Joy of dance10/19/10: So many things in Rwanda call into question assumptions I have held for years. How can a 7-yr-old girl with machete cuts on both sides of her neck so deep that they require physically holding her head on survive alone in the forest for weeks? How can a child without parents or family from infancy & who lives in an orphanage with 499 traumatized others deeply connect with peers & adults—why don’t they have Reactive Attachment Disorder? They would here. Why don’t young people who experienced the most heinous torture ever perpetrated by man have Dissociative Identity Disorder? They would here. What does their society have that we are missing? I don’t know the answer, but I have some guesses. They do not question that they are their brother’s keeper. The village does raise the child. They take what they have & create what they need. They find joy in small moments. They sing & dance whenever they can. They find deep meaning in their Christian religion, despite the priests who betrayed them (80% of Rwandans are in church on Sunday, for 3 or 4 hours). They feel gratitude for the simplest of things. They do suffer greatly from the poverty & the losses, but there always seems to be someone who comes up with something to try as a solution, & it is freely shared. I know there are still Rwandans, especially those in self-imposed exile in The Congo, who are consumed with hate so I am not speaking about them. I also know the people we interacted with most are those who choose to care about & work with those in need & are the most mature & loving of their society, but I see the same kind of interactions when I walk down the streets of Kigali or drive by the mountain villages. I see true joy in children who appear to have nothing, not even shoes or clean clothes. There is something very special about Rwanda. I wonder if there is a way to export some to us here.
Perhaps it is all about attitude? In any situation, no matter what happens it is something one can always control. They do not see themselves as impoverished. For these people dancing has always been a form of mediation and prayers. It serves to bind them ever more closely with the higher power.
ReplyDeleteThey do not see a bleak future ... as the most genetically diverse of all humans residing on this planet it is they who perhaps best represent a brighter future?
When you can invoke and provoke the uplifted energy of basic goodness in your life, you begin to create basic goodness for yourself and others, fully and ideally and not philosophically but on a concrete physical level. And so do does really it matter what faith they follow, whether Christian or Muslim? And so who are truly the impoverished? In material good perhaps they are depending on one's perspective ... but in a profound spiritual sense?
Our healthy core resides in the Noetic dimension and not in the phenomenal one. Self-transcendence and self-actualization start
with a healthy attitude.
Given the situation you encountered on your mission it would seem to be a forgetful omission if nothing of Frankl were included. So then:
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread."
"They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
"The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress."
Your Rwandan survivors walk hand-in-hand with Frankl and like-minded survivors of the concentration camps.
There is also one who wrote much of what Mr. Tolle includes within his tomes. His name is Chogyam Trungpa a reincarnated Llama from the sacred heights of Tibet. In his book on the "Shambhala: the Sacred Path of the Warrior" he wrote:
"Enlightened Society must rest on a good foundation. The "nowness" of your family situation is that foundation. The vision of enlightened society is that tradition, culture, wisdom and dignity can be experienced now and kept on everyone's part. By regarding your home as sacred, you can enter into domestic situations with awareness and delight rather than feeling you subjected yourself to chaos. "
"If you apply awareness to any situation you will be able to open yourself further, rather than narrowing your existence and falling prey to corruption. Vision and practicality can be joined together in Nowness and it perhaps that starts with a choice to have the right attitude?"
Perhaps this goes to the heart of why you went on your mission?
And perhaps we have now merged East and Western philosophies finding a good example in the middle, in Africa? Perhaps there still are many great spiritual warriors in the heart of Africa?
Additionally, in the midst of very similar calamities and atrocities Viktor Frankl appears to discover the true, sacred, and noetic meaning of love:
ReplyDelete... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."
That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...."
"By magic we do not mean power over the phenomenal world, but rather the discovery of innate or primordial wisdom in the world as it is. The wisdom we are discovering is wisdom without beginning, naturally wise, the wisdom of the cosmic mirror. In Tibetan, the magical quality of existence, or natural wisdom, is called Drala. 'Dra' means enemy or opponent, and 'la' means above. So, "Drala" literally means beyond the enemy. Drala encompasses a wisdom beyond aggression, an unconditioned wisdom beyond any dualism"
C. Trungpa
I really do think there is a blessing in not having much. We have so much "stuff" and wealth here in the States, that we always think we need more stuff to enjoy. Commercials advertise things we desire, TV shows advertise people with fortune, fame and perfect bodies. Our values have skewed from what is important to wanting these other things. As you said, we do not find joy in the small things here, only the big, expensive things. We forget that it takes work/effort and being bombarded with images of the wealthy, we feel "entitled" as well. When we don't get it, we feel sad/depressed/angry.
ReplyDeleteYour writing reminds us that when we have nothing, we have everything to live for. That life and relationships are everything when you don't have anything.
As American's, we need to learn that having money and things is not important. We need to re-value things such as love, family, friends and work.