[Oe List ...] Fwd: From a monk in Plum Village....

[PSchrijnen at aol.com]

This is a valuable response to the Newton massacre from one of Sr Chau  
Niems (Kaira Lingo) colleagues, who is from Newton, and now lives in Plum  
Village.
 
Paul
 
Paul Schrijnen
13 Bloemfontein Avenue
London W12 7BJ
+44  7973 206 766
skype: paulus.schrijnen  

 

Saturday, 15th of December, 2012 
Dharma Cloud Temple 
Plum Village 
Dear Adam, 
Let me start by saying that I wish for you to find peace. It would be easy  
just to call you a monster and condemn you for evermore, but I don't think  
that would help either of us. Given what you have done, I realize that 
peace  may not be easy to find. In a fit of rage, delusion and fear�yes, above 
all  else, I think, fear�you thought that killing was a way out. It was 
clearly a  powerful emotion that drove you from your mother's dead body to 
massacre  children and staff of Sandy Hook School and to turn the gun in the end 
on  yourself. You decided that the game was over. 
But the game is not over, though you are dead. You didn't find a way out of 
 your anger and loneliness. You live on in other forms, in the torn 
families  and their despair, in the violation of their trust, in the gaping wound 
in a  community, and in the countless articles and news reports spilling 
across the  country and the world�yes, you live on even in me. I was also a 
young boy who  grew up in Newtown. Now I am a Zen Buddhist monk. I see you quite 
clearly in  me now, continued in the legacy of your actions, and I see that 
in death you  have not become free. 
You know, I used to play soccer on the school field outside the room where  
you died, when I was the age of the children you killed. Our team was the  
Eagles, and we won our division that year. My mom still keeps the trophy  
stashed in a box. To be honest, I was and am not much of a soccer player. I've 
 known winning, but I've also known losing, and being picked last for a 
spot on  the team. I think you've known this too�the pain of rejection, 
isolation and  loneliness. Loneliness too strong to bear. 
You are not alone in feeling this. When loneliness comes up it is so easy  
to seek refuge in a virtual world of computers and films, but do these 
really  help or only increase our isolation? In our drive to be more connected, 
have  we lost our true connection? 
I want to know what you did with your loneliness. Did you ever, like me,  
cope by walking in the forests that cover our town? I know well the slope 
that  cuts from that school to the stream, shrouded by beech and white pine. It 
 makes up the landscape of my mind. I remember well the thrill of heading 
out  alone on a path winding its way�to Treadwell Park! At that time it felt 
like a  magical path, one of many secrets I discovered throughout those 
forests, some  still hidden. Did you ever lean your face on the rough furrows of 
an oak's  bark, feeling its solid heartwood and tranquil vibrancy? Did you 
ever play in  the course of a stream, making pools with the stones as if of 
this stretch you  were king? Did you ever experience the healing, connection 
and peace that  comes with such moments, like I often did? 
Or did your loneliness know only screens, with dancing figures of light at  
the bid of your will? How many false lives have you lived, how many shots  
fired, bombs exploded and lives lost in video games and movies? 
By killing yourself at the age of 20, you never gave yourself the chance to 
 grow up and experience a sense of how life's wonders can bring happiness. 
I  know at your  age I hadn't yet seen how to do this. 
I am 37 now, about the age my teacher, the Buddha, realized there was a way 
 out of suffering. I am not enlightened. This morning, when I heard the 
news,  and read the words of my shocked classmates, within minutes a wave of 
sorrow  arose, and I wept. Then I walked a bit further, into the woods 
skirting our  monastery, and in the wet, winter cold of France, beside the laurel, 
I cried  again. I cried for the children, for the teachers, for their 
families. But I  also cried for you, Adam, because I think that I know you, though 
I know we  have never met. I think that I know the landscape of your mind, 
because it is  the landscape of my mind. 
I don't think you hated those children, or that you even hated your mother. 
 I think you hated your loneliness. 
I cried because I have failed you. I have failed to show you how to cry. I  
have failed to sit and listen to you without judging or reacting. Like many 
of  my peers, I left Newtown at seventeen, brimming with confidence and 
purpose,  with the congratulations of friends and the approbation of my elders. 
I was  one of the many young people who left, and in leaving we left 
others,  including you, just born, behind. In that sense I am a part of the 
culture  that failed you. I didn't know yet what a community was, or that I was a 
part  of one, until I no longer had it, and so desperately needed it. 
I have failed to be one of the ones who could have been there to sit and  
listen to you. I was not there to help you to breathe and become aware of 
your  strong emotions, to help you to see that you are more than just an  
emotion. 
But I am also certain that others in the community cared for you, loved  
you. Did you know it? 
In eighth grade I lived in terror of a classmate and his anger. It was the  
first time I knew aggression. No computer screen or television gave a way 
out,  but my imagination and books. I dreamt myself a great wizard, blasting  
fireballs down the school corridor, so he would fear and respect me. Did 
you  dream like this too? 
The way out of being a victim is not to become the destroyer. No matter how 
 great your loneliness, how heavy your despair, you, like each one of us, 
still  have the capacity to be awake, to be free, to be happy, without being 
the  cause of anyone's sorrow. You didn't know that, or couldn't see that, 
and so  you chose to destroy. We were not skillful enough to help you see a 
way  out. 
With this terrible act you have let us know.  Now I am listening, we  are 
all listening, to you crying out from the hell of your misunderstanding.  You 
are not alone, and you are not gone. And you may not be at peace until we  
can stop all our busyness, our quest for power, money or sex, our lives of  
fear and worry, and really listen to you, Adam, to be a friend, a brother, 
to  you. With a good friend like that your loneliness might not have 
overwhelmed  you. 
But we needed your help too, Adam. You needed to let us know that you were  
suffering, and that is not easy to do. It means overcoming pride, and that  
takes courage and humility. Because you were unable to do this, you have 
left  a heavy legacy for generations to come. If we cannot learn how to 
connect with  you and understand the loneliness, rage and despair you felt�which 
also lie  deep and sometimes hidden within each one of us�not by connecting 
through  Facebook or Twitter or email or telephone, but by really sitting 
with you and  opening our hearts to you, your rage will manifest again in yet 
unforeseen  forms. 
Now we know you are there. You are not random, or an aberration. Let your  
action move us to find a path out of the loneliness within each one of us. I 
 have learned to use awareness of my breath to recognize and transform 
these  overwhelming emotions, but I hope that every man, woman or child does not 
need  to go halfway across the world to become a monk to learn how to do 
this. As a  community we need to sit down and learn how to cherish life, not 
with  gun-checks and security, but by being fully present for one another, by 
being  truly there for one another. For me, this is the way to restore 
harmony to our  communion. 
Douglas Bachman (Br. Phap Luu) 
who grew up at 22 Lake Rd. in Newtown, CT., is a Buddhist monk and student  
of the Vietnamese Zen Master and monk Thich Nhat Hanh. As part of an  
international community, he teaches Applied Ethics and the art of mindful  living 
to students and school teachers. He lives in Plum Village Monastery, in  
Thenac, France.


-- 
Met Hartelijke Groeten,
Namens de Leidse Sangha 
"De Vrije Boeddha" 
Kerngroepleden:
Frans van Zomeren    - 06 - 5324 - 1996
Anne Remijn    - 071 - 576 - 6312
Hans de  Bruijn          - 06 - 2454 - 4881
Peter Quik  - 017 - 251 -  8411
Marian van Zomeren   - 079 - 361 -  5355

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