If I imagine (as my present practice asks me to) that I will die in a few days’ time, I think I can say farewell without great remorse. No human being has no regrets, I suspect, if they are honest with themselves. “Non, je ne regrette rien,” is a defiant cry, not an intimate one, I suspect. Nevertheless, have I finished my war with myself?
Lately, I’ve been thinking frequently about the effect on my development of choosing, during the Vietnam War, to oppose that war. I registered as a conscientious objector. I am glad I made that commitment. And, today, the My Lai massacre is on my mind. I don’t think it’s just because Donald Trump is doing well in the polls.
In a couple of weeks, it’s the forty-eighth anniversary of that unspeakable crime against humanity – the My Lai massacre. To the U.S.’s unending shame, only one of the twenty-odd murderers was convicted, and he, William Calley, spend a paltry few years confined to a military base for his crime. “Bad boy. Shame that you got caught.”
No, there are some things I regret, but aligning with the cause of non-violence is not one of them. The Buddhadharma has symbolised that for me. Some years ago, I quit a certain spiritual path, because I felt that it’s demands were becoming too cult-like, and that it threatened my allegiance to Buddhism. Yet, it’s fair to ask what would make me so dedicated to the Buddhadharma?
One clear answer has emerged, because I have understood in my own mind the root of the human violence. Seeing that is inestimable. And, I know of no major spiritual path whose commitment to non-violence is so pointedly clear. The founder’s words are unequivocal.
They can be distorted and abused, of course, by any culture. We’ve seen that historically, in the approach of the samurai – the bushido approach to Buddhism. A distortion. And, presently we’re seeing it in Burma, where corrupt (or fake) Buddhist monks are inciting Burmese villagers to persecute the Rohinga.
Humans have such a propensity to harm other groups of humans. I was thinking today, about the Milgrim famous obedience experiments, which showed that under certain conditions the ordinary Jo or Joe, like you or me, will cause harm to others if ordered by an authority.
Reading about the My Lai massacre today, I came across an angry U.S. officer’s statement, a year after the atrocity: “[Calley] is a good man. He was obeying orders.” (Which it has been established that he wasn’t; and that he went way beyond orders. Was he ordered to murder women and children, even babies? Decent people know a hate crime when they see it.)
Of course, for those of us who cultivate non-violence, we hear in this U.S. officer’s statement, a defence what would please Adolph Eichmann unconditionally. Eichmann was, in his own eyes, a good citizen who was following orders. (Or, at least, that’s how he portrayed himself.)
It was, when I joined the opposition to the Vietnam War, my conviction that a culture of non-violence was necessary; and to that end, I took up a way of life. What I didn’t know then… (Well, I was nineteen. I became a Buddhist in the same month that Time magazine ran the story of My Lai, starting the exposé.)
What I didn’t know was that I would have to become intimate with my own violence, to find in myself the seeds of war. I hadn’t heard Thich Nhat Hanh, at that point. He had been in the West for just three years, then; having been exiled by both sides of the war in Vietnam. A peace-maker is hated by both antagonists. However, this is his message: that the seeds of war are in our own minds.
We must stop the war in in ourselves, if the human world is to know peace. I began the journey, not knowing that I wouldn’t be the same idealistic young man at the end of the process. . Mindfulness, Focusing, meditation, and a culture of enquiry brings transformation. I don’t regret becoming someone I couldn’t have imagined I’d be.
Before I die, though, let me tell another story. Milgrim’s experiments didn’t only show that 60% of the average college kids, in his experiments, would obey orders to cause others unreasonable pain. (The experiment demonstrated that the subjects would be willing to give a shock of 450 volts to a person.) That’s only the frightening and well-known result.
He showed something else. If others around you are willing to oppose injustice, it strengthens you to listen to your conscience. This is the power of a practice community, a sangha. As the American Psychological Association says it:
“In one of Milgram’s conditions the naïve subject was one of a 3-person teaching team. The other two were actually confederates who-one after another-refused to continue shocking the victim. Their defiance had a liberating influence on the subjects, so that only 10% of them ended up giving the maximum shock.”
If this experiment could be re-done (which, nowadays, it can’t), I would predict that if another group of experimental subjects were trained in mindfulness and in Focusing, a comparable figure (10%) would be realised. These practical disciplines support moral development. They don’t cause it; but they support it, with thousands of volts worth of energy.
Three men that day, in 1968 in My Lai, tried to stop the carnage – literal carnage. The corrupt President Richard Nixon and his vile administration tried to skewer these men, to protect the so-called reputation of the US. Army; but they eventually were acknowledged as the heroes of the day. They were the crew of a helicopter – the Hiller OH-23 Raven crew, led by a brave man Hugh Thompson. We have this in us, too. It needs protecting and nurturing, like a green plant. These men are remembered, too, every year on March 16.
I wonder: Has any journalist thought to ask Donald Trump for his candid opinion of his fellow Republican, Richard Nixon?