[From a talk given by Eve Marko on May 11, 2014]
The founder of Japanese Soto Zen, Eihei Dogen, said:
“What is practice?”
“Everywhere, nothing is hidden.”
I keep going back to these words when I think about the Zen Peacemakers’ retreat in Rwanda a month ago. What was it that struck me so poignantly about Rwandans and how they have worked with the genocide of 20 years ago, in which 1,000,000 Rwandans were killed in 100 days? What caused me to feel such admiration for them? My roots lie in the European Holocaust. Both my parents did what most East European Jewish survivors did, they left Europe as refugees after World War II. People ended up in Israel, the United States, Latin America, and Canada.
But Rwandans can’t leave. In Rwanda, I was told, every person over 20 years old falls in one of three categories: Perpetrator, Survivor, Rescuer. Those younger than 20 are children of people who fall into those categories. There are no secrets here. Among the retreat participants were a mother and daughter. The mother was raped in 1994; the daughter was born out of that rape and knows it, it’s no secret. We heard of a group of women who’d been raped, a group of the men who raped them, and after much separate therapy and work the women are beginning to talk to their rapists because, after all, they are the fathers of their children.
There is Juliette and her daughter, Pauline, who was a one-month infant 20 years ago held by her mother who promised Jesus to serve him all her days if he would preserve her daughter. How does the young woman feel about that prayer, knowing that her father and two brothers were massacred that same night?
There is the Hutu mother who rescued Tutsis, including a young boy who now, at the age of 26, is still looking for his own parents whose bodies were never recovered. And there is the woman who lost her arm, and the man who hacked it off—all there in the retreat, in one broken circle.
“What is practice?”
“Everywhere, nothing is hidden.”
What is this place where there are no secrets, no escape, not even exile? This, Dogen says, is the place of practice. In actuality, nothing is ever hidden, everything manifests openly all the time, only due to our own preferences, our likes and dislikes, we don’t recognize it. In the Rwanda retreat we created a field in which many truths were spoken. People talked of what they did, what they didn’t do, what they suffered, what harm they caused others, what they rescued and what they couldn’t rescue. Did I take everyone at his or her word? I didn’t have to; what I wished for was a space in which all things could be expressed openly.
Survivor, Perpetrator, Rescuer. Given any situation, I could fit into any one of those three categories. How do I know this? Because I’ve watched the violence I aim at myself, the voices I send into exile, and the silence. Before a genocide there is almost always dehumanization. We, too, dehumanize ourselves whenever we banish any of our own voices (Am I a good enough mother? A good enough sister, wife?), whenever we deprive them of attention and care, whenever we roll up our eyes, get angry, turn our head away, get disengaged. One day I look at the mirror and wonder where all that weight came from, where that self-hate came from.
“What is practice?”
“Everywhere, nothing is hidden.”
More and more, this practice is about being in peace with myself. Living heartfully and attentively—not in pieces—in peace. I hurt the right side of my head and arthritis is acting up in my knee this morning, and concurrently the sun comes in between the window slats and the dog emits high-pitched snores. It’s not about escaping the day’s compartment of sorrow or misery, it’s about seeing it as part of limitless awareness, perceiving the field rather than staying in my head about things.
During the retreat’s morning councils participants were often restrained and low in spirits. But as they walked to Murambi, where we spent most of the day, their faces lit up as they passed a poor village where children played joyfully spattered in mud and the women smiled in their cheap, colorful dresses. And I start crying at how everything co-exists and co-arises; the vastness of it all humbles me. My contentment no longer relies on whether life goes my way, but on experiencing the unbelievable sanctity and mystery of all life, on bringing deep presence to everything that is offered.
The founder of Japanese Soto Zen, Eihei Dogen, said:
“What is practice?”
“Everywhere, nothing is hidden.”
I keep going back to these words when I think about the Zen Peacemakers’ retreat in Rwanda a month ago. What was it that struck me so poignantly about Rwandans and how they have worked with the genocide of 20 years ago, in which 1,000,000 Rwandans were killed in 100 days? What caused me to feel such admiration for them? My roots lie in the European Holocaust. Both my parents did what most East European Jewish survivors did, they left Europe as refugees after World War II. People ended up in Israel, the United States, Latin America, and Canada.
But Rwandans can’t leave. In Rwanda, I was told, every person over 20 years old falls in one of three categories: Perpetrator, Survivor, Rescuer. Those younger than 20 are children of people who fall into those categories. There are no secrets here. Among the retreat participants were a mother and daughter. The mother was raped in 1994; the daughter was born out of that rape and knows it, it’s no secret. We heard of a group of women who’d been raped, a group of the men who raped them, and after much separate therapy and work the women are beginning to talk to their rapists because, after all, they are the fathers of their children.
There is Juliette and her daughter, Pauline, who was a one-month infant 20 years ago held by her mother who promised Jesus to serve him all her days if he would preserve her daughter. How does the young woman feel about that prayer, knowing that her father and two brothers were massacred that same night?
There is the Hutu mother who rescued Tutsis, including a young boy who now, at the age of 26, is still looking for his own parents whose bodies were never recovered. And there is the woman who lost her arm, and the man who hacked it off—all there in the retreat, in one broken circle.
“What is practice?”
“Everywhere, nothing is hidden.”
What is this place where there are no secrets, no escape, not even exile? This, Dogen says, is the place of practice. In actuality, nothing is ever hidden, everything manifests openly all the time, only due to our own preferences, our likes and dislikes, we don’t recognize it. In the Rwanda retreat we created a field in which many truths were spoken. People talked of what they did, what they didn’t do, what they suffered, what harm they caused others, what they rescued and what they couldn’t rescue. Did I take everyone at his or her word? I didn’t have to; what I wished for was a space in which all things could be expressed openly.
Survivor, Perpetrator, Rescuer. Given any situation, I could fit into any one of those three categories. How do I know this? Because I’ve watched the violence I aim at myself, the voices I send into exile, and the silence. Before a genocide there is almost always dehumanization. We, too, dehumanize ourselves whenever we banish any of our own voices (Am I a good enough mother? A good enough sister, wife?), whenever we deprive them of attention and care, whenever we roll up our eyes, get angry, turn our head away, get disengaged. One day I look at the mirror and wonder where all that weight came from, where that self-hate came from.
“What is practice?”
“Everywhere, nothing is hidden.”
More and more, this practice is about being in peace with myself. Living heartfully and attentively—not in pieces—in peace. I hurt the right side of my head and arthritis is acting up in my knee this morning, and concurrently the sun comes in between the window slats and the dog emits high-pitched snores. It’s not about escaping the day’s compartment of sorrow or misery, it’s about seeing it as part of limitless awareness, perceiving the field rather than staying in my head about things.
During the retreat’s morning councils participants were often restrained and low in spirits. But as they walked to Murambi, where we spent most of the day, their faces lit up as they passed a poor village where children played joyfully spattered in mud and the women smiled in their cheap, colorful dresses. And I start crying at how everything co-exists and co-arises; the vastness of it all humbles me. My contentment no longer relies on whether life goes my way, but on experiencing the unbelievable sanctity and mystery of all life, on bringing deep presence to everything that is offered.