I've been trying to absorb the news of Katrina, like all of you. Trying to comprehend, not just the massive degree of devastation, but the human drama as well. The stories now of the lootings, the rapes, the terror. And then I see the blog posts and the increasingly hostile exchanges as everyone seeks to enlighten us as to who, exactly, is culpable and why (in some instances going back many presidential administrations).
I find the swirling hostility spinning out from the swirling hurricane to be ironic and, if you will bear with me, I'd like to bring it down a couple notches, encourage everyone to catch their breath and go inside for a moment or two. Don't worry, I'm not going to get all hippie love child on you. I want to speak to you from my heart, my very serious heart.
I read A Path with a Heart by Jack Kornfield several years ago and one story that never left me was a Buddhist exercise in which you are to imagine that everyone, EVERYONE around you is an enlightened Buddha (yes, including Mark the Sane and Sensible, who thinks I am brilliant btw, but I digress) and they are all trying to teach you something.
You are the only one who doesn't get it and your task is to learn the lesson.
That's easy to do when someone performs a random act of kindness. Some stranger pays your toll on the highway and you say, "Oh, what a sweet Buddha, teaching me about kindness. How nice. Come here, little Buddha, let me rub your belly, you crazy kid."
It's a little harder to imagine what an opportunistic looter in the aftermath of Katrina is going to teach YOU about enlightenment.
Last year, I saw a guy driving like a nut in Chicago. That is hardly news. He was on his cell and swigging coffee and speeding in and out. Because I am a Chicagoan, my instinct was to drive like a bigger nut so I could catch up to him and give him a good "talking to" with a few eloquent gestures.
Article comments
1 - Pete
...well said, Laura. How easy is it to cast stones rather than to learn lessons and maybe change our ways. Friendly wave from someone who works in downtown Chi...
2 - Mark Saleski
very nice.
frankly, i can't understand:
a. attempts to demonize pres. bush for this
b. slingback from the other side accusing folks of being stupid, unpatriotic, etc., etc., etc.
3 - Laura Young
Thanks Pete and Mark.
It's so ironic that my post on Life is Empty and Meaningless has drawn such an insane (and I think I am using that word on purpose) amount of commentary with everyone whipping out increasingly bigger...dictionaries...to intellectualize each other into submission when this post slipped by relatively unnoticed. Unfortunately, people keep proving my point that we really do seem to harbor this aggression within us that gets set off so easily when our own little hair triggers get activated.
I don't know that I have a lot of hope at this point. Getting to old for it, maybe.
But I'll keep saying what I believe because there are always those few individuals, like you two, that emerge from the wilderness and brighten things up a bit.
Thanks for letting me know you are out there!
L