The only certain thing about life is death. Its presence is constantly in our lives. But we hardly ever think about it or pay attention to it. Its like a silent partner, tags along with us all the time. Death has scared me and fascinated me for a very long time since I can remember, even as a child. I remember the first time I saw a funeral pire. I was travelling with my maternal grandmother in a bus to her house. I would have been less than 10 years old. It was dusk and the funeral pire was burning and the flames engulfed it. I remember that so vividly and I was frightened and curious. 

I didn't encounter death until my paternal grandfathers death. I have a few memories. Somehow my father was on his way back to our home after visiting his sick dad when we got the news. As soon as he came we packed and went to Galle. I think the body was being prepared in the house. That's what my memory says. Then they closed the doors etc and brought the body from the room it was in, into the main living area. I remember the funeral procession. The crematorium and how people went to see the burning pire in the night or early morning hours. But that's it.

Then the most vivid one the one that caused me much sadness was the death of my uncle, my mothers second brother. We were very close to him and he used to visit us often and we learnt a great deal from him as teenagers. Then more deaths followed. Last year Ranil's dad died. That made me recollect all the deaths I had experienced previously. For some reason the death of his dad seem much potent experience compared some of the previous experiences. It was sudden even though we kind of expected it because of the 2 anyurisms he had. 

But since then I have contemplated not just death and the dying process, but also the ones left behind and how life continues to unfold in the absence of our loved ones. I have also worked with hospice patients over the last two years and even though they die and none are related to me, you build up a relationship with the patient and at times a significant other or a child. 

I have seen people struggle towards the end of their lives. Either from pain or fear or inability to face the fact that their bodies are falling apart. I met a man who was diagnosed with cancer. He was young-74- and had good memory. We struck up a friendship for almost a year before he died just after he turned 75. He was single and had no family except two friends who used to visit him regularly. He was a war veteran, traveled to many places had many girlfriends and partied and drunk and had a good time. But he had a hard time coming to terms with the frailty. He had a a few hard falls cause he tried to walk when he was told not to. He felt like a prisoner, not being able to do the things he wanted to do and go to places he wanted to go to. But he was not bitter. He had a good sense of humor and he always waited for me to come and see him. But every time I left, I could see the twinkle in his eyes fade.

There was a woman around the same age riddled with breast cancer. I don't think she every made peace with death. She was a woman who had gone through domestic violence. She had a son in another state who would visit her once or twice during the time I visited her. She died within 6 months. But she was always crying. When she talked about her son she cried. When she talked about her death ad God she cried. She tried to tell that she was going to be with God but there wasn't a lot of certainty to that. She was also in a great deal of pain. Towards the end her pain medication made her feel frightened and have hallucinations, said the nurses. The last time I saw she was sitting on the bed, in tears. Her brother and a nurse was with her but she was in tears. She calmed down when I sat by her. She died a few days later.

The last patient I visited was 55 year old muslim woman. She was paralized onn her left side and her speech was damaged. So she couldn't talk to me. She would make noises and smile, try to. When I first saw her she looked real bad but with time she recovered well. I met her husband, a man who was 10 years older to her, always in white kurtha suit. Their life story was amazing and he had cared for her for over 15 years since she first had her stroke. Then she started to tell me through her husband, that she wanted him to take her home. Her frustrations clearly came through at time, partly because she wanted to go out and home but she had no control over that decision. Neither over her body. For some reason I felt that she was going to die and she did after a few weeks.

Even though I didnt meet Ranils father before he died or throughout his sickness, I heard it all from Ranil. It was a tough time. He too had  failing body and he struggled with coming to terms with it. 

So all these stories have twirled in my mind from time to time during the past 6 months or so. Following are some of my thoughts and insights

1. Death is not easy. Dying is hard. Partly because we don{t think about it and partly because the world we live in put so much emphasis on the living. I think its a dis-service to people who are living. As hard as a truth it might be, each one of us have to face this in terms of our own deaths and the deaths of those who are closest to us. But while sadness comes and goes, nothing stick for us. I think it's important for us to contemplate death while we live and are capable and not leave it to a time when we don't have our faculties and bodies in the right condition to think about it.

