A ramble about memory (memorial and celebration)...

[The soundtrack for today's blog is a montage of news items edited over REM's Everybody Hurts. It is an emotional rollercoaster and in no way is required to appreciate the entry below. The lyrics that are important for my entry are in the text of the blog. Nonetheless, I listen to this song every year on September 11th and thought I would share.] 

When your day is long and the night
The night is yours alone
When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on
Don't let yourself goEverybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes... 
It seems appropriate to have my first blog back from hiatus to be one of historical relevance and particular import to me. Fifteen years ago some terrible things happened on 9/11, and those of us that were there—present in the moment—know how time can stretch out into a terrible breath holding exercise of amazement, terror, and anticipation. Sorrow flooded in as the disbelief dissipated, and anger with despair pressed the sorrow down to places where it might fester, only later being flushed out slowly and patiently in a world-wide session of collective grief. Terrible things happen all the time in history, but that they would happen in the US to so many of the privileged made the whole world pay especial attention, including me...

Sometimes everything is wrong
Now it's time to sing along
When your day is night alone (hold on, hold on)
If you feel like letting go (hold on)When you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on...
It hurts me still, the feelings that arise when I think of that day fifteen years ago. I remember identifying with the 343 firefighters especially, even though I had yet to turn in my application for the local fire department; that identification is what finally pushed me to join the local hose company.  I have strong memories from that day that I can play back in my mind with cinematic clarity. I can feel what I felt and see faces of confused and distraught children quietly wandering the halls of my school that was no longer following the bell schedule. It was a quiet chaos that burned like hot iron, but there was no noise; the quiet was disquieting. When exploring those cinematic moments hurt me too much [forgetting that I can choose to not watch my own mind's screen] I choose to retreat to a moment at the end of the day when I was emotionally drained having been a teacher for the entire day a with wide-eyed and shocked students around me for the entire news cycle from first impact to 4pm: I have picked up my five months old son from day care and have NPR on the radio. I am thinking I want to cry for the loss of innocence I am projecting on him, and for the realization that the news he does not know will change his world. I worry that he might be taking in the raw emotions of the newscasters as they lose their ability to be objective in reporting the events of the day, and I choose to for the first time that day to turn off the radio. It's time to shut off the feed. It's the good parent thing to not allow this hurt to pour around the air space of my firstborn, my millennial born, my beloved progeny. I pull into the Duncan Donuts that has since become The Donut Man and ritually buy my son and me our Tuesday blueberry cake donut to share for the 1/2 hour ride home. And as I glance back in the rear view mirror and hand him his first piece, he smiles and laughs and my world is whole again for that moment...

Everybody hurts
Take comfort in your friends
Everybody hurts
Don't throw your hand Oh, no
Don't throw your handIf you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone
And here I am on another anniversary of 9/11 reliving some of those feelings again, allowing the hurt in, as a strange form of respect for those impacted more than me, a tribute(?) for those who have suffered more than I do. I allow the feelings in to witness the hurt, and perhaps to defy the hurt by feeling sad and then rising out of that sadness with a glow in my heart and compassion for those around me who persist; living today seems to spit in the eye of the feelings that were sought by angry men who wished to injure us fifteen years ago. Living today feels like laughter and smile from a baby, innocent and full, and wonderful!...

ABRUPT SHIFT IN BLOG FOCUS (but still following a thread of though about Septembers and memories... 

...Nine years before the attacks on Washington and New York I traveled to a Buddhist monastery in India to study near and under the grandchild-tree that the Buddha sat under so many seasons before. I allowed my eyes to open while studying in Asia. I woke up... It was the pinnacle four months of the most transformative four years of my life, and I am grateful for the person I have become as a result of my experience there. This is not the Sunday to process the lessons I received while on that trip, but suffice to say, I was not only transformed, but continue to receive the fruits of the seeds that were planted back then so long ago...

Living in the past vs. remembering...
I bring up my trip to India today, as it is in my mind a lot lately and has me thinking about the differences of living in the past vs. remembering the past. The former is stale and speaks of a soul no longer growing; the latter is fruitful and reflective, allowing for comparison and subsequently for me, gratitude. I recently joined a public group on FaceBook that is comprised of people who have visited that place in India and learned from the same teachers, and perhaps who have experienced the same sorts of transformation I did. It is a group that helps connect people who share a location connection from the past only, but so many who go there seem to open in similar ways, share similar growth, at a similar time in their searching lives. If the impulse to join such a group is only to relive the past, then the present is ruined. But if the desire to revisit the past in order to find a better present, then the future opens in a way that was not possible moments before. What glorious potential!...

Finding Things (like new friends who feel like long lost ones...):
So to be silly I asked Google how to find something lost. WikiHow toped my search results and listed the following steps: Method: Calming down. 1: Breathe in and out. 2: Empty your brain. 3: Remember that is is not the end of the world. 4: Put it in context. 5: Be confident.  How interesting...  How almost Buddhist, how apropos! ... So, to get back to FaceBook: I found a new friend from my Buddhist Studies past. I have been breathing lately and emptying my brain; I have been reversing any catastrophizing (sp?!) in my life and placing my experiences in context. I am working on my confidence... and then like magic, I stumbled on a new friend with old ties in the most implausible of circumstances... like "it" (this discovery) was meant "to be" even though I do NOT believe in fate! Coincidences happen all the time as long as we are open to observing them as they happen...

