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I recently read a newspaper article about what life looks like for everyday people in Gaza these days. The article, written by a woman named Ghada Abdulfattah who lives there, appeared in The New York Times on April 10 of this year.
After describing what the streets look like and how people deal with the disappeared apartment buildings, the disappeared loved ones, and the rubble that’s everywhere, Ghada offers us this poignant sentiment:
It isn’t just the sadness of what was demolished. Seeing endless piles of concrete brings a second layer of violence – the violence of being forced to live with destruction. Rubble doesn’t just destroy the past; it erased the future. It forces your mind to stop imagining, to stop thinking, to stop dreaming about life after today.
So, in Zen and Buddhist terms, the people of Gaza are living in the realm of just this. Of no-self. And at the same time, they are living with just the facts of life. Finding food and water. Trying to stay warm. Hoping to find someone they thought was lost. Just making it through the days and the nights. And waking up each day and doing it all over again. Just this.
No-self. The facts of life. What an intersection!
We can look at no-self as being like the sun and all stars: They shine of themselves, just as people do what they must in every moment. They don’t do it as an act of will; they do it because they must … because living is what they do.
On a lighter note, it’s like that movie Quartet, directed by Dustin Hoffman, which is set in a British retirement home for famous musicians. They’re all well past their prime, but they still do music. That’s what they did in their prime, and that’s what they continue to do in their dotage. They don’t do it as an act of will; they do it because they must … because music is what they do.
I think this is how we all strive to operate in our daily lives. Like the sun and all the stars, we shine. That is, we do what we must in every moment, until we take our final breath and our hearts beat their final pulse. No-self shines of itself.
Self, or ego, trumpets its actions, but no-self shines. Because that’s what it is; that’s what it does. And we do what we do as we meet the facts of life. No-self is our ultimate silence within the word.
The New York Times writer, Ghada Abdulfattah, closes her article with these words: “We are alive, but there’s no going back to once upon a time. We are learning to live in the in-between.” So, they live in the realm of just this, of no-self.
Thank you.
EMPTY CLOUD ZEN 