2. We have little control over our bodies. While we all fall sick from time to time, we don't get it what's like to have chronic pain and sickness. It's not easy face a situation where you don't have an answer or have very little control over. I think the illusion of life, is to provide that sense of control. Or we exert so much power until we get what we want or make things happen the way we want. When we are not able to do so, we will justify it. But sickness and imminent feelings of doom cannot be controlled to our desires. Since we've had a life time of practice manipulating our external situations, we do the same towards our end of life events. But with no much results except restlessness, sadness, resentment, frustration and even anger at times.

3. Our emotional world becomes everything. When the body is falling apart, the only things that can give certain balance and a sense of calm is our mind. But unless we have throughout our lives, anchored ourselves in something that can produced that clam, it's hard to ask for it to be at your service when you need it. It's important to have healthy emotional world. When we are young we do much and run around  like chickens with it's head cut off-doing this and doing that-that when we are lying down taking our last breaths, we don't know anything other way of being other than being like chickens with its head cut off. It's a time that requires great strength of the mind and one must prepare as much as can for this experience. sometime I watch these bridal shows and these young girls say that they've thought of their wedding day since they were 5 years old. I think we should think our dying from the moment we are born. Otherwise we waste a lot of time in unnecessary things.

4. Learn those who die. No matter how many funerals we go to and even perhaps our closest, we see it as something that has happened to someone else. For us what is left is the grief and loss. But this should not be it. We need to see the dead person pay respects by all means. But also we must make an effort to realise that this is something that will at some point happen to me, and my closest family member. That lessons somehow eludes us. Maybe we may say it out in words during the time and a mourning period but it does not come home in to our hearts. I think we must see clearly that death is something that happens to me. Then perhaps that might make us take a hard look at how we live right now. For in our living is created our dying experience. Our death and the dying process is not going to be something alien to us. It's in how we have faced and responded to our life on a moment to moment basis. We have a pattern of it, call is our personality or our dominant trait. This is what will get unfolded at time of death and during the dying process. So take a hard look at ow you respond to life while living, for in it lies all the clues and answers we need.

Lies, distortions of truth and injustice: tremors in my emotional world

Last night I was watching news about the testimony by James Comey and the response from the WH and supporters of Mr. Trump. As I was watching it, I noticed that I kept getting increasingly angry and resentful. At the end I switched off the news channel cause my anger gave me a headache. I wondered why I got so angry. As a practicing Buddhist, I could not make peace with it. I kept fighting the lies and the injustice that was happening and the emotions that it aroused in me until it gave me a headache. It was exhausting. 

Then my husband started reading a chapter from the book we have been reading over a month by Ayya Khema. It was very timely. Cause the chapter said that we should not take things personally no matter how right or wrong things maybe. My husband ended up asking me, "why do you have to take it personally?". That was a good question and I had to think about it. Why does lies and distortions of the truth and injustice always get me? Why do I take these emotions so personally every time? As I thought about it, I realized a few things.

I have faced such lies, distortions of truth and injustices by others. I realized that's why these stories strike a never in me.

When I was little I had an aunt who was very unkind to me. I was about 5-6 years old. She used to refuse to give me the food I like to eat after I get back from school for lunch. I loved lentils. My mother would cook it everyday just the way I liked to eat it. But this aunt of mine who lived with us and took care of us while our parents were working during the day, would not give it to me. She will give me just enough and then laugh when I would want more. Or call me names. She also got me to do all the cleaning afterward. She used to look after me, my sister and a cousin of ours during that time. She would drop pick us from school everyday and we would walk home. She never got them to do the cleaning up. I had to do the cleaning up of all our school items like snack boxes and bottles etc. My mother never knew about it. I never told, apparently. But those days I would cry every evening if mother got even slightly late from work. She would come around 5.15-5.45pm. If she didn't come during that time I would be in tears until she did so. I remember feeling sick about losing my mother. I remember having these frightening thoughts about my mother dying and that would scare me so much that I would cry. I was also punished for this. But it didn't stop for a while. Finally my dad realized what was happening because he was at home one day and that day my aunt had hit my across my leg and her finger marks were visible. My father saw this and that got him to send his own sister away. Maybe my crying stopped then, I don't remember.

