Peter Clothier's Blog, page 8

From Ken McLeod's Unfettered Mind newsletter:On your own,...

From Ken McLeod's Unfettered Mind newsletter:

On your own, stay empty and relax.In a group, keep knowing clear and sharp.Knowing’s nothing, not a thing at all—Goal there's none, but stand right there you must.Empty knowing—that is hard to catch,Work at it and it becomes a friend.
The lines come from Jamgon Kongtrul's Creation and Completion: Essential points of Tantric Meditation., and I have read through the words many times since I first came across them in Ken's newsletter. My mind is still working with them.


Ken writes: "This piece of advice is especially important when the world is in turmoil—whether because of fires, hurricanes or other natural disasters, because of incompetent leadership in a crisis, or because of civil unrest, the rise of ideological factions, or other political tensions. Turmoil in the world triggers emotional reactions in us, reactions based on survival, basic emotional needs, and our sense of who we are. If we are not careful, we can be swept away by the reaction and confusion around us and become unthinking reactive participants in the turmoil."
If ever there were times of turmoil, these are they. And in such times Kongtrul's words are great advice for one who seeks to lead a healthy and harmonious life. "Relax"  as he instructs in his first line, is a good start. It's easy enough to understand, if sometimes less easy to practice. But how to "stay empty"? Empty of thought, empty of judgment, empty of past and future, memory and anticipation... Empty of wants and needs. Empty of likes and dislikes. What he does not mean, surely, is "vacuous"--empty of wisdom, discrimination, tolerance. This kind of emptiness is not empty-headedness, in the negative sense, but rather a different kind of fullness, an at-peaceness with one's self and the world. It is also not passivity, which, in Ken's formulation, " is insidious. It kills your mind (your attention, your intention, and your will) without you knowing it." 
So, when with others "in a group, keep knowing clear and sharp"--even though "knowing's nothing, not a thing at all." A paradox? So be it. Conflating the two, Kongtrul writes of "empty knowing"--a concept that, he concedes, is "hard to catch." If I'm right about what he's saying here, this "empty knowing" is easier to feel and experience (in meditation, say) than it is to understand or, still less, explain. My take is that it's the kind of knowing that is neither right nor wrong; as I heard elsewhere the other day, "everything I think is wrong"! It's the kind of knowing that has no goal, and no intention. It is inarguable but also indefinable, utterly clear but at the same time impenetrable. Knowing without knowing.
I like the idea that if I work at it, "it becomes a friend." In times of turmoil, it is good to have a friend I can rely on. Essential, even. To have a friend means not to be alone, to have someone to turn to. It's good, particularly, at such times, to have a friend who offers me a yardstick for my truth, who keeps me honest, keeps me in integrity with myself and others. Someone I can "come home to" at moments when the turmoil threatens to overwhelm. 
There's food for much more thought here. This is just (another!) start...

OPEN MIND

I have been thinking about the meditation session for my neighborhood group this evening. The turmoil and confusion in which we find ourselves in the external world tend to get easily assimilated by the mind, and I have been contemplating the need to keep it swept free of the clouds and cobwebs that will soon take up the entire space of the mind if we allow them.

A possible path for meditation, then: begin with a few extended breaths, drawn in to the entire body and exhaled with clarifying intention--an intention that can be maintained through the practice of goodwill, breathing thoughts of compassion for oneself, for those close to one's heart, for those known and liked and those disliked, extending outward to all people... and all living beings. 

From here, move on to the body-mind, with the attention to each area focused on awakening the mind there, the sharpening and deepening of consciousness. Work, as usual, from the area around the navel to the lower belly, the upper belly, the solar plexus, extending out to the flank on either side; the chest, with special attention to an awareness of the heart as an organ of the mind as well as of the body; from the base of the neck to the center of the head; from the back of the neck down either arm; and down the length of the spine, extending out to the length and breadth of the back; and from the tail bone down the length of legs...

