Dharma Topic: Submission, Rebellion, or Reconciliation

Dear Still Water Friends,

This Thursday evening, September 28, 2006, after our meditation period we will practice the guided movement meditation we call the Five Touchings of the Earth.

The first four of the five touchings help us acknowledge our place in the flow of life. They help us see our relationships with our blood family, our spiritual family, our country, and with those we love. They help us to connect with where we come from and where we are going.

The first four touchings prepare us for the fifth touching– reconciliation with the people and the institutions that have made us suffer.

When I was younger I consciously separated myself from a close relationship with my family of origin and with my religious tradition. I felt I had to. There seemed to be no place for me, no way to continue and be true to myself. It seemed as if there were had only two choices – to remain and betray myself (Submission) or to leave and cut the relationship (Rebellion).

The fifth touching suggests another option – Reconciliation. Looking back on my life, I understand now that reconciliation requires a maturity and a strength I simply did not have then. Out of weakness, I too often saw things only in terms of the extremes: it was all good or it was all bad. And my separation was fueled by an emotional antipathy that often surprised me with its sharpness.

As I now understand it, true reconciliation is possible only when we are able to access our strengths. We are able to look at what appears to us as healthy or toxic - in others, in institutions, and in ourselves - from a place of stability and compassion. We are able to recognize our continuity with our blood, spiritual, and land ancestors. And we fully realize, rationally and emotionally, that we can choose in our lives to act in ways that accord with our deepest aspiration.

You are invited to join us this Thursday for our meditation and our program. In our discussion we will share our personal experiences with submission, rebellion, and reconciliation.

The full text of the Five Touchings is available on our website (Click Here). Below is an excerpt on reconciliation from a 1998 Dharma Talk by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Warm Wishes,

Mitchell Ratner
Senior Teacher

"Reconciling With Our Roots," from a Dharma Talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh on August 2, 1998, in Plum Village, France.

When I came to the West, I did not come as a missionary. I came in order to call for an end to the Vietnamese war. Because I am a monk, wherever I go, I have to practice sitting meditation, walking meditation, and breathing. Young people in the West agreed with me, and wanted to work with me to bring an end to the war between the United States and Vietnam, and they learned how to breathe, they learned how to eat in mindfulness. While they participated in these things, they felt well, they felt light and happy, and they said, "Please, Thay, please teach us the way of practicing mindfulness. That is why I wrote books like The Miracle of Mindfulness, to help my young friends to be able to practice mindfulness. When that book was first published, it was called The Miracle of Being Awake, because I was afraid that the term "mindfulness" was a little too specialized. After that book had been published, Pax Christi in England liked the book very much, and they published it again, for people in their organization to be able to use. The people who did this were very intelligent, they were able to recognize the value of mindfulness practice in Buddhism for their own tradition, and their own congregation used this. I remember in California that there was an order of Catholic nuns who used this book for all the students of that order.

My friends encouraged me to lead retreats, where so many people have learned mindfulness, and I have never said, "Please give up your tradition to follow me." I say, "If you are Jewish, please do not abandon your Jewish roots. You can study Buddhism with me, but that will help you to go back to Judaism and discover the jewels in Judaism, that may have been covered up by layers, so that you haven’t seen them. If you are Christian, please do not abandon your Christian roots, do not abandon your Christian ancestors." . . . Even though you are angry with your church, with your priests, with your parents, you should know that those are your roots, and you come from those roots. So I encourage you, come to the Buddhist monastery, learn how to practice mindfulness, and then you will see that in your own spiritual tradition there are jewels, and you will return to that tradition, and help re-establish those jewels in your tradition. Although there are negative things there, which have made the young people leave that church, try to find the jewels in your own tradition, so that the young people will have something to go back to, and there can be reconciliation between yourself and your ancestral tradition, and between yourself and your parents.

We have to reconcile not only with our spiritual traditions, but also with our blood traditions, and this is going back home. A tree which has been cut off from its roots cannot be happy. If you dig up a tree, and you put it in a strange environment, even though you give it a lot of fertilizer, it cannot be happy. A person is the same: if you pull it up by its roots, and put it down somewhere else, it will not be happy. I am very aware of this, and that is why I have never encouraged anybody to give up his or her roots. I say, "You are Christian; do not give up your Christian roots. You are Jewish; do not give up your Jewish roots. This practice of mindfulness will help you to return to your roots, to transform the things that have gone wrong in your tradition, and allow the bright things to shine out again from your tradition." Therefore, I am determined to do that only, and I will never allow somebody to lose their roots, and I will always encourage people to go back to their roots. . . . We have been wandering for so many generations, and we must return home in order to re-establish the relationship with our parents, reconcile with our native land, and reconcile with our spiritual ancestors.