Memorials

There is an old retort, used between intimates when they are annoyed with one another: You remind me of an old song, "How Can I Miss You If You Won't Go Away?"

Many a truth is said in jest. I am reminded of this on Memorial Day. This holiday was intended to honor military dead. However, in my working class youth, it was the time to go to cemeteries with flowers and plants for graves of dead relatives. Grave sites were tidied. Dead plants removed. New plants planted. Prayers said and teary eyes dabbed with handkerchiefs.

The most baffling of these pilgrimages was the trip to my maternal grandfather's grave with his widow and my parents. The man had been ejected from the family for violent, abusive behavior. He had died a homeless derelict, totally incapacitated by his alcoholism. Yet we tended his grave annually. His widow, my grandmother, wept profusely. The rest of us wandered about until she was done. I struggled to reconcile the vitriol heaped on his memory all year long with these uncomfortable moments of bereft grief at his grave. Did not compute.

As I have grown older, I have realized that memorials are for the living, not the dead. The dead have no consciousness of memorials. This is fortunate for them. Who would want to be conscious of being buried under tons of marble?

If human beings could harness the energy of grieving over the past and apply it to doing good in the present, the world would be a much better place. If we could stop to realize that we will all be separated by death inevitability, perhaps we would deal with being together more mindfully and compassionately. If all the money and resources devoted to memorials for the dead were reallocated for helping to improve the lives of the living, the greater good would be served.

Warriors

I wonder at the universal acceptance of war memorials. We honor those who kill with impunity in the name of nationalism. Americans are hardly entitled to honor its soldiers as defenders. American soldiers, from its very inception, have been commissioned for aggressive acquisition of land and power. The first American army was commissioned to take the thirteen British colonies from the British Empire. It was not a defensive struggle. In fact, it was a struggle initiated by the colonists, who did not want to meet their fiduciary obligations to their country, England. The War of 1812 was indeed defensive, but it was defensive against the claims of the English resulting from the revolution. The bombing of Hawaii, an American colonized territory, by the Japanese marginally qualifies the American intervention in World War II as defensive. The Civil War was just that. It was not a war of aggression against "America". The current war in Iraq is a war of aggression and colonization. Warriors who defend the innocent with their lives may well be seen as heroes. Warriors who kill and maim the innocent in the name of some vague ideal which covers materialistic motives of the wealthy are hardly heroes. Killing is inhuman, from the perspective of the 'higher nature' of man. It is unjustifiable altogether in Buddhist thought. In my practice, I wrestle with my own tendency to anger, violence and hatred. This is indeed a war within myself. Perhaps we should strive to win these individual wars, billions of them on this planet. Then, and only then, will there be world peace.

Memorials

Memorials are for the living. Not for the dead. The dead do not need memorials.