Now spend some time using the breath to experience the presence of mind throughout the entire, awakened body... and, when that awareness feels complete, allow it to expand beyond the confines of the body into the immediately surrounding area. Try emptying the mind even as you allow it gradually to open: no thoughts, no judgments, no anxieties, no anticipations... And no physical sensations: no touch, no weight, no gravity... Just slowly expanding awareness.

As you become comfortable with the presence of mind in the space that immediately surrounds the body, allow it to expand still further to include the room where you are sitting, the building that contains the room... the neighborhood... expanding ever further, slowly, breath by breath, to include the mountains to the east and the ocean to the west... ever further... until the mind embraces the whole Earth below, the sky above...

Bring the mind to rest in the spaciousness of a clear sky, no clouds, no obstacles, no boundaries, just pure space.  Allow everything else to fall away, and rest in attention to pure space, pure breath...  If the mind chooses to get sleepy or distracted, use the breath to reinvigorate it and renew attention...

Before leaving meditation, Take a moment to reawaken and re-clarify the mind and return to a comfortable awareness of the body... Tell yourself, may I be happy, may I be guided by the knowledge of the source of true happiness... and dedicate any benefit from your meditation to other living beings... May all living beings find true happiness in their hearts.

And as you leave meditation, and after, remember to bring the experience of open mind into your life.

TAXES

Usually I try to avoid it here, leaving such discussions to my more politically oriented Facebook page; but sometimes it's time to talk politics even on The Buddha Diaries--although this issue, as I see it, is a moral as well a political one.

My thoughts were prompted yesterday, on our Sunday morning outing, when Ellie and I walked past a good number of multi-million dollar beachfront houses--some might call them mini-mansions--with yard signs posted prominently outside supporting the campaign of a congressional candidate who promised: LOWER TAXES!

Really, I thought? The people who live in these houses scream for lower taxes? Perhaps they don't have children or grandchildren in the public education system, increasingly starved for funds over now these many years, even in such a wealthy neighborhood? Or perhaps they are unconcerned about the schools in less wealthy neighborhoods, where teachers are often obliged to bring in their own supplies because the schools cannot afford them? Where children receive an education that is all too frequently inferior to that offered in more privileged areas and enjoy only hard-won opportunities for educational, social and cultural advancement?

Perhaps, in the protected environment of a relatively safe neighborhood, they don't feel the urgency of other, basic social services? Police? Firefighters? Clean air and water? Sewage systems, waste disposal? An infrastructure that provides them, among other things, with safe highways and bridges for their cars? Do they take these things for granted, as a concomitant of privilege--something that nobody has to actually pay for?

An immigrant from Europe, where taxes have been high for many decades now, I have a hard time sympathizing with the American antipathy to taxes--though I understand that it has deep roots in the American historical consciousness. There was, of course, the original Tea Party in Boston Harbor--but the rallying cry of that rebellion, if I recall correctly from my history lessons back in the "old country", was "no taxation without representation." These days, it seems, the demand is for both no taxation and representation.

Taxation, especially in the past few decades, has come to be associated with the infringement of individual rights. Taxes are understood to be more like a personal insult that a shared responsibility for the well-being of the community--whether local or national. And the loudest, most effective protests tend to come from those who can most afford to pay them and have the political clout to ensure that they pay, proportionately, the least. 

The current phase of the historical American tax revolt dates from the early 1970s, in my home state of California. Led by one Howard Jarvis, now deceased, the campaign for the (to my mind infamous) Proposition 13 led shortly thereafter to the Ronald Reagan governorship, the Ronald Reagan presidency, and the ascendance of the anti-tax, anti-government that has brought this country to its present pitch.  And it is no longer surprising that the yard signs are out yet again, demanding LOWER TAXES! for the wealthiest among us.

THE LIFE OF THE MIND

Dreams, fantasies, memories, reflections, meditations... As the body ages, the life of the mind occupies more and more of the reality of my life. 

