Be the Cause

If you have a minute, let me share with you an experience I had in Vietnam in 1967 that came back to me during Saturday’s enormous Peace March in San Francisco.

I dropped out of school in ’64 and was soon called up by Selective Service. The year before Tonkin Resolution they weren’t as aggressive in taking people, so I got a 4-F rating for health issues that might not have kept me out of service the next year.

But wanting to see what it was all about, I got seaman’s papers and shipped out to Vietnam as a civilian in the Merchant Marine.

I became friends with the chief engineer – not much older than me but a very experienced world traveler. One evening in the port of Qui Nhon, about halfway between Saigon and the DMZ, he invited me to join him and visit a local sight. We ambled through the town and out into the countryside on a beautiful summer evening. You would never know this was a war zone.

We got to the place he wanted to see; a Buddhist temple. He went in, lit a joss stick and placed it before the Buddha with reverence. Then he handed me his matchbox. I was shocked. “No way! I’m not praying to a false god. Let’s get out of here,” I said.

He began to explain to me that the Buddha is not a god, but a mortal who was fully aware. “Aware of what?” I asked. “That’s what we’re here to find out,” he said.

I figured I’d have a hard time explaining this to St. Peter when my time came. As we debated, a short man with a shaved head and saffron robe came into the temple. He spoke flawless English, welcomed us and invited us to join him and his fellow monks for tea.

We followed the monk-who-spoke-English into the dining room of the multi-building complex. As he went off to prepare the tea, the room filled with a dozen other men whose saffron robes shimmered against the pale blue wall with a hallucinogenic intensity. My friend told me these were businessmen and family men who take a year off to devote to the Buddha; none of them spoke English.

After the tea was served, the monk-who-spoke-English leaned across the table and said to my mate and me, with an intensity belying his meek demeanor, “The Christ and the Buddha teach the same thing: that all men are brothers.”

Suddenly the room was ripped with a violent wave like a combination earthquake and tornado. An enormous rush of wind, leaves and dirt blew into the room from the courtyard outside. I got up and looked out the door to see an Army helicopter emptying its machine gun into the bushes along a nearby wall. Figuring someone has seen Vietcong in the area, I turned back to the room and yelled above the downwash to the monks seated at the long table, “There’s enemy activity outside!”

The monk-who-spoke-English had a different take on what I’d just said. “Yes, there is,” he replied. “And they do this to us every night.”

“No!” I shouted at the monk. “These are Americans. We don’t do that.”

I went outside and, foolishly, stood only a few yards from the bushes that were convulsing from the fusillade they were absorbing. I looked up into the helicopter and felt a wave of nausea. I recognized the pilot. Not literally, but I knew him. He was me. An earnest, clean-cut young guy who ten years before had worn a coonskin cap, and five years before donned a white sport coat and a pink carnation. And now he felt he had an honorable mission, playing havoc with the heathens every night at teatime.

I came back into the room, and the monks looked at me as if in sympathy for what they knew I was going through. The monk-who-spoke-English got up, came over to me and touched my shoulder, “It is best if you leave now.” And he led us out a different way through the compound, down a long dark corridor to a door. He opened it and the street light that entered showed a face both serene and tormented. He looked at my mate and me and said again, “The Christ and the
Buddha teach the same thing: we must be kind to each other.”

We stepped through the door and were back in town, with the blare of a thousand Honda scooters; the passing women in their ao dais; the men going about their business as merchants or saboteurs; who knew?

I recalled this last Saturday, because I hope none of our children or grandchildren ever faces such violence directed at them. And I hope, too, that none of our children and grandchildren is ever in such circumstances that they rain fury like that on innocent men and women.

Our institutions are failing us – Bernie Ebbers, Bernard Law, Bill Clinton and so many other institutional leaders are badly in need of moral compass implants. More and more it seems that it’s only as individuals and small communities that we can keep alive the honorable part of the tradition we were educated in – of reason over rage; civility over salaciousness; magnanimity over mendacity.

We may not quite be Gandalf or Dumbledore, but we are becoming the greybeards of a society in deep trouble, and with the skills at our disposal we need to leverage our collective energy and be heard. We’ve all come a long way, and each in our own way paid our dues, to gain a much deeper understanding of the angel’s words we heard fifty years ago at the Christmas pageant in second grade, “Peace on Earth!”

-Tom Mahon – www.reconnecting.com

BTW, one of the Vietnamese monks of that generation has since become a world figure. His name is Thich Nhat Hanh. His book, ‘Living Buddha, Living Christ’ (Riverhead Books, 1995) is an eloquent expansion of the message of the monk-who-spoke-English that long-ago night.

I was hovering around the Indian classical music section at some South Asian music store in Artesia. Browsing through the titles, I sensed the irony in my search for traditional, time ridden, classical compositions while some recent Bollywood hit for the week was resonating loudly throughout the store. Of course, the Bollywood song was rather catchy, so I hummed along, being the fickle fool that I am. After a couple of minutes of searching and humming, a South Asian individual approached me.

“Have we met before?” mentioned this individual in a slight South Asian accent.

“No I don’t think so,” I replied hastily, as my mind adjusted to this unexpected circumstance.

“Oh, but you look very familiar. I think I’ve seen you work at USC,” he said.

“Well, I don’t have a job, so I’m pretty sure we haven’t met,” I said laughingly.

