Claude AnShin Thomas
Question: When you go to the Ukraine, or other places that have been plagued by war, what is it that you do that helps?
I do not go there, or anywhere, with the intention of helping the people I encounter. Our ideas of helping just create more suffering. I go there to experience the place and to offer what I offer wherever I go, namely, the tools of Zen practice.
Just being in the Ukraine is a meditation practice in and of itself. I need to allow the circumstances to educate me, to inform me. I need to be willing to just be present with the people there–and to pay attention to what rises up in me in response. I work with that. That is the point of practice.
Consider this: The Ukraine is at war, but what are the murder statistics in Philadelphia? How many people are killed by guns in the US? How many mass shootings have there been? How many assaults? It is important not to view war as something happening only in far-away war zones, external and removed from us.
Practice supports me in waking up to the roots of war, violence, and suffering in me, to the many ways in which I perpetuate it, in ways that might be overt or subtle. So when I go to a place like the Ukraine, it is not as if I am leaving some place that is safe and going to some place that is not safe. As a result of my military service, I am acutely aware of the fragility of life, of existence–how at any given moment the world around me can explode in violence. Most of us tend to move around imagining that we are living in a bubble of safety. This is an illusion.
Last time I was in the Ukraine, each morning my assistant and I would go for a walk to the local shopping area. We had coffee in a café, went to the grocery store, just walking around like we would at home. On our last day there, our host brought us to a café overlooking the Black Sea. People were on the beach, swimming in the water. This was a war zone. We were getting missile alerts several times a day, but people were conducting themselves so as to create some sense of normalcy.
When I go to the Ukraine or to another war zone, practice means bearing witness to all of that, being present with it. I also offer the people living there the tools and possibilities of Zen practice, which can support them in being present to how they are affected by the war, not hiding from that. Practice can also support them when they feel overwhelmed or frightened, bringing them back into contact with this moment. I offer them the awareness that in this present moment, all possibilities exist–and that they are not alone.
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