CxD Special Edition: 3 ways of looking at who is responsible for the Israel-Palestine tragedy 💔

1. Dale Wright, in his book What is Buddhist Enlightenment?, starts by asking us to consider the role of responsibility and blame during an ethical and moral crisis:

Images of Buddhist enlightenment can make their appearance in the least expected places. On April 15, 1991, an unusual op-ed article appeared in the Los Angeles Times titled “We Are the Beaters; We Are the Beaten.” This brief piece by the well-known Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh offers a startling response to the brutal beating of Rodney King by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department earlier that year, witnessed on television by millions of people all over the world. What is startling about this public response is that amidst all the finger-pointing, blaming, and criticizing that filled the press and the minds of the people of Los Angeles at that time, Thich Nhat Hanh was the only one to step forth and take the blame: “I accept responsibility for this travesty,” he appeared to be saying, “and here is what will need to be done to address this severe problem.” Since this Buddhist monk does not even live in Los Angeles, much less the United States, that is a surprising admission.

My question to CxD readers: how much time are we collectively and individually spending thinking in terms of blame, rather than in terms of responsibility?

Who among us can even begin to think in terms of our own responsibility for a horrific crisis that’s not just far away but spans across time, and on a scale far beyond our own?

How instinctually do we blame a “side”?

How uncomfortable does this question make us?

What’s the source of y(our) discomfort or pain or anger when asked to think in terms of responsibility rather than blame?

2. Those who wish to figure out the solution to this humanitarian crisis won’t do so by trying to entangle the infinite historical knots.

Even if one could point to the origins of the conflict and say with certainty— it started here— what followed was centuries and decades and years of blame, vengeance and retribution. History won’t help us. The knot is too bloody and infinitely entangled.

Historical understanding can help, but only if we use it to convince ourselves that blaming some point of origin is futile.

3. Flint Sparks wrote about what it means to work with the edges of what we can handle, here named as horizons. There are three of them:

When one looks out over a vast landscape or the ocean there is the appearance of an “edge” or boundary.  We call this a horizon.  But, a horizon is an illusion, just as perfectibility and self are both illusions.  If the observer moves, the horizon moves.  There is not fixed edge or place that one can approach and finally claim to have reached “the horizon.”  Peter Herschock uses this image to speak of three horizons that are relinquished as we realize freedom from anxiety about non-perfection.

The first horizon is for Readiness.  In an ordinary sense we find ourselves ready for certain things and events in life, and decidedly ill-prepared for others.  As we live our way into freedom we relinquish all horizons for readiness.  Instead, we manifest the potential to respond with something more like, “Ah, now this.”

In addition, we find that as we practice, ready for what comes, we also relinquish horizons for Relevance.  What we habitually and automatically attend to and valorize as important opens further with practice to reveal our unbound interdependence on, and with, all things. Every moment is relevant. Every relationship is an expression of relevance.  There is nothing to discard or dismiss.  We are invited into intimacy with all things, as Dogen suggested. Once again, we find ourselves meeting each moment as, “Yes, this.”

The third horizon that is relinquished with this non-anxiety about non-perfection is the horizon for Responsibility.  If we come to realize that we intimately arise simultaneously with all things, then there is nothing that we can sever from this moment and turn away from.  Sometimes we disconnect from ourselves and others. Sometimes we easily and warmly connect. We develop patterns in our relationships and we can learn to turn toward these habits patterns with Big Mind.  It is not that a separate self could be responsible for everything and everyone.  That would be an impossibility. This is the ordinary burden from which we shrink and the project we face if we believe in perfectibility. However, as the great teacher Uchiyama Roshi said, “...in our daily lives we have to discriminate, but what we must not forget is the fundamental attitude grounding this discrimination: everything we encounter is our life.  This is the attitude of Big Mind.” [From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment: Refining Your Life, edited by Thomas Wright, 1998, p. 47].  Finally, we respond with, “And even this.”

Maybe this is love’s true function.  When we relax our habitual thought patterns and allow our hearts to be touched, what would we reject as unworthy? Wouldn't we, instead, discover that we are naturally ready for what is offered next, and seeing it all as relevant meet it with responsibility? This is profound acceptance beyond self, beyond anxiety about perfectibility.  This is a humble and wholehearted, “Now this.”