Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘The wisest people I know are aware that the stresses, atrocities, divisions and divergences from norms of recent years have made them (and everyone else) exhausted and brittle. The less wise but no less brittle either lash out with the sense that what’s wrong is definitely someone else or take refuge in cults and oversimplified versions in which they are at least in control of what it all means.

Public life has private impact; some of it breaks our brains, and some of it breaks our hearts. Not to leave our consciences out of this – to watch so much malice and willful destruction, to witness so much injustice, from genocides around the world to gross injustices at home, has an impact. That impact is probably best described as moral injury, which a veterans’ organization defines as “the psychological, social and spiritual impact of events involving betrayal or transgression of one’s own deeply held moral beliefs and values occurring in high stakes situations”.’ (from the Guardian)

We were talking in the gathering about the “poly-crisis,” and this article had prepared me for the discussion. Everything is interconnected here. As always, the entire article is worth a read.