Alicia Bay Laurel and Takuji - "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" at Hiroshima Nagarekawa Church, which stands on what was ground zero

Our friends, Alicia Bay Laurel and Takuji, performing "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" in Hiroshima 08/08/2015. Author/artist/vocalist/songwriter Alicia Bay Laurel and jazz multi-instrumentalist Takuji perform John Lennon's anti-war classics "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance" at a peace concert that was part of the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 8, 2015, at Hiroshima Nagarekawa Church, which stands on what was ground zero in Hiroshima.

Keibo Oiwa addresses the psychological roots of world crisis in Nuclear Zen

In Berlin-based filmmaker Michael Saup's short documentary, Nuclear Zen, anthropologist, environmental activist (and contributor to Kyoto Journal) Keibo Oiwa, shares his holistic take on creating a life-sustaining Japan and world. His views echo those of many eco-activists, especially Sacred Stone, Okinawan and other indigenous water, rainforest, earth protectors:

Thank you is a recognition of the reality. We are living here. We are using [nuclear [and fossil]] electricity...We created the social system -- media, education, politics -- on top of the same system. We have to admit it. Yes, this is where we are. And we have to embrace it, whether it's ugly or not. This is us. And only after that, we can say what we want to do. But the problem is, many people refuse to recognize this reality.

Albert Einstein said you cannot solve the problem within the same mindset that created the problem in the first place. But that is exactly what we've been doing. As environmental activist, I've been fighting, in the movements against environmental destruction, pollution, climate change, nuclear power. And all these problems are too serious. We cannot solve any of these problems easily. Many people say it's too late. But I think it's very important that all these problems have the same root, not just environmental issues, but psychological problems.

What do we do with the very unhappy society we've created. you know, education, family situation, families are collapsing. We pit all the children against each other; they're supposed to be be competing and fighting against each other, forever. I think the roots are all entangled and maybe the same one. So what we have to do, is recognize the root. This is a great opportunity. This crisis is an opportunity...to understand this mindset, not just a society, but ourselves, our mindset...

The musician Ryuichi Sakamoto...said, "We are risking our lives, not only human lives, for the sake of what? Just electricity?"

But this is a mindset we have been captured in...

For what? Is it worth risking our lives, our future, our children's future?

The objective of this system is to make more, consume more, discard more. It's eternal growth: mass production, mass consumption, mass discarding. When you look around, this whole system is made up of excess. So I think excess is the nature of the present time. More. Bigger. Faster...This is a religion of efficiency.

...After March 11, we realized how hollow our democracy had become. Democracy had become a treasure box we were carrying but then after March 11, we opened it, after many years. It was empty. We have to rebuild democracy from scratch.

When you look at politics, at media, the situation seems so pessimistic. But at the same time, I witness so many good signs and I can see very clearly that what's happening in Japan all over the place has a strong resonance with what's happening outside of Japan; In Europe, in Africa, Latin America, everywhere, similar things are happening. They're coming out of the mindset that my generation is still trying to cling to. Young people are saying, 'Just forget it. They are not attracted anymore. They're not deceived. More and more, I can feel good things are happening...

The rest of the story we have to create...

May 23, 2015 - Kodansha release of I am Catherine Jane: "50 years ago, a US serviceman raped me too...I want to live my life again from today...With tears in her eyes & in mine, we embraced each other. I did not know her name. But to me, her name was Okinawa."

On May 23, Kodansha released the Japanese translation of "I am Catherine Jane" 

Fifty years ago, a US serviceman raped me too. For 50 years, I have lived in sorrow.

I am now over 70-years-old...I want to live my life again from today...

With tears in her eyes and tears in mine, we embraced each other. I did not know her name. But to me, her name was Okinawa.

This passage from I am Catherine Jane describes a meeting between a woman sharing her story of rape for the first time after hearing Fisher's shared story of rape and her quest for survival, healing and justice in the face of U.S. and Japanese government indifference to the assault.

