The moment I posted the last blogpost about donating to the SF Zen Center Touching the Earth Sit-a-Thon and Run for Our Sons/Parent Project MD to end Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, two bombs were set off at the Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts on Patriot's Day this past Monday. How can I be considering asking for money for these causes I strongly believe in when there is an immediate, massive tragedy brought on by human violence? How do any of us make sense of this horrific occurrence? Not only that it occurred, but that we as human beings would have the physical and emotional ability to destroy and devastate so tangibly and psychologically. It makes no sense to me.
As much as I have difficulty with people and situations and I feel the emotions of anger and hurt, I find that these feelings are so unpleasant and uncomfortable that I would not want others, my fellow human beings, to spend any/as much/more time feeling them. This life is difficult enough. There is no need to impose more suffering. In fact, wouldn't it be better for all of us if we all did our share to alleviate some of the suffering? Like it or not, this is where we are, riding this earth together. It reminds me of a quote I was asked to memorize in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade for an assembly about the earth. Archibald MacLeish, the author of the quote, was writing about the first images of the earth taken from space:
"To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold -- brothers who know now they are truly brothers."
I just looked this quote up, and found it was the closing to a larger piece. It seems to me MacLeish's heart and sentiments are that of a Buddha here. Please consider his words. http://cecelia.physics.indiana.edu/life/moon/Apollo8/122568sci-nasa-macleish.html
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