Our Suffering Occurs, When We Believe in a Thought That is At Odds With What Was, What Is and What Will Be in the Future’

  

Buddhas Psychology teaches that we are not out thoughts, our bodies, our feelings, our personalities. Who we are is the awareness, compassion and kindness who observes our thoughts, bodies and feelings and behavior.

 

It also teaches that our suffering occurs when we ‘believe in a thought that is at odds with what was, what is and what will be in the future.’ When we suffer because of our inaccurate and or delusional thoughts, others in our family and community can also suffer, as well.

 

I am going to offer four examples of what this looks like in todays’ world:

 

…Vladimir Putin has the idea that he wants to bring back the Soviet Union to its glory days. In order to do this, he has to retake the lands that left the Soviet Union upon its dissolution as a nation state. He is currently attempting to retake the lands in Ukraine. United States intelligence has stated that Russian losses and wounded numbered 315,000. 

 

In the course of Putin’s attempt to restore the Soviet Union, the Office of United Nations Hight Commissioner for Human Rights reports that in the Ukraine there have been 9,614 civilian deaths and 17,535 reported to have been injured as of October 27, 2023. Women, children, hospitals and shelters have been destroyed in addition to homes and communities. It reported that Ukrainian military causalities number 383,000. As of December 2022, the number of Ukrainian military wounded numbered 17,329.

 

One man’s delusional wants have caused such suffering. Again, suffering occurs if we believe in a thought that is at odds with is.

 

…In 2005, Israel left the Gaza Strip, and the political fabric of this area was turned over to the Palestinians to govern. Out of this transfer of power, Hamas emerged as the leading political force. The only difficulty with this political equation is that Hamas is committed to destroying Israel and every Jew on the face of the earth. 

 

On October 7, 2023 Hamas attacked and slaughtered, raped and tortured Jewish citizens. 764 civilians died and 248 persons taken hostage. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu’s determination to destroy all vestiges of Hamas has brought about staggering causalities and destruction of the Gaza strip. Since the October attack, over 22,000 Palestinians have been killed, the majority of whom are children and women. 

 

The nature of Hamas’ way of guerilla warfare is the hide behind women’s skirts and to use children as their protective shields. To eliminate members of Hamas, innocent Palestinians have been and are going to be killed. Homes have been destroyed and much of Gaza looks like a moonscape. Israel has cut off water, electricity, medical support and food to the Gaza Strip. This act alone ensures disease and death for innocent Palestinians. Hospitals have been indiscriminately bombed. 

 

Netanyahu is approaching the destruction of Hamas and an act of killing leadership and foot soldiers, when, instead, Hamas is an ideology that people adopt. History has shown that an ideology does not die by killing those who act it out. 

 

What Netanyahu is doing is planting the seeds of resentment for those who have lost children, wives, husbands, family members and all of their material possession. His starving innocent citizens is only inflaming generations of these victims for decades to come.

 

Again, suffering occurs when we think a thought that is at odds with what is. Netanyahu’s killing people is not going to change the ideology that propels people into killing machines. He is only creating more resentment and hatred toward the people of Israel.

 

…The Mega arm of the United States Congress thinks that their job is to slow down the passage of legislation, to make the Biden Administration look incompetent. Their approach to a do-nothing legislature, allows them to gamble on the government going bankrupt. Their attitude is a caviler ‘it might be a good thing for the United States to go bankrupt.’ 

 

It is as if these folks are clueless about what the net impact will be if the United States Government does not live up to its commitments in relation to other nations throughout the world. Ukraine counts on the United States for weapons and munitions to stand up to Russian aggression. The United States is the grounding force in NATO’s ability to meet threats of aggression from Russia, and from other potentially hostile nations. If a do-nothing Congress fails to act to support these treaties and commitments with our fellow security partners, the United States will lose its creditability on the world stage. It makes it easier for the rest of our partners to feel threatened in ways that they don’t experience with the backing of the United States. And it entices our potential opponents to test the waters to see how far they can go to impose their agendas on the world scene. Again, if we believe in a thought that is at odds with what is, we and all who relate to us will suffer.

 

…And, finally, we cannot believe in delusional thoughts and not suffer. If we did believe in the psychopathic and delusional lies of a Trump, we would destroy our Constitutional Institutions. We would not be a country where all are equally protected under the law.  Instead of an orderly transition of power between administrations, we would have violence tainted efforts to do away with our rights to life, liberty and pursuit of wholeness that are guaranteed under our Bill of Rights. 

 

Our need is to become aware of what we think, what we say and do in our everyday lives. We need to become aware of any reactivity we might have around situations, thoughts, or interactions we might have with others. If we observe any reactivity in our behavior, we need to stop, look and listen to what is going on within us. Anytime we react, we are in touch with an emotional nerve ending that has been touched and we need to become conscious of how that nerve ending is putting us in touch with some area of pain in our lives. Only then, are we able to transcend from reacting to others and be able to respond with awareness in our involvements with others and life itself.

 

Namaste

 

 

 

 

 

Our Need to Enter a Season of Rethinking and Redefining Reality, to Address Today’s Needs.

 Donald Trump is an admixture of an ignorant know-it-all, someone whose thinking process and ability to express himself have become more and more incoherent over the years. His love of hearing his own voice seems more like a self-pleasuring behavior on his part. And then, there is his pretend godfather like speech cadence that attempts to seal his public persona. 

