This will be an odd post. In order to understand what I’m attempting to convey the reader will have to sit with this for a bit. The contents of the post will be all over the place as I’ve connected some dots for myself this morning. For the reader to make an instant judgment is to know you haven’t taken the time to consider an out of the box perspective.
I watched a video this morning. I will share it with you towards the bottom of this post. I was watching the video through my, now one year old, pock marked, blood stained, conditioned perceptual lens. - “Two dirty, aged and exhausted children in Gaza. Here we go again. The world is just so fucked up.”
And then a suprising moment of purity. Of clarity that cut my heart open revealing a beauty I hadn’t experienced in a very long time leading to tears of a different kind. Not tears of sorrow. Odd as that sounds, considering the slaughter in Gaza.
One second it was this and the next second it was that.
Buddha speaks of these moments of, “ah ha”. This is like this. Because that is like that. The first time I read that Buddhist teaching my mind went to, ‘What a bunch of crap.” But then I contemplated this for quite a while, was led to the Heart Sutra and a place of understanding.
I’m going to first share with you the words of Colonel Kursk, Apocalypse Now. The following soliloquy is disturbing and I remember thinking when I first saw the movie that the writer and director of this film had just lost it. But you see … we judge events through our own perceptual lens and/or stage of readiness instead of taking the time to deeply consider other perspectives. Other revelations. Attempt to wear the lens of Kursk’s ‘Diamond Bullet.’ Don’t judge your self or your THOUGHT …. just try to find what is the pure crystal clear diamond bullet of which he speaks?
Become Kursk, but more than that, become the Kursk who moved from his ethnocentricity and narcissism and hubris to pure understanding. Crystal Clear understanding. Don’t judge the behavior and the outcome of the behavior of the Vietcong Soldiers … consider the REASONING and the clarity of motivation behind their actions.
“ We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there and they (the Vietcong) had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God… the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment. Because it’s judgment that defeats us.”
So this video. I began to watch the video through my lens of guilt, shame and expectation. Expectation of horror. The faces of the children. My thoughts about their lives. And then an event took place that changed everything.
A diamond bullet right through my forehead.
I was shaking with tears. But tears of what? Wasn’t sorrow. Wasn’t horror. A release of fear?
But after a time of contemplation I got it. The Diamond Bulllet. It took the horror of a massacre to create this moment of beauty. Tears. It was the simplicity of an act of kindness against the backdrop of unkindness I will never ever know. Tears. It was the expression of love …between and among a stranger and then a brother and a sister.
I ENVIED the purity of their love. Gaza has transformed their love into a purity. A diamond bullet.
Told you this would sound crazy. I’m excited about hearing what you all have to say. Please comment. Please comment. Beauty in War.
Tears because, a brother and a sister experienced a moment of pure love like I’ve never experienced. They may be massacred tomorrow. But … that existential moment in time healed hundreds of people.
I’m making sense maybe only to myself.
Love. All you need is love.
Tom
That you have received this "diamond bullet" is evidence to me that my prayers for you have been answered, and in a manner that exceeds my wishes. Am I making sense maybe only to myself? All is Love, and Love as a One, has no opposite! This is often difficult to see. And now, we all have a glimpse - Thanks to your sharing this with us. Pilamayayelo!
Thank you for piecing your thoughts together and sharing them here. Beautifully put.