| AMIDA TRUST | |
Occasional paper ELEVENTH SEPTEMBER 2001 by Dharmavidya David Brazier |
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When the news broke about the attack upon the World Trade Building and the Pentagon, Modgala and I were outside the Excel Exhibition Centre in London protesting, along with 1000 other people, against the export of armaments by Britain, the USA and other Western countries. It felt disturbingly like a complete circle. Buddhist enlightenment means understanding such circles. What goes around comes around. Exporting death to all parts of the planet is sure to come home sooner or later. The events in America are tragic. When one group of humans deliberately attacks another in a way calculated to kill thousands, we all grieve. As Buddhists, we must also strive to understand the turning wheel. The USA armed the Taliban, armed Iraq, and armed Pakistan. We also see everyday children killed in the middle east with bullets marked “made in the USA”. When people plunge to their deaths from burning buildings or their lives are wrecked by the deaths of their loved ones, we all experience a wrenching agony inside imagining their fate. I have felt it myself listening to friends in Sarajevo. This is how the Palestinians feel when American rockets fired by Israelis explode in their homes and schools. As Westerners we have got to learn a measure of objectivity and even handedness if we are to view the world with enlightened eyes. Unless we learn to do so we will just keep on turning the wheel of sharp weopons and, most assuredly, it will come round. It is no good calling our own dead “casualties” and other people's dead “collateral damage”. It is no good living in a world of humbug. Our media and politicians called our own pilots heroes when they flew bombing raids over Yugoslavia flying at enormous altitude in order to avoid risk to themselves and consequently missing most of their targets and killing thousands of civilians. Now we call militants who attack us cowards when they give their lives in what they (totally mistakenly, from a Buddhist perspective) believe to be the cause of God and freedom. These people were not cowards and they were not mindless. They were cruel, but we have to understand the soil from which their anger grew. It is soil sewn with depleted uranium munitions scattered around the world by Britain and the USA and Russia. It is soil sewn with the sanctions that have killed at least half a million innocent children in Iraq. There is no shortage of angry young people in the Middle East. What condition underpins their anger? In many cases it is the memory of their dead relatives killed by “us”. The wheel turns. What will happen now? In all probability NATO will focus upon punishment. This may turn out to be brutal or it may be carefuly considered. On past form there is likely to be some terrible action somewhere in the world and, of course, many individuals will be arrested and put through harrowing interrogations. Again on past form it is likely that innocent people will be convicted - this has certainly happened repeatedly in Britain in the aftermath of guerrilla attacks. As Buddhists we should deplore the injustices that will follow as much as those already committed. If there is major military action we should resist the rhetoric of politicians who assume that their own system embodies justice and freedom and therefore they are immune to charges of injustice and oppression themselves. If there are attacks on countries in the Middle East or elsewhere, how many more innocent people are going to be killed? Does anybody care? The papers will call the innocent who die “collateral damage”. A year or so later it will probably come out that the target was the wrong one altogether anyway, but by then it will be too late. Let us hope this is not what happens, but on past form it is a likely scenario. We live in a dangerous world full of greed and hate. Above all it is a world of delusions. No delusion is more dangerous than a smug self-righteaous belief in one's own righteousness. The wheel turns. The mighty are reluctant to believe that they are as vulnerable as everybody else, but, as Buddhists, we know that everything is subject to changeableness and the mighty fall as swiftly as anybody else when the conditions shift. In fact, the emphasis upon punishment that currently dominates debate distracts attention from understanding the conditions from which these events have sprung and from our own part in the making of those conditions, but as Buddhists our analysis should be more painstaking. Amida protested against the arms trade fair and we will go on protesting against violence and terror whether it is spread by our own country or any other, by little groups of god-fearing fanatics or by the military-industrial complex of the rich and powerful. Violence is not the Buddhist way because the wheel turns. All these issues are actively discussed within Amida Trust which has no “party line” but is open to all who are inspired by the principles of enlightenment and who have a will to work together for a better world.
Dh.D.J. Brazier |