Considering that we're often used to looking for solutions primarily from outside ourselves, instead of doing the often harder work of looking within, here are two interesting meditatations on what "scars" really are, and how they affect our lives. Scars such as the ones we receive from war -- the external, obvious ones; and even the internal, less visible ones, which often mark us as profoundly. How do we come to grips with being scarred, and yet move forward in our lives effectively?
The first passage is by a Vietnam veteran, Claude Anshin Thomas, who has studied with Thich Nhat Hanh, and the other is by Den Ming Dao, a classical Taoist scholar, poet and artist.
First, Claude Anshin Thomas:
Our suffering is not our enemy
“Society teaches us that suffering is an enemy. We are constantly encouraged to reject what is unpleasant, disappointing or difficult. “What’s all this suffering? Let’s be happy! Have fun!” But our suffering is not our enemy. It is only through a relationship with my pain, my sadness, that I reach the other side, that I truly can know and touch the opposite, which is my pleasure, my joy and my happiness.“I often relate to my emotional suffering as though it were a physical pain. When I feel physical pain, society pushes me to take mediation to relieve it, not to touch it, not to explore it or seek to understand it. I am conditioned to make every effort to avoid discomfort. I went through a long period of my life living from this conditioning. I took a lot of drugs, so many that I couldn’t feel my physical pain or my emotional or spiritual pain – at the same time, it was also impossible for me to touch genuine joy, or healing, or anything at all. It was just impossible.
“My body is covered with scars from my wars. Every time I look at my body, touch one of these scars, I touch against the reality of war, and when I touch the reality of war, I touch all the suffering that is intrinsic to war. In the past, when I felt pain from a scar, I tried to repress it, to hide it from myself. But the physical wounds are not the most significant wounds of war. The wounds of the soul, the spiritual wounds, the emotional wounds – they are far deeper, though less obvious. And they are much more unpleasant to look at.
“Can I imagine a time in the future when these scars and these experiences will dissolve, drop away, so that I will finally be free? This is not actually a condition of freedom. I’m free right now. Because I can acknowledge that the scars are there. Because I no longer wish for them to be any different from what they are. Don’t get me wrong. I spent a long time wishing that the scars of my life would just go away. But the more I wished for this, the crazier I felt. Because the reality is that my scars are part of me, like my own hand. I needed to learn to acknowledge them and to live with them in peace and harmony.”
-- At Hell’s Gate: A Soldier’s Journey from War to Peace, by Claude Anshin Thomas. Boston: Shambala Press (2004).
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And now, this by Den-Ming Dao, author of the superb book of daily contemplations, 365 Tao, which always start with a short poem:
Only when the clay is soft again.
Scars upon the self disappear
Only when one becomes soft within.
Throughout our life, but especially during our youth, many scars are inflicted upon us. Some of them are the results of violence, abuse, rape, or warfare. Others arise from bad education. A few come from humiliation and failure. Others are caused by our own misadventures. Unless we recover from these injuries, the scars mar us forever.
Classical scriptures urge us to withdraw from our own lusts and sins. But scars that have happened through no fault of our own may also bar us from spiritual success. Unfortunately, it is often easier to give up a bad habit than to recover from the incisions of others' violence. The only way is through self-cultivation. Doctors and priests can only do so much. The true course of healing is up to us alone. To do this, we must acquire many methods, travel widely, struggle to overcome our personal phobias, and perhaps most importantly of all, try to acquire as few new problems as possible. Unless we do, each one of them will bar us from true communion with Tao [the life force].
-- 365 Tao, Den-Ming Dao.
