HieroniMusing originally posted October 10, 2001
Which of us today is not more aware of the frailty of our lives? Who among us is not in some way grieving for the security of what we had in sensibility alone, but which no longer exists? Who asks of themselves each day, in what ways did I contribute to a better world today? Sept. 11,2001 did change us all, together. For those who have fought geopolitical interventionism worldwide, struggled for right human relations, terrorists are the likely fruit of war rackateering. When nation’s drop bombs, they can be called humanitarian aid. When terrorists bomb buildings, it is called an act of evil. The issue is not the fact that both are violent ways of being in the world and using technology, the issue is how do we go about defining the rules and laws pertaining to violent aggression by anyone? Those of us who look for ways other than destruction of place and community to route out the lawless, find ourselves in these days of American’s calling for revenge, out numbered by those willing to initiate a war that has no laws to apply to it, no end to it’s task, but whose impact will accelerate a world tendency towards dissassembling in greater and greater violence. Alchemcially, coming apart , as practicing buddhists know, is a positive process if one attends to the dissassembling with a reverence and compassion for life, with regard for reshaping, transmuting and transfomring. The world leadership, however, seems less capable of using place and station in life for service to society rather than ruler ship of it by force or aquiescence. The proclaimed war on terrorism, like all the other failed wars fought by government propogandists, policy analysts and industrial war racketeers, will result with certainty, in a militarized nation state , which far from securing freedom will curtail the essential core of america’s great fortune, the rule of law as supreme. Let’s just call this fear, the soft terror in some of our hearts. While some cheer for the bombing of alleged terrorist hideouts in foreign lands, others of us are bracing for the carpet bombing of our own rule of law.
Zohara M. Hieronimus September 20, 2001