Last night I dreamt I had become the target of criminal assassins. I lived alone--as I do not--in an apartment--as I do not--on the seventh and highest floor of a low-rise building, in some part of the world that is unknown to me. With the urgency of the hunted, I needed to return to my apartment to recover what was important to take with me on my escape. The elevator... ? No. Too dangerous and too confined a space. I devised an ingenious way to scale the building by running around the perimeter of every floor, each one tilting a little higher to take me to the next. But this design turned out to be a deceptive, M.C.Escher-ish illusion, leaving me trapped in constant motion on the same floor.

Instead, I took to the wooden stairway at the side of the building, like an internal fire escape, running up so many flights I was exhausted by the time I reached the top. Inside, my apartment was fully furnished. Everything was there. What should I take? Clothes? The closet was crammed with them. I realized I could only take what I was wearing, and changed into a pair of light gray pants, a nondescript shirt, so as not to draw attention. 

Next, the safe. A small fireproof box. I recalled having left a roll of money there, in case of an emergency. Thousands of dollars, mostly in hundred dollar bills, all rolled up neatly. But then, reaching for it, I recalled also having decided at some earlier time that it was too much, too susceptible to theft, and had taken much of it to hide elsewhere, leaving only a deceptive roll consisting mostly of dollar bills, as a kind of decoy. I had left myself a note, a hint, to help me remember where I had hidden the rest...

I wanted to tell my daughter--not my daughter; where did she come from? where did she go?--where to find that note, but didn't know what to tell her. I simply gave her the remaining cash and ran out, down the stairs again.

On the next floor down I found a room where a professor--a glib man of deceptively pleasant mien--was preparing for a seminar with a handful of students. I immediately suspected him of being the assassin, but he read my mind and gave me a not unkind smile. It's not the obvious suspects you should be concerned about, he told me. The one should worry about is the one you least suspect...

The dream continued, but faded, from that point, from my memory. 

I suspect the dream's narrative had to do with the literal and inexorable approach of death, as the years pass; and with the understanding that I will not escape, and that any money that I have and all my worldly goods will be left behind. It's a reminder that when I leave this world, it will be with nothing I have accumulated along the way.

As I say, the life of the mind increasingly takes over from the real world as the place in which I am now given to live...

BOB WENT HOME

I salute my old friend Gary Lloyd on the occasion of his 77th birthday. I divulge no secrets; he already made his age public in an online post. He made, recently, the wise choice to leave the city with his family and find a new home in Taos, New Mexico, where the culture and the landscape speak to the call of his inner life.

It was Gary who helped change the course of my own life, some 50 years ago. An aspiring young poet, I was just beginning to find an interest in the work of artists of about my age and, not knowing what to expect, drove out to see an exhibition of his work at the Orlando Gallery in the San Fernando Valley. 

I was shocked, perhaps even a little appalled by what I found. My exposure to art until that time had been, well, Picasso and Matisse, the Cubists, the Surrealists. I loved Paul Klee. At Gary's show I found--and I may misremember here, but I think I'm generally accurate--an axe head embedded in the wall, jars smeared with vaseline and overflowing with unpleasant-looking contents arranged on shelves, words scrawled here and there on surfaces, scraps of material... 

A nightmare schoolroom, titled "Bob Went Home." My mind's initial reaction: this can't be art.

I drove away. I found myself obsessed with what I'd seen. It had reached through to some deep part of my consciousness, memories of boyhood struggle and confusion, spilled ink and messy fingers, some dark area of rage and fear and inexplicable loss. Over the next few days--as I do when something troubles me--I wrote. I wrote and wrote. I ended up with a long poem--30 pages. I took the title from Gary's scrawled message: Bob Went Home. Bob was the boy still in me, still potent, still unexplored. Still troubling. Bob, I suspected, was Gary's boyhood.

