At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace by Claude Anshin Thomas, Shambhala, Boston, 2004
A Book Review: here are some passages and notes compiled from At Hell's Gate which capture the essence of the book. **************************** I discovered that there is no justified killing, no clear separation between good and bad violence, and no restitute in war. War is just the acting out of suffering. Everyone has their Vietnam. Everyone has their war(s). In 1966 I volunteered to fight in Vietnam. They told me I was going there to bring peace, that peace is accomplished at the point of a gun. My job in Vietnam was to kill people. I got metals for some 625 combat hours during which I kill a lot of people. I never saw them as people. But today I still see many of their faces. During the Vietnam War some 58,000 American soldiers were killed. [Over one-million Vietnamese were killed.] Since 1975 when the US military left Vietnam more than 100,000 American's who fought there have committed suicide. About 40 to 60 percent of the homeless in the US are Vietnam Veterans. The divorce rate among these Veterans is very high. The war is never over; it never ends. War does not go away. There are many myths about war. For example, the soldiers of World War II came home as victors in the "good war." This obliged them not to talk openly or directly about the terrible reality of their experiences. Speaking truthfully was not encouraged. So many of the veterans of World War II isloated themselves, closed down their emotions, and became alcoholics to keep away the guilt, shame, confusion, fear, anger, and all the feelings that are the reality of war. They die trapped in a code of silence. But something unusual happened during and after the Vietnam War: many could not deny its reality. Being in a war is like being in a surreal horror movie. It is insane. There is an emptiness in everyone's eyes. During basic military training and after you are taught to hate, kill, maim, and destroy those who threatens you or your beliefs. You are violently humiliated and abused so that you turn off your feelings. Your animal nature takes over your human nature. Only your victory and the destruction of the enemy is what matters. You dehumanize the enemy, a whole race of people. You dehumanize yourself. But the victor and the vanquished in any war carry the same affects of war; the ame scars. War veterans and their suffering are the same no matter from what war. This military conditioning is able to take hold of us because we are training as children to be prejudice, nationalistic, to solve conflict and problems with violence. Corporeal punishment in families makes us think that love equals violence. It also teaches us to block out pain, repress our emotions, and trust no one in authority. Sports nurture a warrior mentality. Then there are romantic and misleading stories about war; and endless movies that romanticize and glorify it. At the end of my Vietnam tour in just 48-hours I went from intense combat to walking across Newark airport to board a plan for home. The first thing that happened to me at the airport was that a pretty young woman spat in my face. At ome, I found myself unable to socialize or reintegrate back into society. People were not interested in helping me and other soldiers like me to reenter society. We were kept at a distance, emotionally, psychologically, even physically. When I wanted to talk about the war, I was told "to get over it," and "get on with my life." There is a "culture of denial" wherever violence and war are practiced. In 1969 or 1970 I went to Washington, DC with other soldiers who had fought in Vietnam. We handcuffed ourselves to the fence around the White House and took our war medals and threw them over the fence. The police came and beat us. This is the insanity of war, of violence. These were the very same people I had fought for. These were the people for whom I offered up my life. "Society teaches us that suffering is our enemy. We are constantly encouraged to reject what is unpleasant, isappointing, or difficult." We are conditioned to avoid our unpleasant emotions like fear, anxiety, regret, anger. To avoid our traumas; our suffering. But to be able to visit these hells in ourself and others we need the tools of mindful sitting and walking, awareness of the breath, deep listening, and compassionate speech. And a group or community of like-minded practitioners to help and support us as we explore and understand the nature of these hells. We need others to listen to our pain and to help us hold it so it can be transformed. Watering the good seeds in our consciousness----our joy, the wonders around us, our happinesses----is also necessary. The selective watering of these seeds help makes us calm, peaceful, and stable, so we are strong enough to visit hell, and not burned up by its fires. Once free of alcohol and other intoxicants, I was able see how they anesthetized my pain, which continued to rip and tear inside me. And how I was trapped in a prison of self, guilt, remorse, anxiety, and fear. "Physically and emotionally, I was under siege, bunkered in." At my first retreat for Vietnam Veterans Thich Nhat Hanh said: "You veterans are the light at the tip of the candle. You burn hot and bright. You understand deeply the nature of suffering." The only way to transform suffering is to stand face-to-face with it, to realize the intimate details of suffering and how your life in the present moment is affected by it. Talk about your experiences. You deserved to be listened to, deserved to be understood. You are a powerful force for healing in the world. Nonveterans are more responsible for the war than veterans he said. Because of the interbeing interconnectiveness of all things there is no escape from responsibility. The lifestyle of the nonveterans support the institutions of war. Nonveterans sanction war, support and wage it. When you are no long fit to fight, they don't want you anymore. And when you return home they turn their backs in an effort to avoid their own complicity in the war. It was the same for the veterans of the Persian Gulf War with their Gulf War syndrome. There was collective denial for the consequences of this war. Most nonveterans just do not realize their responsibility for war or how deeply they are affected by it. The use of war to end conflict and violence has never worked. History has shown that violence leads to more violence. The argument that in certain circumstances killing is necessary to prevent killing is a very dangerous one. It can be used to justify almost anything. For, examples, preemptive strikes, the death penalty, the current occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the agenda of the Fascists and Nazis (National Socialist German Workers Party) in Europe at the time of World War II. Industrialized mass killing comes from a fear-based philosophy that seeks safety by attempting the impossible: "to control everything and everyone around us." It is also driven by unhealed, unaddressed suffering. War is also both a myth and a narcotic supporting each other. And the nature of addiction is to lie and manipulate everyone and everything, such that the lies and manipulations become seen as the truth. As part of my practice and my service to others, as well as to know myself and others better I have gone on pilgrimages. Pilgrimages are not very common in the United States as they are in Europe and Asia. On