tonglen for Iran

[Charles]

This e-mail request for Tong-len was sent over Sangha announce.  I thought you might like to see it after our phone link where we send our concerns for the Tehran Shambhala Group.  -charles

Please hold in your practice, prayers and thoughts the people of Iran - reports from friends with the Teheran shamatha group (and the news media) are that kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder are on the increase. Please hold all Iranians - indeed, all perpetrators, victims, innocents and aggressors everywhere - equally; all beings have basic goodness, just the same.

Thich Nhat Hanh, expatriate Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and peace activist, has written:

One day we received a letter telling us about a young girl on a small boat who was raped by a Thai pirate. She was only twelve, and she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself.

When you first learn of something like that, you get angry at the pirate. You naturally take the side of the girl. As you look more deeply you will see it differently. If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy. You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate. But we cannot do that. In my meditation I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I am now the pirate. There is a great likelihood that I would become a pirate. I cannot condemn myself so easily. 

After a long meditation, I wrote this poem. In it, there are three people: the twelve-year-old girl, the pirate, and me. Can we look at each other and recognize ourselves in each other? The title of the poem is Please Call Me by My True Names, because I have so many names. When I hear one of these names, I have to say, "Yes."

To view a video of Nhat Hanh's poem, Please Call Me by My True Names, click here.

Thank you,

Marc-Hossein Matheson

[lesl...@aol.com]

Thank you for this profound message and request.   Leslie