We met. He saw the poem. Suggested that we make a book of it. And we did. The result is a big, klutzy, frankly somewhat dangerous thing with a galvanized metal cover dented with the back of an axe head and a hatchet hand grip for a spine. The words of the poem are bound together, hand-printed in Yves Klein blue on a variety of materials--cork, felt, tar paper--and the pages obscured with tissue, small-mesh wire, smears of vaseline. It's an impossible "book", a weighty and ungainly tome, a sculpture... We never managed to put together all 100 copies we aspired to, but many were completed, and many are now in institutional collections. I hope they are sometimes shown.

I have followed Gary's work since then. It has always challenged convention, asking what art is and what it should be in an age of advanced technology, how its ancient roots in human consciousness are still a vital part of its necessary call to the human mind today, how archetypes--boat, branch, cutting tool, raw meat--reverberate in the psyche's memory and teach us something about who we are and what we need for our survival. It has asked us to be always conscious of our need to communicate with each other and take responsibility for the planet that we live on. And Bob--the small boy, smart, naughty, messy, infinitely curious, needing love and constant nurturing--is still at the heart of it. He still needs to go home.

OPPRESSION

It's a line in my daily metta goodwill practice: "May I be free from oppression." I recite it every time I sit down for a meditation session. And just recently it has been drawing my attention each time that I repeat it: "May I be free from oppression."

I can get past the line that comes before it: "May I be free from animosity." It's not easy, because there's a good deal of blame in my heart for those responsible for out current predicament. My conclusion from what the medical and public health experts says is that their action, or inaction, has cost many thousands of lives. Even today, with the example of countless other countries that have managed to stem or slow the spread of the disease, ours stands almost alone in its stubborn refusal to take those strong actions that have proven effective elsewhere. So, yes, I have anger about that in my heart, and it's hard to get past the animosity towards those responsible. But I can allow myself acknowledge it and, with such goodwill as I'm able to find, to let it go.

I find oppression to be harder, in part I think because I feel so powerless to stand up to and reject it. The evidence is everywhere, We have a government whose reins are now held irrefutably in the hands of a man who seems able to impose his will on everyone he has placed in a position of authority. And it's not goodwill, as I see it. It's ill will. There is a powerful malignancy that grips the actions of those who exercise control over our lives. The single example of the postal service may suffice: we can no longer rely on the timely delivery of such vital things as medications. The unreliability of this service is the direct result of oppressive action from the leadership. I am necessarily affected by it, and have no means to, as I say, stand up and reject it. No matter how often I repeat the wish, I am unable to free myself from this particular act of oppression.

So because it is beyond my personal ability to counter the oppression, the line rings hollow in my head when I repeat it. It exists. There is ample evidence of its existence, and of its affect on my daily life. To wish it away feels like an effort to deny its reality, and I have always experienced my meditation practice as practical and real. "May I not allow myself to respond to oppression," in this circumstance, is closer to the mark And perhaps that distinction is too fine to be meaningful. Still, it bothers me. It provides me with a mental hitch each time that I repeat it--a hitch I have to work hard not to cling to. I am not free from oppression. But... may I be.

WHERE I STAND: A REAPPRAISAL

Surrounded by the turmoil, fear and confusion of this present moment in time, I feel the need to restore my own inner sense of stability amid the chaos. There are moments--more than moments, to be honest--when I feel as though I am about to be caught up in the swirl of social and political unrest, lose my footing, and be swept away. So it's a good moment to find my ground again and take measure of where I stand.

As I have recalled perhaps too often in the past in these virtual pages of The Buddha Diaries, I was born three years before the start of World War II in the working-class, coal-mining city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The community was still gripped in the wake of the Great Depression. Unemployment, poverty and hunger were rife in what were dreadfully known, in those days,  as"the slums." My father, then a young clergyman, was the vicar of St. Cuthbert's church, a man whose social conscience and compassion for his parishioners informed his lifelong dedication to the church and his allegiance to the Labour Party and its socialist agenda. 