Realization and reflection:
So I wrote the following on the group page on FaceBook: "What is it about finding someone randomly in the world who just happens to have been on this program that feels exactly like finding a long lost friend? " You see, the threads of those memories back in 1992 continue to criss-cross in my life and it is rich and wonderful. I continue to find new friends as a result of my time in India, each time provoking me to revisit those cinematic memories that do not cause me to retreat, but rather, help me emerge. Our pasts explain our paths, reveal our progress, and provide a context for who we are. Buddhism does not deny the past and the future while it encourages us to embrace the moment; it merely places the past and future in a context that allows the moment to be the place where we live. And on this 9/11, as I reflect on my past, both fifteen years ago and twenty-four years ago, I have have my body turned toward the future, and I am living right now... glory be!

A newsy post: Travels in South and West Asia...

Swayambhunath Temple, Nepal

I went to India and Nepal once—a long, long time ago: I just got off the phone with my mother who has just returned from a trip to India and Nepal, causing me to feel envy beyond description. And I am happy for my parents' trip: Hindu ceremonies at Dashashwamedh Ghat and Manikarnika Ghat in Varinasi, laying eyes on Mt. Everest, visiting the Taj, watching preparations at Boudhanath, Katmandu, seeing large cats in national forest parks, etc. etc. etc. But still, envy beyond description...

I'm still just a young pup: My mother was full of stories, and there will be more to come as I look at photos and hear her reflections as she processes a trip full of new experiences. I need to explain that my mother employs some physics worthy of Einstein et al. to explain how old she isn't. At some point I think we figured out that my older brother is a genetic impossibility given her suggested time line. All hyperbole aside, she and my father have been around long enough that I get to call them "old dogs" evoking that saying about "new tricks." Not all old dogs are unable to learn new tricks! My parents seem to keep going to new places and trying new things even though they have earned the right to just sit and smell the Jerusalem roses in their back yard. I think people who have worked hard their whole lives deserve to enjoy life without the pressures of planning for the future. The future needs to become the now at some point, and they are most definitely living in the now. But living in the now is not wisdom. It just is. Wisdom is derived from experiences that stretch us. I am impressed that my parents seem to be off having adventures that change their understanding of the world. And they are ever wise-ening! Envy beyond description...

Contrasts: On their return trip my parents had a lay-over in Dubai. Visiting this modern city of unparalleled prosperity and cleanliness probably provoked a bit of culture shock as they left the struggling industrialization of Nepal. They were in Dubai the day before a massive fire ripped through a luxury tower, killing no one by the way.

Why no one died in Dubai skyscraper fire (+video) By Jessica Mendoza,Staff Writer, Christian Science Monitor
My mother spoke of the contrast of wealth between Nepal and UAE. We talked about the ever-present spirituality of India and daily practice of Arab Muslims... The world is vast and complex and so easily explored by Americans, either physically or digitally.

Staying curious: So in the name of learning a little more—of reading and exploring why religion, and politics, and history, and values are important to study—read the following story and think how things could have gone wrong, but didn't...

MIDDLE EAST

22 February 2015 Last updated at 09:36 ET

Why is Suleyman Shah's tomb so important?

Scores of Turkish troops and vehicles have entered Syria to evacuate and destroy a mausoleum where the forefather of the Ottoman empire was buried. The BBC's Matthew Davis considers why the site was so important

The now ruined tomb of Suleyman Shah stands on a football pitch-sized spit of Turkish land inside Syria, but its historical and political significance belie this humble geography.

Shah was a Turkic tribal leader who lived from about 1178 until 1236, when according to an epigraph in his mausoleum he "drowned in the Euphrates along with two of his men, in search for a home for himself and his people".

Official accounts are questioned by some, but the story goes that Shah's followers headed north into modern-day Turkey.

It was there that his grandson, Osman I, founded the Ottoman Empire, which at the height of its powers centuries later controlled swathes of territory across south-west Europe, the Middle East and North Africa from its capital in Constantinople (now Istanbul).

The Ottoman empire had disintegrated by the early 20th Century, and the new state of Turkey emerged - but such was the national importance of Shah's burial complex that the site was protected under a 1921 agreement with France, which then occupied the area now located in Syria's Aleppo province.

Since then, Turkey has invoked its right to station troops there and fly its flag over the site, which was relocated some 80km (50 miles) to the north when the original area was flooded by the creation of the reservoir Lake Assad in 1974.

Turkey's only foreign enclave has retained immense emotional value for its people, but the chaos engulfing Syria in recent years has seen it assume a growing political significance.

In August 2012 President Recep Tayyip Erdogan - then prime minister - warned all parties in the Syrian conflict that an action against the tomb would be considered an attack on Turkish territory "as well an attack on Nato land".

And amid reports that the soldiers stationed there had been besieged for months by Islamic State militants, last year the Turkish parliament authorised the use of force against the jihadists.

However despite recently joining the US in training some rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad, Turkey has resisted playing a full role in the US-led campaign against Islamic State.

Correspondents say that if the historic Suleyman Shah tomb had come under attack, the effect on public opinion would have made it harder for Turkey to avoid a full-scale military campaign against the group.

So the fact that the tomb is now moved and the Turkish soldiers evacuated is a great relief for the nation and its leaders, local commentators say.

"We had given the Turkish armed forces a directive to protect our spiritual values and the safety of our armed forces personnel," Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said after Saturday's operation.

Turkish media later showed images of three soldiers raising the flag at a new site closer to the Turkish border, which is likely to host a new tomb that authorities hope will provide a final home for Suleyman Shah.