PEACE AND COMPASSION

The Dalai Lama spoke on the topic of peace and compassion at Berkeley. Of all the religious leaders, the Dalai Lama is perhaps the most interesting.

Pancho at the Metta Centre followed up with a serious of questions to generate hypothetical answers. It is an interesting exercise.

The first thing the Dalai Lama needs to know is that he is still a young fella. My friend down and around the corner is 92. He was recently in hospital with what turned out to be pneumonia. He tells me that he was feeling run down following ten years of looking after his wife who finally died five months ago. In his case, perhaps the exception, hospital seems to have been a positive intervention. He full of praise for the food and people. He is so good, he says, he feels like 82. Now he realizes he has to slow down a bit. He tells me, he is giving his mountain bike to his son to ride, which admittedly been in the shed covered up for some time.

The Dalai Lama seems an extraordinary man, and what strikes me as most extraordinary is the method of his selection that somehow seemed to work. Traditional societies had methods of solving problems that seem impossible for large scale modern societies with extensive institutions. I remember the story of two Maori tribes engaged in long war for a section of valuable, highly productive land. The taiaha (spear) of the warrior may be wooden but it still does its work. Eventually they decided that the cost to them both of self destruction was too high and declared the contested land to be sacred, and to be left alone. Yet modern societies do not seem to recognize problems and to know constraints. The reason I suspect is part faith in technology and part, ideology.

Now it probably too late. The opportunity has passed. Yet, Americans could have been selfish to good effect. All that money spent on the military industrial complex, the defence industries, the wars of invasion and occupation could have been spent on economic infrastructure, health and education (no doubt other things) and it would not have been wasted.

Why is there such as penchant for self-destructive behavior in supposedly modern, enlightened societies? Is the problem the same you identified for scientists? Pancho wrote:

Today, the majority of scientists are specialized in a small part of the natural world and we often miss the big picture and the magnificence of the interaction among the parts that make up the whole. Without understanding the interconnectedness of life, we don’t know how we are affecting the connections and no community can exist without a unifying story. The problem is not specialization but isolation.

If we lose sight of the big picture – this might have something to do with education – the details do not matter. Travelling to hell in a hand basket comes to mind. It is time to get off that bike.

I have not answered Pancho questions. I do not feel competent to do so. It is striking to me how some of your local issues resonant with our local issues. Our local university does not to my knowledge have any connection with the military-industrial complex or the nuclear arms industry, but it does have what is regarded as a very successful campus in Dubai. Our local council is now run by three State Government appointed Administrators and the City Manager following findings on systemic corruption. The relation between democratic process and systemic corruption remains unclear to me.

So it goes.

But I have a challenge for you: What would you say to these soldiers in Iraq who say they enjoy killing, to point that like salesmen they are envious of those who have greater opportunities? Peter Beaumont writes in The Guardian:

War’s most dreadful secret, banal and terrible at the same time, is not that men kill – that much is obvious – or even that many men enjoy their killing. That, too, has been well documented. It is more insidious than that. There exists a widespread envy of those who kill, and especially those who kill and kill again. There is a bitter resentment among men when others claim their kills, or their kills are denied. That deems some men “luckier” to have the opportunity to kill more than others.

I would say something like:

Sure that is how you say you feel now in this among your buddies, your mates, but wait till you try to fit back into a “nonviolent” social context in which you are left to bear the burden of the memory of your behavior for which most people around will have no intuitive understanding or empathy. I refer to the conditional nature of the “nonviolence” since the embedded violence that may be hidden from you is largely determinant in your current circumstances and in your denial of your humanity and deep connection with others that killing violates, more often than not. Such alienation can drive some people mad. Your best bet I suggest is seek out the Iraqis close to those you have killed and ask their forgiveness. Human beings and human nature may just surprise you. My guess is that you will not be given this opportunity. Violence without end.

The people referred to in this article seem to me to be “criminals”. Just where the line between been a criminal and a soldier is moot. They are like the night shift at Abu Ghaib, they were given licence.

Personal Note:

I have been a bit crook. This explains the digressions from the norms around here.

(Sorry this was a lapse into the variant of English of which I am familiar. The meaning is not feeling well. There is also another phrase “going crook at” which means to be angry with.)

Pancho’s questions go to a broader question that challenges me: What limits can be placed on compassion?

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