Unknown. Unremembered. Unnamed.
Victorious
Grim Veteran
When confronted with the dramatic instances of death and catastrophy. My thoughts turn to these beings. Those that suffered and died Unknown Unremembered Unnamed.
When 9/11 happened there was 3 min of silence for the victims in Stockholm.
I refused to participate.
Because I am always mindful of peoples suffering no matter what condition under which they suffer and if I would have to hold a silent minute for each time something horrible happens I would get nothing done.
I mean 5000 people died in 9/11. That is just a tiny fragment of people dying every day in the world Unknown. Unremembered. Unnamed. Some of them under terrible duress. Why would I care less for them?
And is the suffering of even one of these beings less valuable that the collective suffering of 5000 individuals? How to weigh that? And when considering this our thought never once consider all the animal kingdom and what happens there. Is their suffering less valuable, less considerable?
Generally speaking. This is how most of us are born, live our lives, enjoy and suffer and finally die to most other beings. Unknown. Unremembered. Unnamed.
It is nothing new, nothing spectacular, nothing sad. Just how things are. This is to see the world as it truly is.
Peace!
/Victor
Comments
Well said, Victor.
Well said, but to be fair, the number of people who died on 9/11@ the WTC, etc. were just under 3000 souls.
In the case of 9/11 we know their names. We know who they are. We remember them. I think that makes it saddder than if they were annonymous. They have faces. Families. Children. Mothers. And we know who they are, too. From there the sadness extends to a city, a state, a nation, the world. And we may, if we have an awakened heart, find compassion that extends equally to the sadness.
Even Avalokiteshvara wept over the suffering of beings. He reacted. He acknowledged. And from the tears he shed for beings without number, came the embodiment of wisdom.
I think my point is that this is an elephant that we can never kill. But helping one of these beings does not mean that the others are forgotten or put down. Showing compassion to the ones we can help does not mean that we lack compassion for the rest.
/Victor
9/11 is but one of many historical atrocities. Cambodian killing fields numbered far more than this but I didn't even learn of this in school? Isn't history there to map how we progress into the future?
I don't think anybody can change the world, I think if we help ourselves then this can create a ripple effect. We all have to die and time is just a human concept.
All we can do is our best, help yourself to help others
I find your telling of not being taught about Cambodia's killing fields to be appalling.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, they say.
I'd also say that if you don't know your history, you'll never understand the present. Nothing occurs in a vacuum. 9/11 happened because of a sequence of historical events. The killing fields of Cambodia happened for reasons strecthing back decades before the actual events.
If we understand something we're better equiped to find compassion.
"Recent history" is often given little "face time" in public school history classes. Varies a great deal by teacher. To some extent it is an issue of not culling "more historical" history occasionally to give time to newer issues.
Not saying it's "good", just saying it "is".
"Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it"
Hmm even in the 21st century with 21000 years of history it still repeats. It's all subjective.
21000? Try 210000 years... in the least and maybe even 1 million years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution
How is anyone supposed to remember? We will repeat history. This is Samsara after all.
/Victor
The world has always (and probably always will be) full of tragedies, but what is even sadder, imo, is the effect this sometimes has on people. 9/11 happened in my senior year of high school, so I've come into adulthood in a pretty racist hate-filled America. (Representing small town Midwestern America here.) Racism isn't anything new, but most educated individuals now acknowledge that it is wrong. Our government now acknowledges that it is wrong, at least legally. But at that time, it seemed almost heretical to suggest that Muslims could be people and that we shouldn't just bomb them to smithereens. There was so much emphasis on our loss, that people lost rationality and a turban became the new face of evil. This cropped up again for me a few years back when we finally found Osama Bin Laden. I couldn't celebrate... I just couldn't, but that seemed to be what most of America was doing. My only joy came from hoping that it would end the war, but not in his loss of life, no matter what his crimes. I feel like this was the ultimate teaching from 9/11 for me.
-MLK Jr.
Victorious said:
About the most succinctly put sound byte that accounts for everything I've heard in a long while
Unfortunately it's not.
People, countries write history to put themselves on the right side of history.