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