Earlier this month, after giving speeches outside Camp Schwab, rape survivor Catherine Jane Fisher and over 30 supporters tied 100 meters of white ribbon in remembrance of the survivors raped by United States servicemen stationed in Okinawa since 1945, to promote awareness of violence against women.  The day before, 35,000-50,000 protestors attended the mass rally for Henoko in Naha.

A longtime supporter of Okinawa, Fisher clearly sees the interconnections between the 70-year history of US military rapes of Okinawan women and US military rape of the land and sea to build military bases. While the media is covering the ongoing Okinawan governent effort to save the coral reef and dugong habitat at Henoko from landfill and military base construction by the US and Japanese governments, background history starts in 1996 or 2006 or 1996, the dates of recent agreements between the two governments.

Australian rape survivor begins White Ribbon Violence Against Women" campaign 

outside U.S. military training base Camp Schwab

(Photo: courtesy of Catherine Jane Fisher)

This framing omits earlier history crucial for understanding the depth of the Okinawan movement: the  US military forcibly seized and demolished a vibrant farming and fishing community to build Camp Schwab during the 1950's period of "Bayonets and Bulldozers. This followed earlier seizures of Okinawan private property during and immediately after the Battle of Okinawa, when 400,000 Okinawans were detained in POW camps.

Fisher explains that many elder women protesters at Henoko and in those crowds are survivors of US military rape during this period.

The 1950s seizures throughout the prefecture were brutal, accompanied by assaults, including sexual assaults, against resisters. US military crimes against Okinawans, especially rapes, took place on a daily basis at this time, according to scholar Miyumi Tanji, in her 2006 book, Myth, protest, and struggle in Okinawa:

Victimization of Okinawan farmers and forceful acquisition of their land was combined with the physical violence inflicted on the locals personally...Violence directed towards the local populace by US military staff, especially rape, revealed the crudest and most brutal aspect of the power relations between the occupiers and the occupied...

'US land acquisition in Isahama and Ie-jima and the rape [and murder of 6-year-old Yumiko Nagayama] resulted the humiliation of all Okinawans, leading to what Arasaki calls the first wave of the "Okinawa Struggle.' ...These rallies became models for mass demonstrations in the community of protest of the future.

 Okinawan women protesting the forced US military seizures 

 of their homes and farms in July 1955.

On May 23, Kodansha released the Japanese translation of I am Catherine Jane in which Fisher relates the story of her uphill climb for justice after being raped by a U.S. sailor in Japan.  Vivid published the English-language version last year.

Damon Coulter's review at The Japan Times details Fisher's suffering and challenge to the indifference of the US and Japanese governments:

Fisher was physically raped in 2002 by Bloke Deans, a U.S. serviceman stationed at Yokosuka. Immediately afterward, she faced a psychological ordeal at the hands of the Kanagawa police force, who subjected her to 12 hours of questioning without food, drink or medical attention when she reported the crime. Finally, the United States government violated Fisher twice — first by giving Dean an honorable discharge, allowing him to leave Japan and flee charges, and then by later disdaining their own “zero tolerance” rape policy by refusing to acknowledge or take responsibility for their own corruption...

David McNeill's tells the even fuller story of Fisher's indomitable struggle in "From Yokosuka rape to U.S. court victory, ‘Jane’ commits her 12-year ordeal to print":

"I could have returned to Australia and closed my eyes, but somebody had to stand up.”

...Fisher won a civil suit against him in a Tokyo court in 2004 but the ruling had no jurisdictional authority in the U.S. Last year, after tracking Deans in America for several years, Fisher finally persuaded a circuit court in the U.S. to enforce that judgment for rape against him.

Fisher’s insistence that the U.S. military had helped Deans evade justice and that the Japanese government did little to help her pursue him was strengthened in the Milwaukee County Circuit Court by a statement submitted by Deans in which he claims a U.S. Navy lawyer told him to leave the country. The U.S. court’s decision was a victory for Fisher, but one that left her physically, mentally and financially exhausted, she says.

