A Memorial Day Meditation
On this day, during which our warrior culture, my culture, valorizes those who have fallen on the battlefield, I think it is important to offer a reminder that there are other possible epistemes than this one, which posits that war is an inevitable consequence of the human condition.
We are, none of us, fated to be killers. Each of us chooses to continue war; we could, instead, choose peace. The ideology that supports war is quite assiduous in policing the boundaries of what is thinkable. It has become unthinkable, for most, to consider a world without war.
Claude Anshin Thomas, in his memoir, At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace, reminds us just what's at stake here:
Peace is not an idea. Peace in not a political movement, not a theory or a dogma. Peace is a way of life: living mindfully in the present moment.... It is not a question of politics, but of actions. It is not a matter of improving a political system or even taking care of homeless people alone. These are valuable but will not alone end war and suffering. We must simply stop the endless wars that rage within.... Imagine, if everyone stopped the war in themselves--there would be no seeds from which war could grow. (qtd. in Mindful Politics, Melvin McLeod, editor)
It's not a coincidence that it's our culture--so focused on externalizing happiness, on locating it in the pursuit of material objects--which lacks a vocabulary for discussing the inner landscape and how the conflicts; dramas; and, yes, the peace of our inner lives become manifest in the material world. War within--especially when it is unacknowledged--yields conflict in our interactions with the material world.
Better one moment spent remembering/discovering that internal war than a thousand days honoring those who have fallen on the battlefields of our ignorance.