I came on-line to post the two words above and this photo, but a friend loaned me a movie that I just watched and as soon as I wrote "Look within" I knew there was more to be said.
"The Dhamma Brothers" follows a small group of men imprisoned in one of Alabama's worst prisons as they volunteer for ten days of meditation training, ten days of silence and learning Buddhist based techniques for dealing with stress as well as their demons. The film touches on events in a few of their young lives. There is no blaming their childhoods for their actions, just a hard look at situations stirring compassion.
One man, Grady a white fifty year old, told of his mother's leaving he and his younger brother on the front steps of a house in the country with no one around while telling them she'd be back. In the photo neither he nor his brother looked to be more than six to eight at most. Their dear faces never saw her again. She didn't come back. Many years later, after Grady had been involved in a murder, he spoke with his mother. It was only then he learned the reason he and his brother had been left. His mother feared not being able to care for them. Thus she abandoned them.
This man's story along with others made me think of how We, Society, abandon people, let them down, first in their childhoods and also through the prison system. Someone, somewhere let this mother down by not reaching our to her. Or maybe she let herself down by not looking within and having the courage to reach past shame and ask for help. Would a system, a neighbor, anyone have responded to her potentially reaching out?
This is not something I necessarily want to write about or even ponder on a Saturday night as I go to bed. It is not easy to write about anytime. There are no easy answers. This idea though that came to me when I photographed the insides of the tulip tree flower, this idea of "looking within" is something that this beautiful flower and the Dhamma brothers insist I do more of.
This not looking within is the thing I rail against in so many politicians who make laws and corporations that "buy" laws deceiving the public and possibly themselves, laws impacting generations to come as well as Mother Earth.
I want to sometimes shout from the tallest building with the biggest megaphone "We can do so much better than this" because we can.
For tonight, as I turn in I will turn in. I will remember how one of the officials in the movie referred to someone who robs as being so much more than a robber and one who murders is more than a murderer. I need to apply this to the politician and CEO whose new laws seem increasingly to benefit private companies and rob the poor and middle class. I need to apply this to the sports person in Alaska who in low flying helicopters stalks wolves and calls this hunting. I need to apply this to the part of myself that robs me of wisdom when I don't listen or kills off presence when I'm on autopilot.
I want to believe it is possible like the men in "The Dhamma Brothers" did to look within and birth a world where prisons ultimately aren't fed our young men and CEO's, politicians and regular folks like me aren't imprisoned unknowingly by greed and fear.
Like the blossom, I want to believe we all hold inner beauty and that we are all so much more.
-Dawn! The Good News Muse, 26 March 2011
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