Fisher is now an advocate for rape survivors, campaigning for 24-hour rape crisis centers, and for making rape kits mandatory in police stations and hospitals. (The US government might consider funding these much-needed centers, as a matter of restitution and atonementl.)

Fisher is an esteemed member of the Okinawan movement for democracy, human rights, justice and healing which is characterized by intermutual respect and support, hallmarks of authentic community.  A visual artist and and author, Fisher created a FB page, Save Henoko, which focuses on inspirational images and thoughts to support the supporters of Henoko.

Born in Australia, Fisher has lived in Japan since the 1980s and has three sons.

Albert Einstein: "A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe..."

A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

- Albert Einstein

Thich Nhat Hanh: "You carry Mother Earth within you."

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship you have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change your life.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment. You are in the centre and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing.

So to breathe in and be aware of your body and look deeply into it and realise you are the Earth and your consciousness is also the consciousness of the earth. Not to cut the tree not to pollute the water, that is not enough.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh, "Beyond Environment: Falling Back in Love with Mother Earth", Guardian

Terry Tempest Williams on living with radiation from the 1,000+ nuclear bomb explosions in North America

(Image: Richard Miller, “Areas crossed by two or more radioactive clouds during the era of nuclear testing in the American Southwest, 1951-62” in Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing (Two-Sixty Press, 1999))

When Terry Tempest Williams began her soul-searching chronicle that explores how her family, friends, and community members lived with the environmental, psychological and health consequences of the thousand nuclear test explosions in the American Southwest (most Southerners don't even know this, but Mississippi was also nuked twice), she felt unheard and unseen. Then she visited Hiroshima, and upon meeting other survivors of nuclear radiation, no longer felt alone.

Her 20-year-old memoir, Refuge, is more relevant than ever, after Fukushima. An excerpt from her last chapter, "The Clan of One-Breasted Women":

Over dessert, I shared a recurring dream of mine, I told my father that for years, as long as I could remember, I saw this flash of light in the night in the desert—that this image had so permeated my being that I could not venture south without seeing it again, on the horizon, illuminating buttes and mesas.

"You did see it," he said.

"See what?"

"The bomb. The cloud...

I stared at my father.

"I thought you knew that," he said. "It was a common occurence in the fifties."

It was at this moment that I realized the deceit I had been living under. Children growing up in the American Southwest, drinking contaminated milk from contaminated cows, even from the contaminated breasts of their mothers, my mother—members, years later, of the Clan of One-Breasted Women.

It is a well-known story in the Desert West. "The Day We Bombed Utah," or more accurately, the years we bombed Utah: above ground atomic testing in Nevada took place from January 27, 1951 to July 11, 1962. Not only were the winds blowing north covering "low-use segments of the population" with fallout and leaving sheep dead in their tracks, but the climate was right...

Much has been written about this "American nuclear tragedy." Public health was secondary to national security...

Again and again, the American public was told by its government, in spite of burns, blisters, and nausea, "It ihas been found that the tests may be conducted with adequate assurance of safety under conditions prevailing at the bombing reservations." Assuaging public fears was simply a matter of public relations. "Your best action," an Atomic Energy Commission booklet read, "is not to be worried about fallout."

...The fear and inability to question authority that ultimately killed rural communities in Utah during atmospheric testing of atomic weapons is the same fear I saw in my mother's body...

My father's memory was correct. The September blast we drove through in 1957 was part of Operation Plumbbob, one of the most intensive series of bomb tests to be initiated. The flash of light in the night in the desert, which I had always thought was a dream, developed into a family nightmare. It took fourteen years, from 1957 to 1971, for cancer to manifest in my mother—the same time, Howard L. Andrews, an authority in radioactive fallout at the National Institutes of Health, says radiation cancer requires to become evident...

One night I dreamed women from all over the world circled a blazing fire in the desert. They spoke of change, how they hold the moon in their bellies and wax and wane with its phases. They mocked presumption of even-tempered beings...

- Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, 1991

Wangari Mathaai: When we destroy our natural environment, we degrade ourselves; in helping the earth to heal, we heal ourselves

Wangaari Mathaai, the late Kenyan visionary, articulated the interconnections between democracy, demilitarization, human rights and environmentalism in her holistic vision of a life-sustaining civilization:

Spiritual Environmentalism: Healing Ourselves by Replenishing the Earth

During my more than three decades as an environmentalist and campaigner for democratic rights, people have often asked me whether spirituality, different religious traditions, and the Bible in particular had inspired me, and influenced my activism and the work of the Green Belt Movement (GBM). Did I conceive conservation of the environment and empowerment of ordinary people as a kind of religious vocation? Were there spiritual lessons to be learned and applied to their own environmental efforts, or in their lives as a whole?...

However, I never differentiated between activities that might be called "spiritual" and those that might be termed "secular." After a few years I came to recognize that our efforts weren't only about planting trees, but were also about sowing seeds of a different sort—the ones necessary to give communities the self-confidence and self-knowledge to rediscover their authentic voice and speak out on behalf of their rights (human, environmental, civic, and political). Our task also became to expand what we call "democratic space," in which ordinary citizens could make decisions on their own behalf to benefit themselves, their community, their country, and the environment that sustains them...

In the process of helping the earth to heal, we help ourselves.

Through my experiences and observations, I have come to believe that the physical destruction of the earth extends to us, too. If we live in an environment that's wounded—where the water is polluted, the air is filled with soot and fumes, the food is contaminated with heavy metals and plastic residues, or the soil is practically dust—it hurts us, chipping away at our health and creating injuries at a physical, psychological, and spiritual level. In degrading the environment, therefore, we degrade ourselves.

The reverse is also true. In the process of helping the earth to heal, we help ourselves. If we see the earth bleeding from the loss of topsoil, biodiversity, or drought and desertification, and if we help reclaim or save what is lost—for instance, through regeneration of degraded forests—the planet will help us in our self-healing and indeed survival. When we can eat healthier, nonadulterated food; when we breathe clean air and drink clean water; when the soil can produce an abundance of vegetables or grains, our own sicknesses and unhealthy lifestyles become healed. The same values we employ in the service of the earth's replenishment work on us, too. We can love ourselves as we love the earth; feel grateful for who we are, even as we are grateful for the earth's bounty; better ourselves, even as we use that self-empowerment to improve the earth; offer service to ourselves, even as we practice volunteerism for the earth.

Human beings have a consciousness by which we can appreciate love, beauty, creativity, and innovation or mourn the lack thereof. To the extent that we can go beyond ourselves and ordinary biological instincts, we can experience what it means to be human and therefore different from other animals. We can appreciate the delicacy of dew or a flower in bloom, water as it runs over the pebbles or the majesty of an elephant, the fragility of the butterfly or a field of wheat or leaves blowing in the wind. Such aesthetic responses are valid in their own right, and as reactions to the natural world they can inspire in us a sense of wonder and beauty that in turn encourages a sense of the divine.

The environment becomes sacred, because to destroy what is essential to life is to destroy life itself.

That consciousness acknowledges that while a certain tree, forest, or mountain itself may not be holy, the life-sustaining services it provides—the oxygen we breathe, the water we drink—are what make existence possible, and so deserve our respect and veneration. From this point of view, the environment becomes sacred, because to destroy what is essential to life is to destroy life itself.

Read more of this entire excerpt of Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World here.

Wangari Mathaai: "Rather than go backwards, we ought to move forward, towards a vision of a world without war."

...rather than go backwards, we ought to move forward, towards a vision of a world without war. A world where every nation would have an Article 9 in its constitution.

- Wangari Maathai, 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Green Belt Movement

Denise Levertov: "We must dare to win not wars, but a future in which to live."

...Let our different dream,

and more than dream, our acts

of constructive refusal generate

struggle. And love. We must dare to win

not wars, but a future

in which to live.

