Friday, March 18, 2022

Invasions

 Irusu the little dog usually enjoys pottering around the garden in the morning, sniffing at everything and looking at the birds and squirrels, soaking up the sunshine. Not this morning.

Today she left it as late as she could manage to go outside at all, then she just hid behind a shrub to do what all dogs have to, and positively ran back to the house, like a person urgently needing the safety of a hiding place.

She sits in the corner of the sofa, staring moodily across the room to the bright spring day outside, trembling.

"What's the matter Irusu? Come and have a cup of tea with us," says Danshari, who has been discussing some of the finer points of Buddhist philosophy with Hanafubuki.

Wretchedly, her tail between her legs and her ears down, her whole being drooping, still looking shaky, Irusu comes to join them.




"What's up, Ru?" Danshari says.

Irusu gazes at him, her eyes two pools of dread and despair.

"Yūgen says President Putin has invaded England," she says, her voice wobbly.




Danshari frowns, puzzled. "What? England? No, he hasn't. He's invaded Ukraine. In fact, some of the people from Ukraine — not as many as we'd like or as fast as we wanted, but that's another conversation — are coming here to live in England where they can be safe. I think you must have got the wrong end of the stick."

"I doubt it," says Hanafubuki. "Irusu is usually very clear on matters of personal security. What did Yūgen say to you, Ru? Tell us exactly."

"Well," quavers Irusu, "I'd seen all the tanks and explosions on the news, and the people at the railway station trying to get away to somewhere safe; and I said to Yūgen that I was scared.  I was frightened that President Putin would come here and ruin our lives and spoil our home and everything would be terrifying and our peace would be gone and nothing would be nice any more, not ever again. And Yūgen said, 'He already has.' And then she got up and went out of the room."




"Oh, I see!" Danshari's face clears. "I think, Ru darling, Yūgen was talking about attitude. I'll have to check, of course — though I'm certain President Putin hasn't invaded England — but I think what Yūgen meant is about responsibility. You know, to hold our light steady and practice cheerfulness, and keep a calm centre of peace. You know? To breathe in to our hearts, be kind to one another. Not that we ignore what's happening in Ukraine, not at all. If you have any money to help the people who are having to start again, I can help you find the most helpful place to donate it. But if you haven't got any money, you can still close your eyes and go into the quiet place in your heart, and send them waves of love and hope out of the fountain of light inside you."

"Unicorn light," chips in Hanafubuki. "That's the best sort. Sparkly white, with little rainbow crystal glints in it. Send them that. It's very transformative."




"So . . . President Putin hasn't invaded our country? Everything's going to be okay?"

Danshari looks at her. That's a tricky question, he thinks.




"We . . . we live in turbulent times," he says. "But if my guess about what Yūgen meant is right, then I think the 'Everything's going to be okay' part has to come from us. It has to come from the inside, not the outside. That's what she meant. Not to let your heart, the living core of you, be invaded by the sorrows of the world. Even the ones in England."

"See my horn?" Hanafubuki lowers it a bit to bring its sparkle down to where Irusu can't help seeing it because it's right there. "You have to kind of imagine you have one too. Unicorn horns are made of light."

"BUT I'M NOT A UNICORN!" wails Irusu.




"I said, imagine. Is that hard to do?"

"When I walk along the road," says Danshari softly, "I say quietly, over and over — provided there's no one else right there — that thing you just said, Ru: 'Everything is going to be okay.' Over and over I say it. For myself, for Ukraine, for the whole aching world. I say it because I am part of God (and so are you), and when God said, 'Let there be light,' there was light. So I'm experimenting with 'Everything is going to be okay'."

Irusu stares at him. "Is it working? Is everything going to be okay?" she wants to know.

Danshari hesitates. "In the end," he says. "But in the meantime, do you feel a little bit better?"

Irusu considers. She feels comforted by Danshari's kind face across the table, and Hanafubuki sitting just there next to her. "Yes," she admits.

