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In Rad Dad: dispatches from the frontiers of fatherhood Ian MacKaye says in an interview to trust my kid. Iain is two, and already I don’t trust him. I don’t trust him to not scratch the DVDs (just the other night he was pushing the Scrat Pack bonus disc from Ice Age: Dawn of Dinosaurs along the floor like it was a “choo choo chain”). I also don’t trust that he won’t try to stuff two discs into the DVD player. In his toddler state I simply do not trust him to not break or lose things in general.
This reaction seems founded enough: I tell myself I am just helping him explore his world in safety. I say that I can’t afford to buy Toy Story 3 for the third and fourth times. I have a lot of explanations, actually. They’re all bullshit.
Ian also said “with a child is born a parent.” It’s not only Iain who is exploring a new world, taking lessons from his experiences now into his life in the future: I am learning, too. Like him, I am conditioning myself, I am developing patterns. So what will my muscle-memory have me do when my eight-year-old son explores his surroundings, that larger environment which will be available to him on a bike and with friends? What knee-jerk reaction will hurt my relationship with him and his chances to develop when I “protect” him in his 16th year?
In my previous post I talked about how ahimsa does not let us worry because it’s an act of negatively judging our loved ones’ abilities to handle life. What I am talking about now is an extension of that into parenting, though it is a tricky thing to consider. Am I thinking correctly in worrying that Iain will ruin his DVDs? Hell yeah I am! Left to his own devices, the kid will scratch and break every one: he simply does not yet understand the cause and effect concept of scratching dics = no more Buzz, “doggies”, or “di-osaurs”. But do I really have something real to worry about?
You know what happens when I worry? I freak out. When I don’t trust my son I am not his friend or his mentor: I am this crazed loon jabbering on about the cost of material crap, waving my arms and buffooning about as if some plastic circle I spent way too much on at Best Buy is actually worth presenting a message of anger or frustration to my son. It’s ridiculous. Yes the plastic circle cost me a couple bucks, but the kid remembers everything, and it’s not worth me creating so early in our relationship this idea that material crap is worth losing our wits over, and that daddy doesn’t trust Iain, and that it’s OK to fuss and yell and storm about when we are frustrated.
So here’s what I do when I find myself acting silly like this. I play some worst case scenarios. What’s the worst thing that might happen if Iain destroys all of his DVDs? Hell, I might stop letting the TV baby-sit him when I need a couple more minutes of sleep or am too worn out for another round of “giddyup daddy”. Wait, that is best-case scenario. Worst case is that I will go back to Best Buy and spend all of Iain’s college money on more mind-numbing crap. Oh, by the way, Netflix has pretty much everything he likes to watch: I can stream it straight to my TV whenever I want.
Oh, did I mention that I’m the one who has all of the DVDs stacked at toddler level? Who is it that truly can’t be trusted to make sure the DVDs don’t get scratched or jammed into the DVD player?
As an aside, this whole topic teaches me a lot about another of the Yamas: aparigraha or “non-possessiveness. I have a hard time not looking at myself and the way I attach myself to things as I’m trying to explain to Iain that not everything is his. Why should it not be? Why do I have to separate what is mine from what is his? And how am I building the idea of community and sharing when I am always reinforcing the idea of “mine” instead of “ours”? It’s time to pay attention to our lessons we are teaching beyond our words. How much do we share as adults that qualifies us to instruct our young ones what it means to share?
Alright, now that I have your attention (if not go back to the last post), let’s actually start talking about what non-violence is and why calling for ahimsa is not the same as the calling for peace or “making love not war.”
In most any dictionary you will find “peace” defined not as a condition wherein violence and military aggression do not exist, but rather as the cessation of violence, normally due to political expediencies defined in a “treaty.” Committing to peace does not mean a person or state commits to non-violence, it means they only commit to not attacking another person/state at that moment. In such a posture, they maintain the right to build up arms and prepare for war, just not to engage in it just yet. The truth of this definition is best exemplified in the oxymoron which Tracy Chapman points out in the song “Why”, singing, ”Why are all the missiles called peacekeepers when they’re aimed to kill?” Because peace is another state of war, it is not a condition of non-war.
