spirit, a better word or term or phrase, one that does not in any way glorify warriors and war and the disaster they bring into the world? Really? No other way? Unless that is what you want to do, all of you non-warriors ie glorify war.
Because I'm glad you are not warriors. Yes. Very glad. Because warriors and their wars kill people just like everyone you love and ever will or hope to love or be loved by. And I am sick of it. Sick of their sickness. Sick and bloody tired of what they do. Are you really not? Is war and are warriors really the pinnacles of our imaginations?
I won't argue the point. Say what you will, then. I've said my bit.
thank you Deena… this is horrifying.