(I cried while I was writing that paragraph)

I was 16 years old when I finally told this to my parents and my aunt. She apologized and my parents were aghast. I think I forgave everything cause I have had any dealings with this aunt and I haven't felt anger or resentment. 

Then I also had an uncle who supported me through college. It was an ordeal as well. When were were younger and doing well in school, he kept promising that he would help us f we get good grades to go to a foreign university. I particularly grabbed hold on to that idea. I liked it and wanted it. I finally got good grades to enter a good university outside of my country. Suddenly my uncle who had been promising all these things for years started getting quiet. It would have been a difficult time. I remember being very determined to get what I wanted and I was willing to do whatever. Finally with the help of someone we managed to get the necessary documents from my uncle to apply for visa. It never felt  good. Every year I had to call him and ask for the money to be wired. I wasn't sure if he'd send it. But he did. 

Then was the series of incidents with my husband and his family. My husbands mother, was very critical and condescending of me from the beginning. I was never pretty, too fat, not famous or rich enough for her. My family was never posh enough for her. But my husband never noticed any of it for almost 10 years. If he did, he never did anything about it enough to stop it. Over the years his father and sisters too joined in. They cut my family off for no reason. They were astonished why I didn't want to continue to talk to his mother, even after being told why. They treated me like a bad egg even when I had welcomed them and his sisters and treated them well for many years. Our marriage was full of turmoil for a long time. I was exhausted and at times suicidal. It was such an uphill battle. I thought truth was something obvious and decency and fairness was something fundamental that in the absence of it from those who were supposed to protect me left feeling completely out of control and sad and angry. His parents also bad mouthed me to my husband, telling things that were not true and ignoring all the good that I had done. The sisters were supportive of that and was pushing my husband trying to create a wedge between us. I held my husband responsible, for not being there for me, protecting me and standing up to what was right and wrong, for a long time. It was during all this that I took meditation as a practice. Out of sheer desperation and not wanting to hurt myself, I took on to the practice. 

Over the years its helped me a great deal. It's to mostly to see my emotions and work through them in a calm and constructive manner. But it has also helped me to identify where my responsibility ends and others start. That has helped me to stay away from feelings of guilt and take on others emotional drama. 

But despite all that, I still get angry and frustrated when I see lies, injustice prevail. It annoys me how people get away by saying and doing wrong things and are not held accountable for their behaviours. It angers me when people are victimized by those behaviors and no one pays attention to the victims. Power and money seem to protect those abusers and leave the victims out to dry. It makes me very angry. Even when I know there is no point to anger no matter how righteous it may seem. Even when I know in my head that those who do bad have to live with the consequences of their behaviors and I am only responsible for mine. Even when I know "Karma will get the bastards anyway" according to Ajhan Brahm, I still have to live with the strong emotions that get created in me as a reaction to these events from time to time. While not every event shakes my world, the right one at the right time with the right intensity can bring about lot of pain in my heart. I felt that last night and here I am writing about it. Hopefully this will contribute to my own healing process. 

Trails and meditation

My husband and I went on a trip to the Shenendoah Park recently. We did a lot of hiking. It was a fun trip w its sightings of many bears and a couple of close encounters with them. Once I was back, I was relating my adventures to my mother. As always our conversations take a turn toward Dhamma. So did this conversation. We were talking about meditation and how to cultivate a practice that can sustain itself for the most part. It was during this time that I came up with the following similie. 

Meditation is a practice like any other. To get a rhythm of any kind in anything we do, be it a sport, an art, getting in shape and meditation we need to practice over and over again. It has to come to a point that it feels kind of natural. It's the same with meditation. We need to feel comfortable with it. It has to feel like meeting an old friend. But getting to this point is not easy. A lot of time and effort has be expended. Even then we might make errors that takes us back to basics. So does meditation. 

