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Is dissent futile? At the local Farmer's market, I met a friend. She told me that she wouldn't participate in the peace marches any more because it didn't jive with her personality: It seemed so confrontational. And was it really accomplishing anything? Although I didn't completely agree, I felt the same futility: was it really accomplishing anything? And was I doing enough? This impending war really troubled me, and most of it had to do with guilt: was I doing enough to stop it? Didn't I have a moral imperative as a citizen of a country that is about to commit genocide to do something more than just attend peace marches? Wasn't it like watching a murder happen, where you do everything legally possible, like calling the police and trying to alert people to it, but not actually physically trying to stop it? Can we physically do anything to prevent a war anyway? So, these thoughts had been in my mind for a long time now, and they always left me troubled. Yesterday, I went to the Vedanta temple, and attended a sermon. (The temple in Santa Barbara sits on a hill and overlooks the Pacific ocean. If you sit on the front steps of the temple, you have a view of the hill below, with its tranquil native foliage, and the ocean in the distance. You can even see the Channel Islands rise out of the ocean in the background. The sermon is relayed with an external loadspeaker so you can actually listen to it while being immersed in this visual beauty and serenity.) I sat on the steps and listened. It was so peaceful and the winter sun so warming, that my mind would wander. In one segment the Swamiji (priest) was suggesting that only by developing one's inner spirituality would a person find lasting peace and happiness. At the end of the sermon, the Swamiji wanted to set up a circle to answer questions. I was pleasantly suprised and thought I could take this opportunity to ask his advice. After all, my peace was destroyed by this unjust war and my perceived impotence in preventing it. I phrased my question like this. What if I try to be good and spiritual, but the communities around me, of which Iam a part, do not? What if my country wants to go to a war for reasons other than its defence, and in the process, is willing to kill innocent people? What if I am deeply troubled by it? What can I do? The Swamiji replied that that I cared was itself an achievement. That I felt the suffering of people. That was really my achievement, and I should be thankful for that. But what could I, he posed, as a mere mortal do to prevent a country's movement toward war? Not much in the physical realm, although I should do whatever I could. More important, I should go to the source of all action, and pray and hope to bring about change from the spiritual realm. I was instantly calmed. Much of that I suspect came from expressing my suffering, and in return receiving an affirmation that that was the right thing to do, that suffering another's pain is not perhaps just a reaction, it is the response itself, and nothing more needed to be done. It was later that I quarreled with the suggestion that I as a mere mortal could not do anything. After all, would Gandhi have thought the same? What could he, a mere mortal, do to free India? Perhaps he did think that, and perhaps that is the thought that keeps us sane in our moments of defeat. Perhaps, if we continue to suffer other people's pains, we will act when the moment comes. But will all of us continue to wait for that moment which perhaps only a leader can provide us? And who will lead if we all wait. A fear of a looming tragedy is a poor motivator. Especially when confronted by one's own smallness in opposing it. Using fear and guilt to drive my actions in the face of near-certain failure only causes me more suffering. Perhaps the Swamiji is right -- my suffering is response enough. Perhaps everything I do above and beyond that is a celebration of the connection for the other which caused me to suffer her pain in the first place. |