He remained a Christian and a conscientious socialist throughout his life, and was the source of the values I inherited. Though I long ago abandoned his particular religious faith, I have never wavered in my aspiration for social justice and my belief in the essential equal value of all human beings. In crossing the Atlantic in 1962 and coming to the United States for the first time in 1964, I aimed to leave behind me the scourge of class-consciousness and privilege--even, no, especially, with the knowledge that I myself had benefited from both. Throughout those early years in America, the 1960s, I saw reason to hope that this was true. There were, you will recall, the flower children--Peace & Love!--and the widespread student demonstrations of conscience against the travesty of the Viet Nam war. There was the vibrant civil rights movement. There were, until hatred ended both their lives, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy... 

My belief in America's ideals faltered, for the first time substantially I think, with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. I was taken aback to see that what I judged to be that man's manipulative cunning and his extreme conservatism were rewarded by the American electorate. Then came Proposition 13 in California, soon followed by Ronald Reagan. I saw the start of that great spirit of individualism that inspired the founding documents of this country being perverted into the fetish of petty me-firstism that has gripped most conservative philosophy and politics ever since. Proposition 13--I have benefited from that, too!--was the outcome of the tax revolt that started the diversion of public funds from schools and vital social services of all kinds into the pockets of the privileged. The purposeful, intentional and relentless strangling of government and the decline in public services has continued ever since.

There have been temporary hitches from this massive slide into what passes for conservatism along the way since then--perhaps most notable was Obama's Affordable Care Act--but the degeneration into full-blown Tr*mpism should have come as no surprise. It seems, indeed, the logical conclusion of what Howard Jarvis, the John Birch Society and other basically libertarian factions initiated all those years ago. Disgraceful as I judge it to be, the Republican Party's servile capitulation to the purely solipsistic rule of one man and the fanatical "base" he has hoodwinked into following him merely protracts a direct line that has persisted in this country for now half a century.

Where do I stand, then? I stand, first, against the toleration of poverty, hunger, preventable illness and other social ills as concomitant and unavoidable evils. I stand against the use of state or individual power to perpetuate oppression. I stand against the enrichment of the few if it's the cause of impoverishment for the many. I stand against the empowerment of the few if it's the cause of disempowerment for the many. I stand against all forms of violence and the use of oppressive military force. I stand against cruelty. I stand against bullying, the abuse of power. I stand against the kind of discrimination or prejudice that deprives others of their human value. I stand against verbal abuse, lies, misrepresentation, insults, denigration. I stand against arrogance and misappropriation of property or power. I stand against the pain and damage caused by the abuse of intoxicants or drugs. 

And what do I stand for? I still stand for the values for which my father stood. I stand for social justice, for the equal treatment under the law for all human beings. I stand for the care and protection of those who for whatever reason are unable to take care of themselves, through no fault of their own. I stand for the right of every person to receive needed health care, shelter, nourishment, and the blessings of education to the highest of their ability. I stand for the responsibility of government to address, assure, and underwrite those rights. 

I stand for peace between people as between nations, and for the mutual tolerance, understanding, and forgiveness that allows it.

I also stand for the individual freedom of all human beings, when exercised in the context of an understanding and acceptance of responsibility to our fellow human beings. I stand, then, for personal integrity, which I believe to be the unimpeded exercise of that freedom, and within that context. I stand for consciousness, and conscientiousness, and conscience. I stand for the clarity of both mind and heart, for goodwill, kindness, love, and for the mindful practice of those qualities. I stand for everything that can help alleviate suffering, whether physical or emotional, whether for myself or others. 

If I strive to maintain integrity with these principles I embrace, it is with the admission that I am not always able to live up to them; but at least when I fail, I aspire to the wisdom to recognize my failure and dedicate myself once again to their practice. And to remind myself, especially in times of turmoil and confusion, that this is the sacred ground on which I stand.