As I said earlier, we did many hikes during out trip. They were long ones. Even though at times the hikes were through dense woods, we were clear as to where we were. There were sold train marks, postings at crossroad with direction and distances so that we could gauge where we were. We were never lost. The path were pretty neat and pretty clear. So we always knew where we were. When I was talking to my mother about meditation, I realized that just like having a clean trail with markings and postings, we can establish a sense of direction even in meditation. It's not marked with postings and distances. Instead your develop a strong sense of feeling in your mind. 

This is the reason why one must pick a suitable meditation object for oneself and use that over and over again to gain concentration. Sometimes I have heard meditation teachers talking about many types of objects for meditation such as loving-kindness, breath meditation, death, old age, Buddha...but to me personally, I have used two objects. The breath and metta. At the beginning I used metta for the most part when I sat on my own. With the teacher I used to do breath. After sometime I used to do them back to back. But now I almost always do breath. I find that my breath has become very familiar to me. It's comforting to sit with my breath. It's like meeting that old friend.

So going back to my trail simile, I was telling my mother to think of someone or a group of people clearing a trail in a park. In order to create a trail that others can go or for even your own self to travel, you need to start at t a point. ONce you start digging and clearing your way through the woods, you will have to stop at some point because the day ended. But again you have to come back to it the next day, so you can start from where you left off. Imagine if you suddenly felt that you ought to start at another point the next way. What will happen? Well your previous day's efforts would be in vain. Also you need to start a fresh, yet again. Also you have wasted your time and resources. Okay let's assume that you did start again. Well you have to finish off for the day won't you? Then imagine you coming back the next day to start from a new starting point?! Well it will never start, will it. But what if you went back to same point that you start off to begin with? Then you just keep digging and clearing. It might take months or even years but you are cutting your way through a forest, making a path that you can come back to and walk through again and again. Every day you dig through, it opens a few more yards, it gets longer and perhaps you will come to the end to a beautiful scenery. 

I feel the same about meditation. 

If we keep changing our meditation object, it would like coming back to start a new trail every single day. You get started with great enthusiasm but you don't get very far. I am sure you will get exhausted at some point and give up altogether. But instead what if you come back to the same meditation object, like coming back to where you left off from the previous day. Well then you walk a little bit forward and clear a little bit more. I feel it's the same way with meditation. Each sitting, give you an understanding about your mind and it's nature. Each sitting helps you to learn something. We need to take it back together next day so that there could be some more  progress. It might not feel like you are moving forward much but I know that it's okay. 

Hard to digest

Last Saturday we flew into Colorado for a week. It was for business and pleasure. We were going to do some trails in the mountains and I was going to keep to my health goals during the week. It sounded like a perfect plan. I had supported a lower back pain for a few weeks. But I was on the way to full recovery when we embarked on our trip. However, the bed was so soft that overnight my back pain came back with a vengence. It was so bad, that by the time I woke up Sunday morning I could barely move without pain in my lower back. It was so distressing. I was so looking forward to the few days with my husband since we've had a kind of a stressful few weeks. But now I was down with a back pain.

I am not new to pain. I suffer from many chroic pain issues. But this hit me hard. I was inconsolable. I was cried a lot. Just flet so beaten down. This was partly because I was kind of recovering from my neck pain and knee issues. I was able to get into my work out routine and golf and I was losing weight. Overall I felt so much better and then Wham! it hits me. I could not handle it. It made me wonder what on earth is going on with me...yet again. I started wondering when I will ever see the light of day for more than a few days or weeks. My health issues seem to always raise its head up and want to pin me down and keep me pinned down.

So on Sunday as we were touring Rocky Mountain Park, with me being very miserable, I started thinking. This was partly to wrap my head around what's going on and also to get out of the miserable mind state I was in. At some point on our way back the following thought came to my mind. I must say it did help me clam myself.

What I realized was that even when my body was giving up and falling apart, my mind continued to stay resilient and want to do things that my body was not able to do. My unhappiness was a direct cause of me wanting to do all these things and now because of my back pain, not being able to. I work with hospice patients. I see them on a weekly basis unble to do the things they once had done. Some fight and are unhappy and the others seem to have come to a resolve. I felt like one of my patients. I was the one disable and unhappy cause I could no longer do the things I wanted to do. I had these expectations of my body. Now I could not live up to it. So I was unhappy. Isn't that amazing!

