Crisis and Suffering
Buddhism accepts everyone, not despite all their differences, but with all their differences.
It is a religion and philosophy seeking awareness, harmony, and peace.
Buddhism does not offend my Christian sensibilities.
Rather, it informs my faith and practices. It gives me another perspective.
One of the foundational tenets of Buddhism is that life is suffering.
Perhaps in poetically beautiful languages such as Sanskrit and Japanese, the word suffering has layers of meaning or universal connotations.
I feel like crisis is more applicable to me in my journey.
I have crises in my life, things I wouldn’t want you to go through, things I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to go through.
But my crises are not worthy of being called suffering. I eat three meals a day. I have a close-knit family. I don’t live under a general threat of violence.
In the last five years, I have typically gone two or three days at a time working, praying, and entertaining myself without leaving my home. Of course, this has led to another crisis.
I believe the worst crisis we have in society is to avoid suffering, to not recognize it, to not be in solidarity with those who truly experience it.
This only makes the suffering that our sisters and brothers experience even worse, and puts us out of touch with our basic humanity.
Crisis
What I call struggle
is a storm which washes
my old self away
I requested a new poem from Patrick, and he sent me his "first attempt at a haibun". Pretty damn good!
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