we must be the change we want to see

September 14, 2001

Today's Starting Pitcher:
There is no baseball today anywhere in the USA.

When my coworkers went out at noontime to attend a service at a nearby Congregational church, I retreated to my cubicle and wrote the word Ahimsa on my white board along with a quote from Ghandi to the effect that we must be the change we want to see. I turned my chair to face the wall and sat. At first I simply paid attention to my breathing zen-style but pretty soon the image of Avalokiteshvara (God of Compassion) popped into my mind so I began to visualize Avalokiteshvara's 1000 arms with an eye in the palm of each hand - the eyes represent the understanding needed for compassion. I sat for about a half hour alternating between the visualization and mindful breathing. When I finished meditating, I posted a copy of a Tibetan Buddhist prayer for preventing war on my cubicle for rest of the day along with some other peace prayers from the Ghandi Institute for Nonviolence.

I'd like to say that after that every tiny glimmer of an angry vengeful thought left me entirely, but that would not be true. Like most people except maybe bodhisattvas, I have to work at compassion and nonviolence. I try to live so as to cause no harm. I try to take action to prevent harm where I can. I try to walk the talk, to be the change I want to see in the world. Perhaps I live it imperfectly. I can always do better. I keep at it.

As the afternoon wore on a few people commented on my naiveté in believing in nonviolence. Being about as competent at arguing big ideas as I am at writing about big feelings, I don't think I changed anybody's mind. I guess I did get across that ahimsa is active nonviolence not just meekly sitting by on the sidelines in the face of evil. But I guess everybody still thinks I'm naive. Heck, I probably am naive but so was Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr. and for that matter Jesus Christ. But that doesn't mean I should give up trying.

Sometimes people who don't know me very well ask how on earth I can care about both piping plovers and cats - or be a birder at all and care about taking care of homeless, abandoned, abused cats. People who know me well never ask that. It flows out of the practice of nonviolence, trying to embody compassion for all beings, trying to be peace, trying to live that motto that hung over the bulletin board in my mother's kitchen when I was growing up: "Do everything with love."

And so I prayed today not just for the victims but for the perpetrators and for those innocent lives yet to be taken in the course of war. And, of course, for every one of us.