I started being aware how much of a drive I had in myself to want to do things. It was excruciating. I wanted to hike, I wanted clime and be free like I usually am when I go on trips. But my body could not handle it. It was giving me pain. But for some reason I could not come to terms with it. I felt that I was young and these are things people like me would do without batting an eye lid and here I am being pathetic. It was a hard reality to swallow.

I realized how much I needed to change in my expectaions of myself alone. From my body. It's a hard thing to come to terms to because its your body for cyring out loud. But yet there is something uncontrollable about it. You cannot make your body behave and do things the way you want all of the time. Sometimes, you need to allow it to be, rest and recover. That might include doing less, wanting to do less or whatever maybe. The only expectations are those that I have put on myself. I mean I began to think of people who had cancer who were young, who were disabled and young, dead and young. So considering all that I was not having a bad experience. But for me it felt as if I was dying. I felt such a sense of loss.

But I realized that I did not need to. There is no guarantee that we will be healthy, strong and capable, that our senses and limbs will be intact or for that matter I would live tomorrow but yet there is an expectation somewhere in my mind. I realized that I needed to clam down much more, let go much more and expect much less. It was a good eye opener. I also realised that if I continued on the same path how hard it would be for me to die. I will always have some sort of unfinished business. So if I have to die tomorrow what am I going to do. Be sad, angry, miserable and mess up my last moments on this earth?

These were wonderful points for me to contemplate on. I think just this expericence alone brought to my mind how fragile our lives are. How fragile our bodies are. That at somepoint I needed to clam down so I didn't add to an already worse situation. The hard part was it was internal. Where could I go? Where could I hide? Nowhere. I had to be with myself no matter how unpleasant the experience was..not matter how hard the situation was...I was there. I could not excape myself. That's hard. When things are unplesant and external to you, you at least have the choice to run away, but when it's you, there is no place to run to. I realized how much more kindness and compassion I had to develop just deal with myself.

I feel much better now. But I have calmed down....partly because I am not constantly in pain. But also I learnt a lesson. That I needed to expect less of myself and be kind as my body gives up from time to time. I must learn to remind myself that there will be that time, when my body gives up completely and that I will have no choice at that time. I don't want to fight when that time comes. I don't want to be angry or sad. I don't want to feel that there is much to be done and if only I could live....I don't want that struggle. I want to be in a place where I can let my body die because that's how it's going to be. Just because...I want to be able to let it go just becasue it's time to do so.

How we see things makes our reality

I was in a terrible mood today. It was on from yesterday evening. Like clouds gathering in the horizon, getting ready for a storm. I could feel the negativity gathering inside waiting to explode and it did. It was still around when I woke up. The confusion, miserable feeling, felling of being down and feeling like I wanted to pick on something or someone. It's like having an itch that I didn't know where to scratch to get rid of it. So I felt frustrated, restless and moody.

But I did sit down for meditation. I know it was going to be a challenge. I could not focus on anything cause I was feeling unhappy, angry and simply felt like I waned to scream. As I sat on the chair skimming through the emotions there were moments of happiness and light that kept coming in and going out. It was interesting. I like it just as much as I didn't like my negative emotions, dark miserable pain spots.

I tried to look at why. Then I realized that my dark spots made me out of control as if things were falling apart around me, while I sat not being able to exert any control. Anything I did, if I did, was only aggravating the mood I was already in. Things get pulled in from all directions only to fuel the raging fire.

But when I felt even remotely okay I felt happy and in control. Everything seem to be smooth. There was no fighting. No need to feel like I wanted to scream out or scratch our my eyes. Things were clam. I didn't have to or needed to change anything. I kept looking at what was happening. Was it my ego crashing? Was it my ego wanting exert control?

Then suddenly it hit me out of nowhere, that it was simply the nature of things. The impermanence of it all. I cannot always be happy, it too ends. Then unhappiness arrives. But that too does not last long. It changes back to happiness. What causes my problem is my own views, reactions and thoughts on each one of them.