a pilgrimage from New York City to California the police stopped us most often in the state of Ohio. People were constantly calling the police to report people walking on the road. The police also question us many times in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. I also found that in the US and elsewhere that the more affluent people are, the less they give; and the less people have, the more generous they are. On another pilgrimage I visited the World War II concentration slave labor camps and killing places of Europe. What I found is that the Holocaust can repeat itself, because each of us, under certain circumstances, could act with the same kind of horrendous cruelty. Each of us has the potential to become the persecutor or the victim. Each of us can become numb and deny the exploitation, abuses, violence, and atrocities committed at these camps [or in other situations], because each of us is capable of separating ourself from the other. This separation from the other allows us to abuse and kill them. This separation is at the heart of racism, discrimination, self-righteousness, or the abusive arrogance of power. [Wherever there is a perception of superiority, is there arrogance, aggression, violence? It does appear to be the case.] It is dangerous too to think we are not living in forgetfulness when we are. If we believe we are mindfully aware of our suffering and not controlled by it, when actually just the opposite is the case, we are living in a delusion. And without specific awareness of the intimate nature of our suffering, healing and transformation are not possible, and we continue to re-create that suffering and infect others with it. Remaining silent and denying the aggression, violence, and war that is part of our nature and culture makes certain that they will continue and grow. We are conditioned to think we are different from the homeless, drug addicts, the murderers, child molesters, executioner, but we are not different. We may not be any of them, but if we live without mindfulness awareness of what we are thinking and doing we could become like anyone of them rather quickly. We each are responsible for the manifestions of violence and war in the world. It could be the death and destruction of military forces, gun violence (which kills 29,000 to 40,000 Americans each year), domestic violence, the drug war, wars against the poor and criminals. If we don't speak up or live differently while these wars are raging, we share responsibility for them. Speaking up and living differently starts with our own internal wars inside ourselves. From there we can move on to helping family members, friends, and other to work on ending their own internal wars. We can help others become aware individually and collectively about their direct and indirect participation in and support of the violence that is all around us. Living differently means to live mindfully, to breathe mindfully; and to help others to do the same. Nonviolence begins with knowing we can act aggressively and violently, and making a conscious choice not to. It is not succumbing to our conditioning actively or passively to support violence as an effective form of conflict resolution. It means strongly standing up for truth and compassion in the midst of confrontation----and doing so without aggression. There is little difference between feelings of aggression, violence and war wherever they appear. For example, with road rage there are the unfriendly aggressive words spoken and hand gestures which can and often do leave to violence and war. It would be wiser to use this rage and aggressive as a bell of mindfulness not to react aggressively, but to stop, breathe, and be aware of what is actually going on. Mindful conscious awareness to what is thought, said, felt, and perceived is a way of living. It is to live completely in the present moment. It is to wake up and to let go of our pain and suffering and their destructiveness. The best tool to being mindful is awareness of the breath. If you are aware of your breathing with full concentration you are in the present moment completely. Your mind cannot be in the past or future. Concentrated awareness of the breath brings a state of consciousness that allows non-judgmental awareness of whatever arise in the mind-body. This allows our pain and suffering to be held and transformed. Living mindfully in the present moment with whatever is present allows us to live peacefully with our non-peacefullness. This is very healing. Healing is also learning how to live in relationship with pain. If we do not recognize, hold, and examine our suffering, our strong emotions, without judgment, attachment or aversion, so healing and transformation is possible, they will control everything in our life. "If I am living in mindfulness, if I can look deeply into the nature of myself and touch my suffering. I can learn to live with my fear, my doubts, my insecurity, my confusion, my anger. My task is to dwell in these places like still water, as Sister Chan Khong told me during my first visit to Plum Village." To remember to be aware of the breath various bells of mindfulness can be used. The sound of a bell or a car horn, a red traffic light, a telephone ring, a homeless person, the pain of regrets, anxieties, fears, shame, depression, aloneness, aggression. Each can remind us to return to our breath; to be completely aware of breathing in and breathing out. To support your mindfulness practice, mindful sitting and walking meditation are very helpful, if not necessary. Thich Nhat Hanh tells us: "Just practice. Because when you walk, you walk for all those who have ever been abused, exploited, terrorized, crippled, maimed, or killed under any circumstances. When you walk, you walk for all veterans. When you sit [in meditation], you sit for all veterans. So you wake up, and as you heal, you heal them in you." "But I'm not special, you know. You can do this, too. You can face your own sorrow, your own wounds. You can stop wanting some other life, some other past, some other reality. You can stop fighting against the truth of yourself, and breathing in and breathing out, open to your own experience. You can just feel whatever is there, exploring it, until you also discover the liberation that comes with stopping the struggle and becoming full present in your own life. This is the real path to peace and freedom. You could do this for yourself; you could do this for your family. Our whole world will benefit." ******************************************** Claude Anshin Thomas established the Zaltho Foundation, Inc., a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit, committed to ending violence by supporting projects in schools, communities, and organizations, and among families, veterans, war victims, prisoners, the homeless, addicts, prostitutes, refugees; pilgrimages, public talks, and retreats. The Foundation runs the residential and retreat Magnolia Zen Center in Mary Ester, Florida. Claude Anshin can be reached at: The Zaltho Foundation, Inc. P.M.B. Box 312, 60 Thoreau St, Concord, MA, 01742; tel: 978-369-4342; fax: 978-263-9051; email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; website: www.zaltho.org Magnolia Zen Center, 9 Magnolia Drive, Mary Ester, Florida, 32569; tel: 978-243-8169 ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Would you Help a Child in need? It is easier than you think. 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