Memory and Kindness

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies.
My brain and my heart are my temples.

-Dalai Lama

I learned the other day that Leonard Cohen lost his rights to Suzanne
back when it was first recorded. His most famous song, a very personal
song combining the erotic and the holy, and it never made him a dime.
I read a comment he made a couple years ago, when the shadow of 9-11
was first sweeping over us, where he said something about how insane
it is that, given the condition of the world and America in particular,
people continue to go about defining - and dividing - themselves as
either liberal or conservative.

In Cambodia in April, the 30th anniversary of Pol Pot´s overtaking of
the country, a gathering of people walked together before sunrise out
into the killing fields to observe a silence among the mass graves. Over
two million Cambodians were killed, many by the children Pol Pot had
so completely enslaved for participation in this duty. For a long time,
the 17th of April was known as the Day of Hate in Cambodia. Now, with
those surviving children grown into adults and some healing nascent,
it is called the Day of Memory. My son stood in those fields, among the
skulls, last fall; he was very quiet while remembering the experience
for me, sighs taking the place of the words he couldn´t yet find.

I am wary of conviction. I know it has its place, and can be powerful,
but how it is manifested is what troubles me. My uncle, Bill, once said
there is nobody more dangerous than a man who is convinced beyond
a doubt that he is right. I was asking him about war when he said it. He
was in the navy during World War II, and was referring to Hitler. That
his words could be applied to any number of leaders and extremists
since is more than a little chilling.

In my own life, and in my writing as well, I have searched for a way to be
spiritual without conviction. Is it possible? The search has meant a lot of
traveling, inside and out, for few are the places of worship where spirit
is not named and claimed and neatly framed. It can be a lonely search,
much of it made after sundown, but fascinating to the soul. Sometimes I
feel as though I am living my life from beyond the grave, re-entering this
daily life with the melancholy of a man who, upon returning to visit
his hometown for the first time since he was a boy, finds that the people
all speak a foreign language and can understand none of his questions.
That image, recurring as it does even in my nocturnal dreams, appears
to want to name me an outsider. I may be outside of many things, but
I have learned to handle the cold in order to be true.

I have been reading the wisdom of the Dalai Lama, a man who cannot go
home except in dreams. Exile has forced him - he would say allowed him,
I think - to be a student of the world as no prior Dalai Lama has been able
to. He was in Vancouver not long ago. His gospel, if you will, is kindness
and compassion. His temple, as quoted above, is his brain and heart. The
Dalai Lama says kindness is more important than belief, and these words
hum to me. He says, "My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness."
Coming from a man without a family, without a church, without a country,
without a home in the world that he can return to, those few words come
very close to blossoming into tears.

DL