After the usual exchange of pleasantries such as our names, where we were from, what we were doing with our lives, his wife and kids, etc., he gave me his business card and mentioned we should get together at the Hare Krishna temple located near my apartment. And then it came. The underlying motive for our meeting.

Quixtar

I have heard of this marketing ploy before. One phrase – E-commerce gimmick. Essentially, one joins the company and initiates a website to sell every-day household products to consumers through an online distribution format. But even more than this, the real emphasis is on inducing as many individuals as possible to do the same exact thing, so the originator can make a percentage of the others’ profits. Bottom line: big bucks through the manipulation of people.

There was no way I was going to do this bullshit. But you know what, what the heck, I don’t have a job and I need something to do. I told him that I wasn’t going to join but I’d attend the seminar. He probably presumed that I would be sold on my listening to the speaker. Everybody was entitled to their own opinion. Besides, I was getting tired of reading as much as I was and I had an insatiable desire to challenge myself mentally in an another regard. The way I saw it, it was a great test to see if I could deceive people from recognizing how much of an idiot I really was.

On the day of the seminar, I was sitting towards the front of the stage at the end of the third row. I was shocked to see that there were over a hundred individuals attending this seminar. My mind wandered to some forsaken space of the now forgotten. Interrupted, I saw the main speaker approaching the stage and he began his marketing pitch right away. I had heard all of this before stuff about starting your own business, making a lot of money to buy expensive cars and houses, buying yourself time to play golf and spend time with your family. How money will alleviate all your worries.

Money

I don’t remember much of the sales speech because my mind was on the individuals listening. I surveyed the room around me. What was attracting these people to desire such excess monetary income? To support oneself and to provide for a family are valid reasons I suppose. But more than that? Everybody’s eyes shot wide open when the speaker relayed all the stereotypical fantasies of expensive cars and households. I really wanted to figure this out.

Perhaps it was this need to attain a higher status symbol instilled by society and culture around us. A sense of ego I’m sure, must play a part as individuals try to ascertain heaps of wealth to feel “superior” to those around them. Alternatively, is it this desire to feel accepted by those individuals around them? Having multitudes of spare time on my hand, the book situated on my “desk” (miniscule plastic filing cabinet) recently was Ian Suttie’s, “The Origins of Love and Hate.” The book was a psychoanalytic one in nature, refuting the basic precepts of Sigmund Freud’s theories regarding the emphasis on individualistic egos and sexual instincts. In the book, one observation by Suttie revolves around the harmonious exchange between the mother and infant as the mother loves the infant unconditionally and the infant, who thus far is incapable of developing a sense of self and is born into this world as a dependent, shares similar sentiments with the mother. Fundamentally, the ideas of give and take, and therefore greed and expectations, are indistinguishable in this nurturing interaction. Suttie provides the argument that our aim throughout life is to re-discover this harmonious exchange, be it with friends, the opposite sex or the people around us. Moreover, he feels that this world’s jealousy, anger, hatred and fear, all derive from a “separation-anxiety” related to failed attempts at gaining this relationship of compassion. More along the lines of the seminar I was attending, Suttie writes:

“…It is possible that we seek to influence, impress or please other people for the sake of demonstrating to ourselves that we are loved. In other words we seek power as a means to love (through neurotic anxiety), not as a means to power.”

Gain power to receive love. The theory makes plenty of sense I figured. It definitely identifies the root source of people’s frustrations with anger, fear and hatred. Additionally, it also pinpoints people’s efforts to attain a superficial sense of compassion through a dependency on alcohol, drugs, sex, etc. It definitely made quite a bit of sense in my present situation with all these individuals gawking at the dreams of earning big money. I was thinking too much. I figured the hell with it. Whatever makes these people happy. It wasn’t like I was perfect or anything.

I took another glance around me. This time I contemplated over how every single one of us was trying to make it through this world. This gift called life. Every single one of us had an alternate view of how the world works around them. Every single one of us had their own philosophy as to why things are the way they are. I imagined to myself that I could probably learn a lot from these individuals’ experiences and perspectives. But then, reality kicked in, and I realized that this was not the kind of social situation to be asking such clichéd questions as, “What is the meaning of life?” and/or “Do you believe in God?” Oh well. I decided to contemplate about something else.

I thought about the guy who invited me to this seminar. Talk about an enormous disconnect in my dialogue with this guy. I had met his family and I was thinking to myself how amazing it was for this man and his wife to be working so hard to provide for their five year old daughter and their soon to be born son. I had mentioned to the guy that his family was lucky to have a good father/husband, communicating to him a lot of situations of abuse and homelessness I had come across in my minimal endeavors in the community service arena. Of course, his thoughts of me were embracing the perception of how much money this guy could pull in to my bank account? Whatever. I guess he has to provide for his family.

The speaker completed his pitch. Subsequently, “successful” individuals (the people pulling in a lot of cash) who had reached “platinum” or above were presented to the onlookers. They all mentioned their names/occupations and how Quixtar changed their lives. In my simplistic mind, the entire seminar proceeded in this manner:

Do these things so you can be rich.

Do these things so you can spend more time on vacations.

Do these things so you can influence over a lot of people by making them buy stuff they really don’t need.

Do these things so you can be part of the “in” group.

This was like a damn cult. It was all good. As long as they don’t keep pestering me to join their little “club”, it didn’t matter.

Leaving the seminar after saying a few good-byes, I thought to myself that I should really start getting busy again. Maybe I should look for a job.

Ha.

— H