I think I should be happy. Its good for me and everyone else. I don't want to be unhappy. I don't think its good. But no matter what I think, its not true. Both these states are part of me. Its like the seasons. No matter how much I like or don't like winter, it's going to come. Its part of nature. If I dislike winter, then I can have a miserable time during that season. If I like it then I will be happy. But how happy or now happy I am is not dictated by the seasons. Its dictated by my view of it.

Its the same with my emotions. I view my happy moods as good and unhappy moods as bad.  But irrespective of how I feel about them, they are going to come. But I can change my view of them. I don't have to be so repulsed by one and so taken up by the other. What determines how I go through them is my views and my likes and dislikes. If I could simply let go of my views then neither type of emotions and moods can have a controlling effect on me. So my emotional world will be in harmony not in turmoil.

Kamma

One of the key tenets of Buddhism is Kamma. Basically it's consequences of your actions, words and thoughts. Yes, each of these forms can reap consequences. Last night at the meditation group sitting, we had a discussion about Kamma. Kamma is not something you can wrap your head around with ease....in fact the Buddha had specifically said not to try to figure it out, because it is not within our capabilities. It was interesting listening to different opinions and views of people about Kamma. No one could put a finger to it but they were trying anyway. 

I think there is a controller in all of us. We would like to know wouldn't we? One of the meditators said, he thought of Kamma as a formula. From the way he expressed himself I gathered that he felt there should be direct consequences for actions. But also felt that depending on the severity of what he did, the consequences ought to change accordingly in its severity also. It was interesting to listen to. At the end he said that he would like to see it as a law but probably he should not do that, because he could not arrive at a conclusion as to how to figure out the possible consequences he might have to face for the things he had said and done in the past. He felt it was not as straightforward as how a law would be carried out and punishments dealt out. 

First of all I want to be very clear about something. Nowhere in Buddhism there is a concept of punishment. We can never be subject to punishment cause there is no one to carry it out. The ownership is on the individual. So worse we can do is, have guilt and resentment for our past and fear and apprehension for the future. The Buddha did not encourage either of those behaviors. In Buddism, anything is forgivable and should be, to ease our own burdens. Then the other thing is that Kamma is a law. But it's not a law written by someone or proclaimed by someone. The Buddha simply stated what was there in nature. He simply noticed how things unfolded and told us that it was there. He did not invent it. 

So if Kamma is the law of nature, then trying to figure it out does not make sense, cause none of us has been able to make sense of nature. Why things happen the way they happen, when and where and how often. It's not yet within our grasp. I felt the same about Kamma. It is a law and we are subjected to it but we don't know the rules. I find that fascinating. Something Ajhan Brahm always says is "relax, everything is out of control". I feel how profound his statement is considering what I recognized. 

We all want to know. So we would like to believe that Kamma happens in a predictable way. If we could think like this, we could come to a place where we can see what we might and might not face in our own lives now and in the future. Wouldn't that be comforting? I realize that like everything else, the ego needs support, a sense of predictability so that it can have a sense of continuity in the safest way possible. But this cannot happen. Because Kamma cannot be easily explained or projected. But the human mind would want to somehow figure it out. Its the nature of all living being.

I realized the gentlemen who was voicing his frustrations probably didn't know or recognized any of this. But I was really looking at myself. I like to know things and feel that things are somewhat predictable...if they cannot be predicted I'd like to, at least, have the sense that things are going to be okay. If there are warning signs I immediately take remedial action. I felt Kamma posed a similar challenge. But it's not something I can figure out no matter how scary, frustrated I feel about it. It's truly not within our control.

Then I realized that in it, is our lesson from the Buddha. Because we cannot predict and explain why and why not things happen, when they happen and all that, we at some point ought to drop if off of our minds. Just like Ajhan says. 

Now I have a trip coming up. I am going to practice this as much as I can without having to be crazy about having things so perfectly in the best  possible way. Today morning I felt a little tingling sensation in my back and I could immediately see my red lights going off. The projects of my mind as to how to handle a back problem. But nothing has even begun. But this is how it is. 

Trying to live in the moment with a sense of ease without having everything figured out is something that I have been trying for sometime. Like all other things, it comes and goes. There are times that I can drop it and get on with ease and there other times that I cannot and simply become a ball of knots. Now that what has been in my awareness and thoughts are written out and elaborated I hope my mind will find it easier to drop things off and rest in peace. 

