Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves.Thich Nhat Hanh
I have only three enemies. My favorite enemy, the one most easily influenced for the better, is the British Empire. My second enemy, the Indian people, is far more difficult. But my most formidable opponent is a man named Mohandas K. Gandhi. With him I seem to have very little influence.
Gandhi
....this friend of mine told me about how, coming back from month-long yoga retreats she’s found herself unable to relate to her own name....I said I’m always like that....I don’t think this is a sign of my enlightenment, though, impending completed, or any which way...then, I don’t think either my name or who I really am means anything...or if it does it means something just this second and it’ll mean something else in the next....somebody, I think it might’ve been Thich Nhat Hanh, said we die with every outbreath and we’re born again with every inbreath...actually, maybe he didn’t say that...maybe it was somebody else...maybe it was me...
...anyway, I was thinking of that recently... the rebirth thing...not reincarnation in any literal sense but the sense that we can start again, at least in an internal sense...no, I don’t think I can shirk responsibility for ugly words and actions of the past...but maybe I can no longer be the person who needed to say and do them....there’s that song where Lou Reed talks about the possibility of becoming a father and says it might be fun to have a kid I could pass on to something more than rage pain anger and hurt...never mind the redundancy...I’m wondering what I’m passing on to myself...what I can pass on to myself...what I can not pass on to myself...
...I tend to be hung up on the past...my biggest regret about my adolescence is that I wasn’t more violent...really...seriously....if I had it to do over again, I’d break some bones...but endless violence inside myself can’t be my reality now...I don’t want it to be....I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen for maybe fifteen years over Indian food a month or so ago...she said she thought we were both a lot nicer than we used to be...I agreed...not as good looking but much nicer people...it’d be great to have an eighteen year old body but no way would I ever want to have an eighteen year old mind again...there’s only so much suffering a person can take....actually, that’s not true...one thing I learn working with recovering addicts is that people can suffer more than you can imagine...and yet keep trying to get well....I find that inspiring....somebody who’s been molested, beaten, abused in every way by criminals and law enforcement both and is still there has something to teach about the possibilities of rebirth...
