Later at home watching the war on television I pondered the infinite euphemisms for killing people—national defense, regime change, collateral damage, jihad, just war, pre-emptive war, degradation of enemy forces, freedom fighting, operation liberty, justice—or killing people, killing people, killing people, killing people, killing people, killing people, killing people. The good reason for killing people was that they had killed people, were killing people, or would kill people.
Sometimes it did seem, as critics said, that the Buddhist answer was to ignore it.
Just don't think about it.
Just sit.
Just breathe.
I remembered Harold and Nine Eleven.
"I'm so upset!"
"It doesn't matter," the master had said.
"It matters to me!"
But what could I do to stop it, really, or to respond to it, other than what I was doing? I sat, I practiced, I taught school; and yet at times life was so odd, so surreal, so bizarre—the horrors of this ugly war playing on TV while my mother and I shared a light lunch, chatted of family matters, switched the channel to the golf tournament, prepared to feast later at Red Lobster—a nightmare so terrible that there remained moments still when I felt that the proper response to this world of killing would be to scream and to scream and to keep on screaming or, like Niobe, to weep and to weep and to keep on weeping or to pray and to pray and to keep on praying in constant prayer; but then reason returned. Screaming, crying, praying, reason asked, what good would any of that do? I answered my own question.
"None," I told the master in my journal.
Nada.
"It might," he responded. "Who knows?"
I laughed.
Time passed—
Between student papers I watched TV news of the war.
One American military commander in Iraq remarked in front of the television cameras: "I am amused when I hear reporters say that we are softening up the Republican Guard."
He paused for effect.
"We are not softening them up!" he exclaimed. "We are killing them!"
I liked this.
The man was honest.
American soldiers found bodies in bags and cardboard coffins, evidently the remains of persons tortured and executed by Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. U.S. government spokesmen offered these reports as evidence that the president had been correct in waging war against Iraq.
The killing continued.
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When I tired of writing in my journal of my teaching and my students and the war once more I described the sky. On April 7, I had read and marked student papers at my cubicle till 2:00 p.m. and then driven home. I was awed by how beautiful and white everything was. The sky, veiled by a thin layer of clouds, was a pure and brilliant white. The sun, too, was a glowing bright white sphere shining through white clouds. The rectangular roofs of homes and businesses covered with snow were bright pure white geometric planes. The trees were white, their gray trunks, branches, and limbs covered with wet, thick, bright white snow, a pale green tinge of spring foliage shining through the white rime like an eerie aura. The farm fields, too, were pure white, untouched, unstained, perfect white rectangles like the roofs, the yellow sticks, stems, and stalks of the last fall's dead grasses and grains poking up through the bright shining blanket of wet white snow. Everywhere white snow was scintillant and the snow cover and drops of snowmelt twinkled and sparkled like diamonds and white gold in the bright white light. The light and white beauty made me spacy. I felt a tug and a deep strange yearning to surrender to this might and melt and I had to make an extra effort to concentrate on my driving and on the road. In my three rearview mirrors I watched the eastern horizon turn lavender and pink and as I coasted into the school driveway the full orb of the sun rose into a narrow crack between the horizon and the wide bank of dark clouds just above it, an immense and glowing amber ember bleeding bright color throughout the cloudy eastern sky, the radiant orange sphere staining heaven yellow, amber, orange, red, purple, lavender, and pink. I parked, got out, and stood and watched in awe until the enormous dark golden sun lifted completely up from the horizon. I was the first to school. Alone I stood and faced the eastern sky and sun. I raised my hands, palm to palm, in silent prayer, and I silently recited—nonviolence, courage, forbearance, patience, honesty, truth, understanding, generosity, mercy, repentance, forgiveness, kindness, love, and art—and slowly, deliberately, deeply from the waist, three times I bowed to the light. I was sky high. Entering these details in my journal at the close of each day I felt a profound gratitude for consciousness, for the dharma, for the day. May all beings embody the great Way, I wrote, resolving to awaken. The master still seldom commented on my attempts to describe the beauty I witnessed on my drive to and from work. This time the master did.
"Nice, huh?"
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