I'm reading a book, a transcription of discussions between Thich Nhat Hanh, a zen/theravadan buddhist monk and Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest. They are both proponents of peace and poets. Their words are beautiful. Their respect for each others' traditions is beautiful. It is very healing for me as I have long held resentments towards christianity, due to catholic school, wars and random encounters. I feel this book is opening me up, making me more tolerant. I will give you an excerpt:
"Nhat Hanh: I think it is possible to say that eternal life is the kind of life that includes death. In fact, eternal life without death is not possible. For example, you have a coin, a piece of money. You have two sides, and one side is the opposite of the other. But this side is not the coin. The other side is not the coin either. The coin is both. So in talking of eternal life as the coin, noneternal life is just one face of the two sides. Once you choose eternal life you choose death as well, and both are life. But if you want to take only one face of the coin, you don't have the coin.
Berrigan: In the States, so much of what we call daily life, human life, is concerned with death in a fashion that's very peculiar. For instance, we have all kinds of "wars" declared against this or that aspect of death. We have a war on poverty, a war on cancer, a war on heart disease. There's even a war on war. These aspects of death around us, within us, are always conceived of as the great enemy which must be overcome so that we can get beyond disease, war, poverty-into what they like to think of as the good life, the real life, the life which has no death within it, And this dream continues. But it's always a kind of troubled and violent dream because it implies (and sometimes says openly) that, in order to make that leap, we have to make war on something or on somebody. To attain anything like the trugth of life, or a life with others, something is always in our way; and must be done away wit, must be overcome.
Of course, the fact is that the culture is almost totally bankrupt of a vision of what a good life might be. We're ridden with consumerism, fear, violence, racism-all these terrible mythologies which forever put off any real vision. I find it interesting in the light of the scripture that. while the dream of the good life is forever delayed, death is always magnified: omnipresent, omnivorous, the shadowy other, the enemy. So we never really pay tribute to life at alland never arrive at life. What we're really doing all the time is paying tribute to death. The eventuality of life is put off and put off and put off, because the obstacles and enemies multiply like piranhas, forever.
Until the end of history, we'll be waging a shadow war. The shadows are created by our own psyche in the image of death. In this itch for beatitude, which has nothing to do with GOd or our neighbor-in order to get nearer to that, we must kill all the time. In the pursuit of life, we are always dealing out death War becomes the continual occupation and preoccupation in the minds of people who are purportedly trying to get to a better life.
Speaking in biblical terms, God is superseded by the ape of God, which is actually personified death. This is the shrine at which we worship. This, I think , is the practical consequene of our war on life. Our real shrines are nuclear installations and the Pentagon and the war research laboratories. This is where we worship, allowing ourselves to hear the obscene command that we kill and be killed, A command which, it seems to me, is anti-Christ, is anti-God, you know.
Someday you must take a trip into the countryside of NOrth Dakota, just south of the Canadian border, It's all prairie; it's all flat. And for miles and miles on the horizon, the only visible thing is a nuclear installation, shaped like a pyramid. Most of it, of course, is subterranean, Someone told me that in Egypt the construction of the pyramids began just before the downfall of a dynasty. It was the kind of sarcophagus, that kind of a shrine to death, which they raised as an admission that they were dying. Someone said that if NOrth Dakota seceded from the Union, it would be the third nuclear power. And this is a farming state.
Nhat Hanh: So, war becomes the only possibility. During the periods when the war was very intensive in Vietnam, most of us meditated on death every day, because death was a matter of every second, every minute.
In that atmosphere, there was pressure on each one of us to work more quickly, to break through the problems of life and death. On one hand, we were pushed by the need to bring help to the suffering. you had to bury the dead and help the mutilated children, and often we were busy building shelters for others. You had to to be busy all the time doing these things. But your mind was always on problems o flife and death.
IF death came and you were not prepared, youwould not be able to take it well. But there was another stimulus and others acted quite differently. They said, "well, youd on't know when you'll die, so if you have some money why not spend it?" That was another attitude, since the future was so insecure.
My Master died during the 1968 Tet offensive, but not from a bomb or a bullet. He couldn't stand it. He just couldn't stand it. He was old-eighty-five.
Berrigan: He couldn't stand-the war? The assaults on the monastery?
Nhat Hanh: The monastery was struck by one mortar shell; but no one was killed. At that time I was not in the country; I did not have the opportunity to see him before he died
I remember quite well what he said when I was a novice. It was a long time ago, during the French occupation. We had rice for the monks, and we had to bury the rice in order to preserve it because French soldiers came and stole it from us. We put it in big containers and buried them in the yard. One day he and a few of us novices went out to the yard to unearth one can of rice for dinner. The Master was old, but he still followed our tradition that every monk works: "no work, no food." He said to us while he worked, "I'm so tired. Let's wait until after I die." We vietnamese say, "Well, just wait until I'm dead, I won't be tired anymore." He was joking with us; all of us were sweating because of the hard work. I thought it was only a joke but half a minute later he said to us, "who will be the person after I am dead: Who will be the person who will not be tired?"
I was struck by that and I took it as a theme of meditation. It helped me a lot. I realized that it is by watching the Master, his way of living and listening, that youfind the things that are useful for your own work. It's not by studying the scriptures hours and hours with explanations of a professor that you find those things. Now he's no more. He's no longer there, and I am supposed to succeed him. But since I am here, another disciple is in charge of the monastery. [Thich Nhat Hanh was and is exiled from his country of birth: Vietnam]
Berrigan: We thank God you're here. And since it's the anniversary of Holy Thursday this week, maybe we can all celebrate the Eucharist. It would be marvelous.
Nhat Hanh: Sure. We'll make some bread."
How beautiful is that ... It makes you want to cry, to open your heart, your mind ...
