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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 12/2/09

Zen and the War on Terror

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It is a sad day for the the world that the delusions of cynics, hatemongers, miltarists and paranoids, as well as the avarice of the merchants of death, have once again carried the day in shaping America's foreign policy. Suddenly we have a new incarnation of "the best and the brightest" who will cleverly figure out, just as well as their previous namesakes in Vietnam did, how to successfully escalate and win yet another war in the hinterlands of Asia, which is to say, there will be no victory at all by wounding and slaying our brothers and our sisters, for how does one win anything at all by harming our Greater Self, which includes the greater body of humankind.

Just as your right hand can at best claim a Pyrrhic victory in chopping off your left hand if you are disjointed and deranged enough that your hands want to stab each other to death, so too is Obama's rush to "finish the job" in Afghanistan going to leave us all with a bloody stump and vast hemorrhaging.

Many of you may have difficulty grasping what I am saying, but it is based on Buddhist perspective, a perspective that dissolves the illusion of duality and duality's agent of cloaking Reality, the everyday ego, which is often reinforced in its ignorance even more by the collective ego, when the later is absorbed with archetypes and stereotypes that reinforce blindness.

Feeling that Buddhism can help us out of this labyrinth of darkness, loathing and fear that the world is trapped in right now, I wrote a poem a while back that attempts to see the War on Terror though the lens of Zen Buddhism. Tonight, after Obama's benighted speech, I thought it would be quite appropriate to dust it off and post it, so here it is:

(It is best to view this poem in printer-friendly mode, where it is not spread out over 5 pages. It is difficult to format poems with the editing controls.)

Zen and the War on Terror

by Mac McKinney

Embracing fear, we deepen illusion,

turning from the Dharma.

***

Obsessing death, we cling to ego,

impaled upon the Wheel.

***

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I am a student of history, religion, exoteric and esoteric, the Humanities in general and a tempered advocate for the ultimate manifestation of peace, justice and the unity of humankind through self-realization and mutual respect, although I am not (more...)
 
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