It seems in the wee hours of the morning, self is stripped away. For some reason, my most often insatiable ego, is not searching for something to latch onto at 4am. The Buddhist me isn't looking for the wisdom in everything, the punk rock me isn't trying to push anyones buttons, the activist me isn't searching for a new cause to rally around. Is it cause no one is looking, that this burden of self isn't here right now? Everything is peaceful, everything seems okay.
But gnawing at the back of my heart is an emptiness. Like when Ram Dass describes his experience with LSD, that eventually everything, came to a "one-pointedness". This, some people will claim, is the goal. If so, than why do I feel lacking? Not in a desperate sense, as most my encounters of "emptiness" feel, but more of an emotional understanding of "not yet". Or is this the failed human conditioning, a true understanding of dukha?
Or maybe I am just bored, and can't sleep.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Junkies and Losers...
This was written in response to comments made on oregonlive.com, about homelessness in Portland. The commenters were compassionate towards "those who deserve it" (whatever that means) while using terms like "junkie street kids with aggressive dogs" and losers":
"These "losers" and "junkie street kids" are suffering human beings. Did you ever stop to think that there may be some kind of horrible conditioning that led them to such a state in their lives. Sure we can get annoyed and bothered when it appears that all "those people" (blatantly not realizing that whether we like it or not, they are part of our community) are all just out to take.
I was a homeless drug addict and alcoholic for 13 years. The life that preceded such a tragic life was not a pretty one. My mother had abandoned me to cook crystal meth, left me with an violent alcoholic father who was later murdered in life, I was kicked out of my house at the age of 11 for shaming my father, later to wind up in Maclaren for trying to survive on the streets, I took up prostitution by the age of 14, all but three of my friends have been murdered, OD'd, commited suicide, or are either in jail or in an insane asylum for life. So instead of judging people because they either pull at our heart strings, or inconvenience our little selfish world, or they, what is mostly likely the truth, force us to look at the brutal truth of what our perfect delusional little world has turned into,we might realize that WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE. I am just as guilty as the next, and probabaly even more so, because I suffer from the same disease as everyone else, which is the failure to see a human being, when we look at a human being.
The services for drug addiction and alcoholism in this state are abysmal, yet we claim to be so liberal. We feed and clothe the homeless, therefore putting a band-aid on a shotgun wound. We are all so opposed to war, that we tend to forget that the men and women who have fought for their chosen ideal, have only done what they thought was best, and therefore forgetting the validation every human needs and deserves. We have placed CHILDREN in positions to be tried as adults (whatever that is supposed to discern) and therefore completely robbed them of any chance of rehabilitation. Do we honestly believe that humanity has regressed so much, to insist that murderes and rapists are born and not made?
Maybe, just maybe, the problem does not lie so much in the individual, but in the foul callousness that we have achieved, as a whole society. I am not saying that people should not be held accountable for their actions, but I would hope that we would look for what creates such "mosters" as we have come to regard them as. How much longer can we continue to point the finger at the world around us, blaming everyone else for the state of the nation, while we continue to work in our comfotable little jobs, drive our fancy little cars, and go home to our safe neighborhoods, while there are women and children sleeping in the street, while trusting little boys are being raped by priests and teachers, while a child is doing life in prison because he commited a crime at the age of 15 and had to adapt to prison life, where murder and rape are not only the norm, but a means of survival? If I haven't done anything to ammend the situation today, and everyday, then it is not fault of the "loser homeless junkie" who has inconvenienced my joyous little downtown shopping spree, but me. I am the only one to blame.
"These "losers" and "junkie street kids" are suffering human beings. Did you ever stop to think that there may be some kind of horrible conditioning that led them to such a state in their lives. Sure we can get annoyed and bothered when it appears that all "those people" (blatantly not realizing that whether we like it or not, they are part of our community) are all just out to take.
I was a homeless drug addict and alcoholic for 13 years. The life that preceded such a tragic life was not a pretty one. My mother had abandoned me to cook crystal meth, left me with an violent alcoholic father who was later murdered in life, I was kicked out of my house at the age of 11 for shaming my father, later to wind up in Maclaren for trying to survive on the streets, I took up prostitution by the age of 14, all but three of my friends have been murdered, OD'd, commited suicide, or are either in jail or in an insane asylum for life. So instead of judging people because they either pull at our heart strings, or inconvenience our little selfish world, or they, what is mostly likely the truth, force us to look at the brutal truth of what our perfect delusional little world has turned into,we might realize that WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE. I am just as guilty as the next, and probabaly even more so, because I suffer from the same disease as everyone else, which is the failure to see a human being, when we look at a human being.
The services for drug addiction and alcoholism in this state are abysmal, yet we claim to be so liberal. We feed and clothe the homeless, therefore putting a band-aid on a shotgun wound. We are all so opposed to war, that we tend to forget that the men and women who have fought for their chosen ideal, have only done what they thought was best, and therefore forgetting the validation every human needs and deserves. We have placed CHILDREN in positions to be tried as adults (whatever that is supposed to discern) and therefore completely robbed them of any chance of rehabilitation. Do we honestly believe that humanity has regressed so much, to insist that murderes and rapists are born and not made?
Maybe, just maybe, the problem does not lie so much in the individual, but in the foul callousness that we have achieved, as a whole society. I am not saying that people should not be held accountable for their actions, but I would hope that we would look for what creates such "mosters" as we have come to regard them as. How much longer can we continue to point the finger at the world around us, blaming everyone else for the state of the nation, while we continue to work in our comfotable little jobs, drive our fancy little cars, and go home to our safe neighborhoods, while there are women and children sleeping in the street, while trusting little boys are being raped by priests and teachers, while a child is doing life in prison because he commited a crime at the age of 15 and had to adapt to prison life, where murder and rape are not only the norm, but a means of survival? If I haven't done anything to ammend the situation today, and everyday, then it is not fault of the "loser homeless junkie" who has inconvenienced my joyous little downtown shopping spree, but me. I am the only one to blame.
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