Ahimsa, on the other hand, focuses on the complete cessation of violence. It is the Christian Commandment “thou shalt not kill” and Golden Rule. It is the Muslim directive to not hurt “the smallest ant.” It is a dedication to non-violence: meaning the complete eradication of violent actions, words, and even thoughts. We don’t practice ahimsa while preparing for war. We don’t commit to non-violence for now, we commit to it forever. Calling for peace simply isn’t enough. We must beg tirelessly for people to give up aggression, give up fighting, and promise to seek only the betterment of the human condition. The goal of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions is to end suffering, and one of the most important ways we can do that is to stop creating new suffering.
In Zen Buddhism a person makes such a commitment by dedication to precepts. While the wording of the precepts (usually the “grave” or “clear mind” precepts) can differ from one practice to another, they all contain essentially the same elements. There are also differences between the practices in the ordering of the precepts, but in many of them the first one is the precept to “not kill” or to “take up the way of supporting life.” This is the base of all things ahimsa. We commit to not taking life or doing anything which doesn’t support life. All of the other precepts really just feed into this, so we will call the commitment to the precepts a personal promise to do only those things which are life-affirming. That is, we will try our very best to support other living beings, no matter the species or other distinguishing factor, and avoid causing suffering to any (including ourselves).
Can you imagine a world where governments refused to kill or support any form of killing? What if we were able to convince every person in the world to not hurt another person or any other living being, not even with their thoughts? Wouldn’t that be an amazing place to live? I would move to that world.
At this point the common reaction is to point out the impossibility of it all, how that could never happen. I hate that argument: not because it isn’t true, but because it is used to back up the argument that we shouldn’t even try. I promise you all we will never see the end of suffering in the entire world, no matter how much we do. That does not mean that we can’t end as much suffering as possible and commit to not bringing new suffering into the world. We do have a very real chance at creating a truly happy life for ourselves, bringing light and happiness to the lives of others in the process.
So where do we start? Most of us do not even feel like it’s our place to do anything. Non-violence begins with compassion. We cannot end suffering without understanding suffering, and we don’t understand suffering without experiencing it. Through the experience of suffering we learn empathy, which grows into compassion. It is only compassion that takes a good deed and turns it into the passion it takes to change the world.
Thus, we start with our own suffering, and we end it. We take ownership of our lives, we stop blaming others for our situation or expecting others to change/maintain it. For me, I had to stop smoking, start sleeping, and let loose the feelings I had bottled for years. Once I ended my own suffering I was able to look beyond my suffering to that of others, truly feel the love for them it would take for me to do anything, and then I could act. I am not saying that I have become pure, completely free from suffering. I am simply saying that understanding and mastery over my own suffering is what enables me to address the suffering of others. It is only when I stop being violent to myself that I am able to see the violence around me, particularly the violence to which I am contributing.
So my challenge to everyone is this: take just one precept, whichever one most touches your heart or is easiest to understand, and commit to it. Everyday Zen has them listed with a little explanation. If you would like to explore them a little deeper, I recommend the book “Waking up to what you do” by Diane Eshin Rizzetto. As you commit to these precepts you will find yourself committing to eradicating the suffering in your own life as well as those around you. You don’t have to become “Buddhist”: whatever religion you are most likely already ascribes to these same principles. We can all commit to non-violence, and tell our governments to give up fighting for peace.
So I decided it is time for me to provide a good update. Not only because it has been well over a year since my last post on here, but also because I have been changing a lot and I would like to share with everyone the nature of those changes and where they are carrying me in my life. Being specific in discussing such direction must include a caveat which actually does well to set the tone for this missive: I no longer view my life as a highway taking me directly from some beginning to some end. Rather, I view it like the path of a stream, wandering about on a gradual and winding, though inevitable, course toward the next place I need to be, wherever that might be. The highway is future/destination minded, the stream is present/journey minded. I see myself now as being on such a journey, and I see my life as being inseparably interconnected with all life around me.