He is also a pathological liar and a sociopath. He will flip the switch on what he says in a heartbeat. He doesn’t give-a-damn about how his words and behavior will impact the needs and feelings of anyone else. Other people’s needs and feeling do not matter to sociopaths. 

He loses an election and calls the Georgia Secretary of State to have him change the vote count of the people of Georgia so that he can win the state. He is also dumb enough to do that bidding over a recorded phone call. He holds on to the belief that he really didn’t lose to Biden because of the ‘corruption’ that was present during the election. He consistently projects what true for him onto others. In truth, his battle with Biden was the most uncorrupted Presidential election in our history

 

He reminds me of the ten-year-old who constantly does things in public that are unpleasant for others to be around. And, when he is called out about his misbehavior, he denies doing what he has done, and when the adult world reinforces their displeasure with his behavior, he cries out about being the victim of others always ‘pick’n on me.’ With Trump he is never the cause of others’ accusations about him, he is always the one who is treated unfairly. His whole idea about being the ‘retribution’ for his and others mistreatment, his identification with Jesus and Nelson Mandela are all about of his sense of being the one who is always treated unfairly and the champion of retribution. 

 

Trump is unable to see the cause-and-effect relationship between what he says and the consequences that follow from what he has said and done. His is a scatter gun approach to saying things and his inability to appreciate the consequences that follow what he might say. He likes tariffs, for example and fails to realize that ultimately a tariff is a tax to be paid by the citizen who is making a purchase. With Tariff’s the price goes up for the customer. The question to be asked is, do we want someone like Trump running our economy. 

 

His faulty reasoning was also on display during the COVID pandemic. In a speech, Trump said that one way to cut back on so many people testing positively for the virus would be to do less testing. His convoluted reasoning was that with less testing there would be fewer individuals who would be shown to be carrying the COVID virus. He lives in a world of make believe. This was during the time that he also suggested that the injecting of bleach might also help those who have come down with the virus. His thinking process has become viewed as limited and quirky. Again, the question to be asked is, do we want someone like Trump to oversee our health care system, or our Social Security, Medicare or any other system that people depend on for sustaining their lives?

 

Trump also has strong biases against those who are not white. He claims that ‘immigrants are poisoning the blood of America.’ His black and Latino prejudice was demonstrated in his calling out of the Central Park Five where four black fifteen-year-old males and one Latino male were wrongfully charged and convicted of raping a woman who was jogging in New York City, in April of 1989. Trump wrote in the New York Times demanding the execution of the Latino group member. In fact, all five of these young men were exonerated of violating the young woman.

 

His is an attempt to rid the United States of all but the whites. His support of the White Christian Nationalist group sets the tone for his biases and prejudices. He wants to go back to a time when women were subservient to men. His is a regression on the course that that we have been on as a nation where we have equal rights as citizens of the United States. Instead of making America great again, he wants to return America to the time when the rights of Americans were predicated on their skin color and the sexual distinction of being male or female.

 

His notion about removing immigrants from ‘the land of the Free’ is classic example of his scapegoating of minorities, and it is a classic example of his pathological lying. At first, his administration was going to round up those undocumented immigrants who are the killers and rapists, those who have been convicted of heinous crimes and have gone to jail. Instead, he casts all immigrants as ‘poisoning the blood of America.’

 

His administration and his masked bulling ICE thugs are going to places where immigrants work, earn a living for their families and contribute taxes from their labors. Places like the fields where they pick crops that we all eat. Where they provide home care for those who are elderly or infirmed. Where they provide labor to build roadways and buildings. Where they work at a Home Depot and have made a career of providing retail services to members of their community. Where they provide hospitality services in hotels. These masked bullies will even go to the courts where immigrants are dutifully filling out the required paperwork in a timely fashion and arresting them on the spot. They go to public schools, churches, and medical facilities. And these gutless bullies ignore the reality of an individual’s ‘due process rights.’

 

It has become painfully easy to label immigrants as being expendable by a sociopath like Trump. In truth our immigration system is in the shambles. It takes years for an immigrant to go through all of hoops of gaining citizenship. There are not enough trained people to process those who come to America in a reasonable time frame. Often it takes years to finalize the immigration process. In addition, there are not enough immigration justices to be able to process those are going through the immigration process.

 

And so here we are. We have required governmental procedures that need to be met for someone to become an American Citizen and we don’t have enough people to do the job in a timely fashion.

 

We allow a person who is disregarding of other people’s needs and a pathological liar to reside in the Oval Office. We have yesterday’s realities attempting to address today’s confusion, dysfunction, and disregard of others. Today’s needs require our going back to the basics of what makes the United States the special place that it can still be. We only need to select people who are committed to our Constitution, Bill of Rights, Due Process, our three but equal branches of government. We need to select people who are regarding of other’s needs and feelings. We need to be able to learn to live with our differences and trust that we have the will and commitment to work out our differences…then, we have the chance of not repeating the mistakes we have made during Trump’s   attempt to destroy everything that defines who we are as an American Family.

 

The Dali Lama is someone who has been instrumental in my own understanding of what makes it possible for people to grow as individuals and as members of a community. He has written ‘compassion and love are not a luxury; they are essential to our existence. Without a sense of caring, there can be no sense of community. If we are to survive, human beings must develop a greater sense of universal responsibility. We must learn to work not just for our own self, family, or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind.’

 

I am committed to sharing life with others by treating others as I would want to be treated. It is simple way to begin to connect with someone else…

 

Namaste.