Reader Valerie wrote in with a link to one Buddhist Community’s response to the Las Vegas shooting. It’s lovely of course and I’ll include the link here: Soka Gakkai International – USA link ~ https://tinyurl.com/y7z6joar
As I read the article, their message felt clearly to be the default understanding on the topic that every clear and heart-centered being would have. Readers of this blog are already on board with this.
I’ll take this opportunity to offer some information about my own upbringing on the topic of firearms. My Dad was a hunter, and a successful one at that. The reason he was successful was because he had respect for Nature.
He made sure his gun was sighted properly, and he took care of his equipment. Target practice was a priority so that his aim would be true and there would be no suffering.
An intimate study of the habits of his prey was key to getting close enough to a deer in order to drop it while it’s browsing. Much better than tracking a wounded animal, and the meat is better.
My Father never would leave trash in the woods and he made certain that every one of his kids knew how to handle a gun and where the safety was. We all saw the animals that he brought home, blood, fur and mess…and it was normal. And we ate what he brought home.
Fast forward to today, when mass shootings take place in this country on a horribly-regular basis. I’m not sure how many actual citizens are against removing from our lives the kinds of weapons used in these events. Yet our legislators resist mightily when virtually any kind of sensible laws about limiting our access to guns comes up.
That’s another story though…how the overlords of our “elected representatives” love it when we kill one another off.
If only this country wasn’t infused with a belief that seems to be in our very bones that tells us we need to have guns. The history books tell us that the United States of America was founded on the principle of independence from the crown of England, right?
We had to fight our own government with privately formed militias in order to choose how we wished to live and be.
The American Revolution succeeded because we wanted freedom so passionately, or so my high-school teacher told me. In any case, we actually needed firearms in order to prevail. That seemed to be the best and only course of action in order for us to achieve the goal of freedom.
We Americans seem to be stuck in that Revolutionary War. I mean, where the Human organism is wounded is where it stops growing…could that not be true for a country as well?
We seem to think that if we have every freedom imaginable to purchase actual weapons of war, we can uphold our constitutional rights should our own government move against us.
Well wait a second…that’s already happened! It seems that a great many of us still just really don’t care to see it. And they have bigger guns. Do we play chicken and see who’s willing to see blood in the streets?
Maybe what this country needs is a massive Soul Retrieval. Track down that part of us that knows we’re far more powerful when we unite and join together in Love to overcome injustice and hatred. We were never meant to be so tied up in survival and making sure that we got ours, even if it was at the expense of our neighbor.
Isn’t it time we decide for ourselves how this world is going to work? We can choose every day to be kind, to hold the door for someone, smile at a stranger…be an Anchor for Peace within the self and be a Beacon of Light.
The MSM news is swollen with grief and horror. The man in the White House is quite the incendiary device, a brilliant distraction and a generator of negative Human emotion. Are we truly willing to allow our feelings to be manipulated for even another minute?
Let’s focus our immensely powerful attention on bringing the good, true and beautiful to the forefront of people’s consciousness. There are many beautiful stories of people helping one another and joining together, with no question of race or wealth ever coming up.
That’s who we are and it’s gorgeous! What better stuff to put our attention on and give more power to?