"Well maybe," says Danshari, "that's the first step to being okay. Maybe that will have to do for now."

He makes a mental note to have a word with Yūgen.


Saturday, March 12, 2022

How to live when there are no answers

 


I am sure you know this: time and space live in intimate relationship. This is why history rests always on geography.

Kanso, who likes life to be simple and quiet — unadorned, you might say — knows that sometimes peace is found only by long waiting. Tonight, when he wants some time with nothing else in it, to sit with Danshari and talk things through, he has to hold the space inside himself until the children have gone to bed, Two Hours Max and Hineni are deep into a game of chess, and the other animals have gone out in the moonlight as darkness falls — all except for Irusu who prefers dozing on the warm hearth rug in the comfortable presence of Shanti and Sophia and Auntie Jessie. Technically, Ananda too; but he's fast asleep in his chair, so only notionally present.

And now the two of them — Kanso and Danshari — are alone, with enough space around them for proper conversation.

"This war," says Kanso; "it stirs up memories."

Danshari says nothing. He can see it would. He just listens. 

"There were times," Kanso says, "when I couldn't find any more courage; when I was there only because I had to be. There were nights when we huddled in sodden blankets, holding the little ones to keep them warm, all of us in a two-man tent, knowing we must be awake before dawn, because the police would come and trash everything — and we needed to save a little bread, not lose our phones, make sure we hung on to a blanket for tomorrow. I didn't know, Danshari, how to be. Or even who I had become — if I still existed, if you see what I mean. I was cold. I was hungry. I was tired beyond telling. That is who I was — all I was. I'm not sure I even felt afraid any more; fear takes energy."

Danhari breathes quietly, and he listens. 

"I see people in their bomb shelters making coffee, sharing bread, keeping little ones amused, doing their bravest best to be cheerful and calm while the city explodes and burns and the buildings fall. I want so much for it to stop — for there to be a surprising intervention, some kind of a miracle, something that would mean life could be rebuilt and hope rise from the ashes."

He glances at Danshari, then looks down at the table. "I don't want them to go through it all; losing the people who meant the world to them, on the road with only what they can stuff in rucksacks, sheltering under bridges, lining up for soup given out by volunteers, not knowing where to go or how to get there. Tired and cold and damp and dirty and hungry and feeling ill — all the time, every day. Danshari, I don't want it to happen to them."

Before he lost everything, Kanso already knew the magic of simplicity; he developed the practice of it into a super-power. He knew that if you live with very little, and own almost nothing, you can extend your possibilities to an astonishing degree. When those days came in which people's homes and possessions turned themselves into weapons of the enemy — became avalanches of rubble, heaps of twisted metal, flew from their shelves on the shaking walls — having very little showed its advantages. Sleeping on the floor wrapped in a blanket feels less severe when it is the familiar everyday way of doing things anyhow. 

But almost nothing and actual nothing are very different things. Simplicity is not the same as destitution. Kanso believes simplicity enriches everyone's life; he wouldn't wish destitution on his worst enemy.

Because he holds silence inside the chambers of his heart; because he has lived with simplicity so long, he is able to put his hand now on what he really means, and eventually he manages to say it to Danshari.

"I just don't think I can bear any more of it," he says.




Danshari doesn't try to appropriate anyone else's feelings. He doesn't look for comparisons in his own emotions or experiences. 

He just sits in silence with his friend and sees the tears begin to fall.




The whole world, he thinks, probably can't take any more. The whole Earth is worn out. This was supposed to be our chance — the last chance we would ever have — to find our way in to healing, and peace. This was our time to make it right again, to give the trees and the sky and the waters some space to breathe. It wasn't meant for bombs. 

Danshari offers no false hopes, but no bitter counsel of despair either. 

He sits at the table with Kanso, and lets it just be what it is.

Having a friend to live through it with you is what makes it possible.
 




Danshari knows that. 



Invasions

  Irusu the little dog usually enjoys pottering around the garden in the morning, sniffing at everything and looking at the birds and squirr...