THE DOLL

I dreamt I made this curious invention--which someone surely has already made, though I've never heard of it--to act as an aid in disputes between loving partners. It was a live-sized doll, not the sexy kind but featureless, constructed out of plain stitched canvas (for good measure, in those still-dreaming moments on awakening, I added for the sake of flexibility a detachable cock and balls: the miracle of velcro!) At moments of potential conflict the doll could be trotted out and all the words of anger, fear and sadness--perhaps, too, all the unexpressed frustrations and desires--could be poured out to the doll, rather than the partner. The partner's role would be to act simply as silent listener, or witness to the aggrieved one's distress. The exchange would not have that intensely personal, accusatory quality that can be so damaging and hurtful. Instead, the words could be spoken, as they must and should be, without being addressed to a "you" but rather to an invulnerable third party who could absorb them with impunity. The "you", thus spared, could avoid the kind of reaction that inflicts further pain and instead simply stand back and learn. The doll, in my dream, was accompanied by a book entitled, curiously, "The Art of Simplicity and Love." Odd, then, what the unconscious mind comes up with. Maybe I should patent my invention. It could be a best-seller, particularly at this moment when relationships are under the stress of isolation.

REAL TIME?

 I used to enjoy Bill Maher's "Real Time" on a Friday evening. It gave me the opportunity to have a laugh at the end of the week about all the absurdities that had taken place in the preceding days. Recently, though... is it I who have changed? Or the comedian/satirist? Last night was awful. It has reached a point where I think I won't watch it any more.

The opening monologue had its usual tiresome share of adolescent jokes about smoking weed. I haven't done it myself for years but I really have no objection about others choosing to get high. But with Maher it's a fetish, as though the habit were still some daring, law-breaking act of defiance by the hippest of the hip. It isn't. It's just ordinary. And dull. To pretend otherwise is just childish. Worse, his tasteless and patently misapplied jokes about Joe Biden. Yes, Democrats deserve satire too. So does Joe Biden. But to put the words "Whatever gets your pussy wet" in his mouth is so wildly off-target and out of character as to be thoroughly unfunny. 

I do believe that the left wing needs and deserves satire too. Even the not-radically progressive left that dominated the party convention this past week. But what convention had Maher and his two guests been watching on their television sets? Not the one I watched. Led on by their remorseless host in his resolute attack on Democrats who failed to meet his (I guess libertarian-ish?) requirements, his guests dismissed the entire convention as, first, deathly dull (it wasn't, not the one I watched) and otherwise disrespectful of the poor and underprivileged. Again, what had they been watching? There was, of course, a good deal of well-earned savaging of the current occupant of the White House and the corruption his presence there has permitted, if not encouraged. But there was also a great deal of ardent venting about the neglect of the disadvantaged and the urgent need to address the attendant problems of poverty, injustice and racism. Maher freely attacks the far left for their "political correctness" and the circular firing squad that threatens the party unity that's especially needed at the moment in history. Last night, he chose to join the firing squad.

And lastly, his special guest, Oliver Stone. Bad enough that this hugely successful Hollywood (yes, sorry, Hollywood!) director should spend his air time (and ours; but we all chose it) whining about how badly he has been treated by, um... Hollywood. A sad spectacle. More appalling, though, was to hear Stone's barely disguised defense of the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, and his servile ally in our White House on the grounds that the American intelligence services are out only to deceive us, and that all that Russians want is to be left alone to get along peaceably with their lives. As though they were not living under the oppressive thumb of a ruthless tyrant who has no trouble resorting to the murder of anyone who dares oppose him--most recently, it seems likely, the opposition leader Alexey Navalny. Bill Maher, meanwhile, sits by and nods with (somewhat uncomfortable, I thought) approval. He gives air time to precisely the conspiracy theories that he mocks.

