The recent events in Israel and Gaza reminded me of this excerpt from my memoir, Life of Kai, a memoir of awakening.
“It was July of 2005. Chris and I had been on the road for a month, and as we were heading to Rockport, Illinois, to visit with friends, we heard about the London bombings. Four suicide bombers had struck London’s transport network, killing 52 people and injuring over 770 others.
The violence and apparent meaninglessness of the attack shook me. I wanted to meditate and connect with all the people, perpetrators, and victims involved in such a violent ordeal. Needing to find a place where we could be still, we looked for somewhere to stop. Off the road, we saw a trailhead that led down to a small rushing river. I found a flat rock where I could sit at the water’s edge, and Chris left me to meditate alone. By quieting my racing thoughts, I hoped to sort out my feelings about the troubling event that had invaded our peaceful retreat.
I practiced tonglen, a Buddhist method of transformation. I grounded myself by watching my breath and then began visualizing that I was taking the grief and fear of the victims into my heart. In my vision, I let their pain burn and then let the cleansed smoke of their transformed pain out as clear, fresh air, sending healing to those suffering. I repeated the tonglen process of taking in the anger of the attackers and transmuting it to love. It seemed like a small action, but I felt I was at least doing something. I realized I couldn’t change what had happened, but I could practice compassion for all suffering humans and open my heart. It was all I could do at the moment, and it had to be enough. Taking in such grief would help me train my heart to live love more deeply in our complex and confused world.
When I finished the tonglen ritual, I considered the possibility that we humans move constantly through an evolutionary birth canal. The natural birth process is often filled with blood and guts and brings the baby violently from the familiarity of the womb to a totally new world. Perhaps the growing violence was a sign of a new birthing. If true, I wondered what role I would play in the unfolding evolution of love on the planet.
Contemplating the events in London, I chose to believe that the recent violence amounted to a call to humanity and to me personally to remember my connection with all beings. I needed to remember, not for the first time, that love surrounds me and all beings and is embedded in all that is. Love is the glue that holds everything together, from the smallest atoms to the orbits of stars and planets. On the road, I no longer had a clear purpose defined by my work. I began to see that my new vocation was to learn to be a lover, not just when it was easy but under all circumstances. In the face of such chaos, such a calling was challenging.
I finished my meditation and left my quiet perch by the water. Still unsettled about the disturbing news, Chris and I continued our journey”.
Now, in 2023, almost twenty years later, the violence has not ended, nor has the need for us to practice love in whatever ways we can.