Iraq, nirvana, and collective existence

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Iraq, nirvana, and collective existence
By: Pumo at www.gnn.tv on: 11.06.2005 [09:13 ] (32 reads)

American snipers killing mothers, soldiers executing civilians in the street, houses being demolished with entire families inside.

A little girl on the way home from school is shot through the abdomen while watching her younger brother’s delicate body explode under the voracity of bullets spit from the cold muzzle of an m-16.

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Iraq, nirvana, and collective existence
Fri, 27 May 2005 08:26:22 -0700

"I can feel our humanity fading"


by Pumo
As I sit in front of my computer on this Memorial Day weekend, digesting the latest images of death and carnage of our forgotten humanity in Iraq, I can’t help but cry for the future of my eight-month-old daughter.

It is, and has always been, every parent’s dream to provide for their children a better world than the one in which they reside. It is one of the instinctually based motivations that has been planted in our collective psyches to ensure we don’t destroy ourselves or our planet; it keeps our greedy, self-centred desires from swallowing us whole and turning us into something less than human. As we enter the 21st century, I fear we have discarded or so altered this part of ourselves, that we now stand on the edge of humanity itself, staring into the dark pit of woe, hatred and violence, and we seem to feel powerless to turn away and reject the direction our masters present.

I have recently returned from touring with independent, ‘unembedded’ journalist, Dahr Jamail in California, Washington, and British Columbia, and have been connected to the daily sufferings of the Iraqi population in a way that has permanently altered my view of the world and humanity.

American snipers killing mothers, soldiers executing civilians in the street, houses being demolished with entire families inside.

Children pulled from cars, windows red with the blood of their parents who, only moments earlier, were trying to calm the fears of these traumatized innocents.

A little girl on the way home from school is shot through the abdomen while watching her younger brother’s delicate body explode under the voracity of bullets spit from the cold muzzle of an m-16.

The torn and mutilated body of a beautiful baby lying in the streets of Falluja, eyes wide open, burning a hole in my heart that will never be mended.

And through all of this I have come to recognize that this disgusting display of our most base natures, our greed, hatred, ignorance and indifference, are killing more than just the children of Iraq, they are killing ours as well.

Human life is more than just a series of breaths. Human life is love, compassion and caring, and humanity without these qualities will come more to resemble the existence experienced by a dairy cow, or poultry chicken, kept alive merely to feed the insatiable hunger of their masters, than it will that of the potential experience we could collectively share.


During my time in India, back in the days which I viewed the world from a backpack, I was disturbed by the glaring inequality and sufferings in a country that honed many of the ideas of reincarnation, and compassion that so inspired Christ in his wandering years.

Outcasts, beggars, cripples without the hope of chance, and an upper class completely surrounded by these images and yet able to remain totally indifferent. I remember in Delhi, seeing a Rolls Royce unable to move in the afternoon gridlock of carts, buses and jalopies. Windows tinted and horn blaring demands to a crowd with nowhere to move.


Nirvana is a collective state, I thought to myself, just as reincarnation also refers to us as a whole and not the individual, for certainly it is our children that represent our reincarnate selves, and not some direct revisitation.

This man in his limousine will not experience nirvana alone, nor will he be reborn into a higher state of existence that could bring him closer to perfection. Infact, it is his indifference that ensures the mortality of his bloodline.

And so as U.S. troops and U.S. trained Iraqis ring Baghdad and prepare to siege our innocence yet again, it becomes clear to me that the child lying lifeless and vacant in the streets of a city close to the birthplace of our civilization, is as much my daughter as my little eight month old beauty, so I mourn both, the daughter lying cold in the street and the one warm in her bed that will eventually lose her innocence to a world without humanity.

linK

sent by jangikedi

Please spread widely. jamie