Now I ask myself, am I reacting in this way because Maher is milking my sacred cows rather than someone else's? As much as anyone, it behooves me to have my values and assumptions questioned, even held up for ridicule. Are tastelessness, inappropriateness, disrespect and incivility not needed weapons in the satirists quiver? Well, yes. And I'm still angry at Bill Maher, for all the reasons I've laid out above. And, actually, more.

DARKNESS... AND LIGHT

Two things leave me incredulous about our human species as I read "A Woman of No Importance," by Sonia Purnell. One is our potential for unspeakable cruelty toward each other; the other our capacity for unimaginable courage. 

Purnell's book is the story of Virginia Hall, an American woman of enormous energy and practical aptitude whose talents were vastly underestimated by the diplomatic service in the years before World War II (she was deemed capable only of demeaning clerical tasks and rejected for the more responsible work for which she yearned), and who offered herself instead, in some exasperation, as a spy for the British secret service as it first began to find its feet in Vichy France. Placed under the command of men less competent and far less courageous than herself, she managed nonetheless to create functioning networks of resistance fighters and underground railroad agents who rescued countless downed airmen and fellow spies from the jaws of the Nazi occupiers--all the while herself in constant danger of capture, torture, and certain execution. 

That's the story so far. I have reached the moment of the Normandy invasion by the Allied forces, with Virginia struggling to organize internally squabbling and mistrustful "maquisards"--the French partisans--into a behind-the-lines strategy of resistance, ambush attacks and sabotage. One of her persistent problems was to assert her authority over macho freedom fighters who proved to be in general as scornful of women as the diplomatic and military establishment. 

First, then, the cruelty. It is almost beyond comprehension that so many human beings--they must surely, many of them, have been regular human beings before being turned into monsters--were induced to perform acts of such incredible barbarity as those practiced almost routinely, not only by the infamous Gestapo but by soldiers wearing the German military uniform. Purnell's book dwells thankfully only infrequently on the excruciating details of torture, but her frequent allusions and brief descriptions are enough to sicken you for their cruelty and callousness. Even absent actual, physical torture, the prisons were hellholes of vermin infestation, disease and deprivation where many captives died. And as the war began to turn against them, the German occupying forces resorted to the execution of thousands of civilians, including whole villages, in a spirit of vengeful desperation. These were soldiers, of course, recruited, indoctrinated and trained to follow orders or themselves face discipline, even execution. But I still find their inhumanity--not only in France but also, particularly, on the Eastern front--to be horrifying. It is a bleak reminder, too, that such acts of barbarism have been practiced by our species throughout history.

The different, and to me equally unfathomable story is that superhuman courage can co-exist with such cruelty, and even match it in its intensity. Both men and women had the courage to be dropped by parachute or left onshore in full knowledge that they had little prospect of surviving the dangers that awaited them--the kindest of which might be a quick death by firing squad. They knew to expect much worse in the torture chambers. Deep cover spies like Virginia lived in constant apprehension of the sound of Gestapo Citroëns screeching to a halt outside their windows or jackboots echoing on the stairs. A single careless step or a wrongly pronounced word in the cafés risked betrayal by fellow Frenchmen intimidated into submission and obedient to the Vichy government. To transport forged papers or, worse, "pianos"--a code word for radios--past Nazi checkpoints was a task fraught with danger, courting discovery and immediate arrest and imprisonment. The wonder is that any human being had such courage.

When confronted with these issues and reflecting on them, as I have done in the past, I often end up asking myself this tough question: would I have been able to find the same courage in myself that these people did? Would I have been ready to expose myself to the darkest side of human nature and stand up to it? Or would I have taken the easier path and retreated from the danger? I am fortunate to have never had to make so radical a choice. But I recognize it to be one that we are confronted with, each in our own small way, today. There is darkness all around us. And there is light. I am confounded as to which one we, as a nation, will now choose.