Transcending Extreme Views

     We live in a time of partisanship: bias, prejudice, one-sidedness, discrimination, favoritism, partiality, sectarianism, factionalism. Vicious reflex aversion or frenzied blind support for topics ranging from politics, economics, religion, sex, gender, even sports, is based NOT on careful analysis of evidence, BUT solely on identification with certain groups. If "one of us" is criticized, no matter how justly, we immediately react as if it were a life-threatening personal attack. Yet it's just our ego being criticized.
     There is a much more nuanced, wiser & healthier approach:

     “Sympathizing with (extreme ends of a) perspective is easy; walking the knife-edge between them is more difficult. Can we employ each viewpoint to interrogate the other, without accepting either perspective as absolute? Such an approach can be discomforting because it is so destabilizing: what remains of one’s own standpoint? This process invokes the understanding of Buddhist practice … which emphasizes the realization of ‘nondwelling mind”: a mind that does not identify with any particular forms, including thought-forms such as ideologies, whether religious or secular.”
        David R. Loy. “A New Buddhist Path. Enlightenment Evolution and Ethics in the Modern World.” Wisdom Publications, 2015.

Soccer Hooligans - Getty Images

All in the Family - OR - Evil Outsider?

     As the worst of human nature erupts yet again today on Ottawa's Parliament Hill, the temptation to wipe such "evil" off the face of the earth arises, yet again. 
     But wait, isn't that precisely what these & other terrorists claim to be doing? And if Canada and her allies were able to "eliminate" each terrorist involved in this attack, and apprehend and imprison all of their (immediate) supporters, what exactly would it accomplish? Isn't Israel far better at this approach than we Canadians? And how's it working for them? Hasn't this approach been clubbed to death over the past million years or so?
     Haven't the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and a host of other wise people repeatedly told us that an eye for an eye only makes more and more of us blind? How long must we keep beating this dead horse?
     Evil is not in others, the evil is within our own individual heart-minds, it is our "shadow". We project this evil onto "the other". All groups, even "peace" activists & "right-to life" activists, have members who are willing to be violent, particularly towards "the other, evil side."
     The willingness and ability to act out our OWN demons requires THERAPY, not encouragement & support. 
     Only when we stop supporting others' DIRTY WORK, will atrocities diminish. All of us who support heart-mindless violence against "the other", must rethink what we're doing - our minds, hearts & hands are also bloody. Quickly & definitively eliminating "evil" once and for all can't be done. Both World Wars were supposed to "end war for all time".

     The current state of affairs is repulsive to all evolved human beings, regardless of faith, nationality, race, etc and is ineffective. We live in an age in which we must recognize & transcend this inherited reptilian reflex within ourselves, first & foremost. 
     Human beings are ONE FAMILY. We can only solve our problems as ONE FAMILY PULLING TOGETHER.