Fear is all consuming

It was only a few weeks ago that the Paris terrorist attacks happened. It was awful. In the wake of it, people continue to go about their business but in fear. Soon after the attacks, the media spread quite a lot of fear in their coverage of the news. It was like putting fuel into a roaring fire. I was angered at the attacks and wanted revenge upon those who would carry out such a violent act of crime. At first I let my emotions and the anger and fear let out by people wash over me. I can see my anger flaring and my thirst for revenge in the form of justice and freedom take over my heart. 

Then after a few days I calmed down. I began to ponder over the events and what would happen if I too became that fuel in the fire. Then I started to recognize that there is only one way we can come out of such a tragedy no matter where it happens. That way is through love and endurance. I recognized that if we are to take a path other than love and endurance we simply become what we want to eradicate. In the name of justice we become the perpetrators. That to me was not an option. I hope those who read my blog would recognize the nature of our deepest desires and not let emotions overwhelm them. Not let our logic dictates to us to do the very thing that we seek to destroy. Instead to look into our hearts and love and endure as we should do in the name of being a "Human".

Fear is a powerful weapon. But one that is like a double-edged sword. It has the power to destroy both sides. But fear is also what has kept us alive and on top of the food chain for eons. Its a primitive force that seeks to survive even at its own peril. It is also an illusion. But it can gather so much momentum that it always takes its own form. Therefore the fact that its an illusion tends to lose its argument pretty fast. But over the years in meditation I have found out that it is an illusion. But one that has so much power that it can take complete possess of our very being and drive us to do things unimaginable. 

Fear also gives rise to emotions such as anger, revenge, jealousy, resentment, hatred. Fear arises when one feels a sense of threat to ones self and sense of well-being. But fear is a response to an object-internal or external. I will call it a defense mechanism. It has a sense of logic to it. It seems rational but its like a mirage. Promises a lot but cannot deliver cause it has no existence other than in how we respond to it. 

I am always amazed at this. Even though I know, vaguely I might say, that this is true, my actions and words at times can be completely under its tight grip. 

Every terrorist is under the grip of fear. It is fear that makes us want to impose ourselves over others, oppressing others. This is not only in terrorists. If we are honest within ourselves there is a little of this in each one of us. We want to conquer and leave our mark, no matter how big or small. If this is threatened we will fight for it. This is the very simple explanation I can see for all terror activities whether its the Paris attacks or a husband beating his wife. At the bottom of it is fear of not being able to stay in control. 

After the attacks, the news media and social media and every other person was also in the grip of fear. It was fulled by speculation and fact. But at the end of the day people were driven into the arms of fear. When we are in fear, we will lose all sense. We only see it as a fight or flight response. In this day and age, only a few will seek to flight. We will find ways to fight it one way or another. The more we have the intention to fight, the more we will. When one fights it triggers a response similar to that in the other person,  unless that other person is in a deeply spiritual place. So the chain effect unfolds. This is why I recognized that we cannot fight this with more anger and more fear. There has to be a point when we let it go. 

When fear is no more, we can breath. Our backs are no longer to the wall and we don't feel like we have to fight and go out with all guns blazing. It is only at such a time that we can love and endure. I believe Ghandis' doctrine was something similar. It will take much more effort to love and endure. It certainly is not the quick and easy way out. But it is the only sure way out. In a world where we are so driven by 'quick and fast', enduring and love seem like a crazy idea. It is also our nemesis. Because the more we see it as crazy and the more we cannot endure the more we can be driven to the point of violence in ourselves. 

This is what the terrorist hope for. They want us to fight back. Without that they will with time lose momentum. They will lose their fame and following. But it will take time. However that will be the sure path. If we succumb to their fighting with more fighting, then we hand them over free reins to what they do. They then will have a real cause to fight for. I don't think we should do that. For the our sake and for the sake of the well being of all of us and the future of this world. 

I hope leaders in this world will see this and will be in a place to tell their people the right path to take. More than that my hope is each one of us will see the trap this can create for our long term well being and allow themselves the freedom to love and endure.