This interconnectedness is the central point guiding the transformations through which I have been going. It has come largely as a result of the things I have learned from the Indian (the people from the country of India, not Native American) traditions through yoga and related reading and speeches. It follows from the assertion that we are all – people, animals, plants, and everything else on Earth and in the universe –one by virtue not only of our makeup but also of our interdependent nature. It is deeper than the “people breath in oxygen and breath out carbon dioxide while plants take in carbon dioxide and exhume oxygen” way of thinking. We don’t just share air, and we don’t just become fertilizer for the plants which become our food: we are literally one with our surroundings. We are completely reliant on our interaction with living others and with the ground upon which we walk, and they on us.
This concept is the base for the Sanskrit “ahimsa” which loosely translates to “non-violence.” I’m sure anyone reading this who knows me would be surprised to find that non-violence could be important enough to warrant first-mention as a symbol of the changes I am making. I certainly have never been physically violent toward other people, but ahimsa charges us with commitment to non-violence in actions (direct and indirect), words, and thoughts. There is plenty out there in the internet tubes talking about ahimsa for you to read, and I will talk more about it in subsequent posts, so we’ll leave it with this elementary introduction for now. The important thing is that I have become committed to being non-violent – or, more appropriately, life supporting – toward other people, animals, the environment, and myself.
This last is key, not because I am more important than the others which make up the universe, but because taking care of myself physically, emotionally, and cognitively leads invariably toward caring for those around me. There are easy examples: by quitting smoking I not only made myself healthier and increased the air quality of those in my immediate vicinity as well as contributing less mass to landfills. More distant effects of my cessation of smoking include the fact that I no longer contribute directly to the economic stability of cigarette producers, who then use their funds to market to new smokers.
This concept gets a little trickier in other areas. I learned, for example, that committing to telling the truth is actually a self-fulfilling behavior. Not only do I show another person respect by allowing them their right to know the truth, I also avoid that pesky little side-effect of telling lies the psychologists call cognitive dissonance. Some people call this “conscience,” others the “still, small voice” or “the Holy Ghost.” It doesn’t matter what you call it: we all know the feeling we get in the pit of our stomach when we do something which is in direct contravention of what is right. Some of us know how high that feeling can pile up, too! It is not just a matter of having dissonance or not, it gets worse and worse with repeated infractions. So committing to truth is the same as committing to self-care because we avoid the stress dissonance creates.
So now the big question I know many of you who know me have: why suddenly vegan? First let me caveat that I am not committed to the vegan moniker because it carries with it some specific definitions and identity I might not adopt. I have committed, as of July 12, to not eating, purchasing, or otherwise condoning the use of any animal product so far as I can avoid it. There are some ways I cannot currently avoid it, such as the leather from which my combat boots are made, but outside of such constraints I am done with personally committing or supporting violence against life. One of the biggest ways you will see me differ from the vegan mainstream (or loud minority, I still haven’t decided which case is true), though, is that I will not pass judgment on and become angry with those who haven’t made my same commitments. To do so would be a violation of my commitment to supporting life: the transfer of violent energies (whether physical, verbal, or mental/emotional) from animals to fellow humans is not a commitment to non-violence. So meat-eaters, do what you do, but if you ever decide that you want to make a commitment like mine remember that you are not alone and I’ll give you some good resources to get started. Let me warn everyone, though: I do intend to delve a little deeper into some of the things I’ve just glazed over here in subsequent posts, so if my commitment in some way offends you beware. First up will be some discussion about being vegan in the military…and why I’m probably not going to stay in.
In the meantime, I hope I have given you all some information since I have been relatively quiet for the last year. As always, your comments, whatever they might be, are welcome. Namaste!
