The Universal Soldier

Where have all the soldiers gone?

Long time passing

Where have all the soldiers gone?

Long time ago

Where have all the soldiers gone?

Gone to graveyards every one.

When will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?

A repeat of the 25 year reunion concert of Peter, Paul and Mary. Tears came.

Memories returned of a Remembrance Day morning at the Cenotaph. A group of us had spent the previous chilly night in a silent vigil protesting the Vietnam war. When the veterans arrived, we quietly made way for them. Some were indignant, reminding us that they had fought for our right to protest. We assured them of our respect, and that our only goal was to end the war.

Ten years later, heart glowing, I watched the television in wonder. The last troops were leaving! It was silly, but I couldn't help feeling we had won the war on war.

As years passed, it seemed the only reminders of the war were movies like Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter and Platoon. The interminable Russian war in Afghanistan and the brief war in the Falklands somehow didn't shake my feeling that war was really on the way out. Until January, 1991.

Once again I was glued to the television. Stealth bombers. Scud missiles. Patriot missiles. The Iraqi night sky lit up by deadly fireworks. The dream of the peace movement lay in tatters.

The statistics are appalling. There were over 58,000 (American) military deaths in the Vietnam war (26 deaths per day). Arguably, it was an improvement over the 405,000 deaths in World War II (416 deaths per day), down from 625,000 deaths in the American Civil War (599 deaths per day). These numbers don't include military deaths of other countries or civilian casualties. Recently it was reported that every 80 minutes, a veteran takes his or her own life.

Contemplating these things, I can't help feeling an immense sadness. I wonder if we will ever acquire such awareness of our universal nature that we will no longer experience grief over such suffering and death. I used to think so.

In my early years, in pursuit of all things yogic, I read the Bhagavad Gita, a conversation between Arjuna and Krishna about Arjuna’s anguish over going into battle.

I do not see any good in killing my own kinsmen in battle, nor can I, my dear Krishna, covet victory, nor kingdom, nor pleasure … O Krishna! Though they may kill me, why should I wish to kill them?

Lord Krishna spoke the following words to desolate Arjuna, who was overwhelmed with compassion, eyes brimming with tears.

You are mourning for what is not worthy of grief yet speak as if a man of wisdom. Wise men bewail neither for the living nor for the dead … In the unreal there is no subsistence and in the real there is no end … Know that the abstract entity that pervades the whole body is indestructible as no one is able to cause destruction of that unceasing and eternal soul. The bodies with this unceasing, immeasurable and eternal soul decay. Therefore, fight, O Arjuna.

This doesn’t resonate with me anymore. It feels like mindfully eating meat or hiding in oneness, maintaining that suffering is an illusion.

Coincidentally, I read these words today over at James Ford Roshi's blog Monkey Mind:

I’m sick to heart that every week, week after week I have to read that list of young men and women, who wearing uniforms of our nation have died in or because of combat. I’m sick to heart knowing those names stand for many, many more, combatants and civilians who’ve died unnamed to us in this decade of war.

Will we ever cease to be ‘overwhelmed by compassion, eyes brimming with tears’?

I hope not.

French people bid troops of the French Army goodbye as they leave metropolitan France at Marseille harbour, 1941