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Tuesday, 07 November 2006 17:25 |
By JEREMY MORRISON
Vietnam veteran, author and Buddhist monk Claude AnShin Thomas brought his message of overcoming suffering to Asheville on Sept. 1, urging people to confront and deal with the pain in their lives.
"The cure of suffering does not mean suffering vanishes," Thomas said. "It means you have a different relationship with suffering."
Thomas presented a lecture titled, "Steps Into the Open: What is War? What is Peace?" to a gathering of more than 100 people at UNC Ashevilleës Lipinsky Auditorium.
Before speaking, the robed monk lit a candle on a table beside him, pressed his palms together and drew a few deep breaths.
"I need my John Deere hat," he laughed, shielding his eyes from the auditorium spotlights as he looked out over the crowd.
"Rarely do
people have the opportunity to really see me ÇƒÓ to know who I am,"
Thomas said, explaining that many people form an opinion of him based
solely on his writings. "It grates on me a little bit, like nails on a
chalkboard."
Thomas
volunteered for service in Vietnam when he was 18. His war experience,
along with an abusive childhood, set him on a journey to learn how to
cope with suffering. That journey culminated in 1995, when he was
ordained as a Zen Buddhist priest.
Thomas said that
his process can be broken down into four steps: realizing there is
suffering; identifying the cause of the suffering; realizing that where
there is a cause, there is a cure; and the cure itself.
His own own trial of suffering stems in large part from the Vietnam War, he noted.
"War is a
terrible thing, but it isnët purely terrible," he said, adding that his
experience has allowed him to help others. "I have an opportunity to
bring healing to all this suffering."
The message he
emphasized most heavily throughout the evening was the breaking of
violent cycles. Violence answered with violence breeds more violence
and suffering, he told the audience.
"Peace,
nonviolence ÇƒÓ these are all important topics to me," Thomas said.
"Violence is never a solution. Not ever. War is not an effective form
of conflict resolution. Not ever."
Thomas said that
his own cycle of violence began generations before he was born. His
father had fought in World War II and fostered a militant culture, as
had many generations of fighting men before him.
"My fatherës war
experience set me up for the military," Thomas said, describing himself
as a young child at an American Legion hall listening to veterans talk
of their glory days in battle.
Following his
time in Vietnam, Thomas said he tried to dull his suffering through the
use of intoxicants. At that time, the suffering manifested itself as
anger.
"In the end,
anger just brought me more anger," he said. "Greed just led to more
greed. I couldnët find the place I wanted to find."
Internal
suffering, when left unattended, slowly kills the spirit and eventually
leads to physical death, he said. Thomas cited his father as an example
of someone who never dealt with his suffering.
"I watched my father die on an installment plan," he told the audience.
Thomas
emphasized that dealing with suffering does not mean it disappears. He
spoke of how his suffering still affects him, causing him to be
ill-at-ease in large crowds or inciting irrational fears of booby traps
in the grocery store.
"Itës unlikely
Iëm gonna take a can of black-eyed peas from the shelf in Ingles and
everythingës going to blow up," Thomas told the audience.
Nonetheless,
such fears plague him while shopping, he said, adding that he uses such
stressful moments as opportunities to confront his fear and for
meditation. "I can come back to my breath and establish a conscious
contact with these feelings."
At that point, a
woman seated beside Thomas on stage rang a small bell in an effort to
center the monk and his audience. Thomas bowed toward her before
continuing the talk.
Thomas then spoke of his sometime-awkward relationship with the current anti-war movement.
"They automatically think that Iëm aligned with them," he said. "And itës true; and itës not true."
Calling them
"peace imperialists," Thomas explained that the anti-war movement holds
its own vision of what peace is and tries to impose that vision of the
world. He cited Mother Teresa as saying she would attend a peace rally,
but never an anti-war rally.
Thomas, however,
has attended anti-war rallies. He described a scene in which activists
ÇƒÓ many adorned with the peace sign ÇƒÓ were full of hatred and anger.
"Iëm not a
political person, Iëm a monk," he said. "We canët arrive at peace
through politics. Politics are just too polarizing."
Instead, Thomas suggested, true change must happen on an individual level ÇƒÓ that one must "live the change."
"If we want the world to be different," he said, "it really can be different."
However, Thomas said he purposefully does not know what such a change would entail.
"I want the
world to be different and I have no idea what that means," the monk
said. "If I know what that means, Iëm in trouble."
While Thomasë
suffering emerged after combat experience, he noted that suffering has
many sources. In closing, he urged the audience members to face their
own suffering and use it as a source of growth.
"We all have our Vietnams," he said. "We all do ÇƒÓ if weëre willing to wake up to that."
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