- Denise Levertov, concluding lines from her poem "A Speech for Antidraft Rally, D.C., March 22, 1980”

Lao Tzu: War as futile death wish & collective funeral

One who would guide a leader of men in
the uses of life
Will warn him against the use of arms for
conquest.
Even the finest arms are an instrument of
evil;
An army's harvest is a waste of thorns
In time of war men, civilized in peace,
Turn from their higher to their lower
nature.
But triumph is not beautiful.
He who thinks a triumph beautiful
Is one with a will to kill.
The death of a multitude is cause for
mourning
Conduct your triumph as a funeral.

- Lao Tzu

Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death & evil

Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.

- Dr. Martin Luther King quoting historian Arnold Toynbee

Grace Lee Boggs calls for a revolution in cultural values: "What are we for, rather than what are we against?"

In this Democracy Now! interview, legendary peace & justice activist from Detroit, Grace Lee Boggs talks about the social and cultural openings unfolding in the wake of failures of our current economic system. Boggs, with DN!'s Juan Gonzalez, Harper'scolumnist Thomas Frank, and minister Jim Wallis, discuss the revolution in values Martin Luther King called for 50 years ago.

This Asia Pacific Forum (WBAI 99.5 FM) interview, "Making the World Anew," with Grace Lee Boggs and her co-author Scott Kurishige, focuses on their new book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-first Century. The deep question the book addresses is "What are we for, rather than what are we against?"

The daughter of Chinese immigrants who lived in New York City, Boggs attended Barnard College on a scholarship, and received a PhD at Bryn Mawr, before embarking on a journey of lifelong advocacy of interconnected social justice and peace causes.

Her father ran a popular Chinese restaurant on Broadway, near Times Square. Despite all his success, in the 1920's, when he bought a house in Queens, he had to the put deed in the name of an Irish-American contractor because Asian-Americans were not allowed to own property.

Because of her experience with structural racism, Grace Lee Boggs came to identify with African American intellectuals and activists, the vanguard of all U.S. ethnic minority movements and leaders in global human rights and anti-colonial struggles during the 20th century.

In an interview with public broadcaster Bill Moyers in 2006, Boggs explained:

When I was growing up, Asians were so few and far between, they were almost invisible, so the idea of an Asian American movement was unthinkable. When I got my PhD in 1940, even department stores would come out and say, 'We don't hire Orientals, and so the idea of my getting a job teaching at a university was ridiculous.

Boggs tells us that we must remain aware our struggles for equality, dignity, justice and peace are part of an ancient humanistic tradition that is interconnected and global in scope. The philosopher-activist sees nonviolent grassroots social change as part of a "pilgrimage" that humans have undertaken for millennia.

Discussing her mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Boggs reminds us that King didn't just talk about civil rights. Similarly to Malcolm X and other anti-colonial activists of his time, King saw the American Civil Rights Movement as one piece of a global human rights movement challenging the violence and exploitation of hundreds of years of militarized colonialism. Boggs echoes King in telling us that our challenge is not one nation, but instead our challenge are the globally interconnected patterns of racism, materialism, violence, and militarism. As King emphasized, we can only address this dysfunctional and sick mindset by cultivating a "radical revolution of values" — spiritual, moral, creative, and human values — a revolution that begins inside ourselves.

Instead of despairing at what we're up against, Boggs sees hope for change by "bringing together small groups for a major cultural revolution" to address the monstrous growth of the military-industrial complex, the planetary environmental emergency, the plight of the marginalized and other related problems.

We must look for ways to "regain our humanity in little, practical ways." She recommends gardening, especially community gardening, as a means for us to remain connected with and become empowered by our beautiful, living, natural world.


(Grace & the late Jim Boggs. Image: Boggs Center)
Grace Lee Boggs reminds us to stay focused and gain strength from being effective in our personal worlds and finding alternative ways to regain and expand control over our lives:

Do something local...Do something real, however small...There was a time when we thought if we just received political power, we could change everything...

But we have to begin new practices... engender discussions...community...dialogue...

We have to change the way we think...I think we have to rethink the concept of "leader" because the idea of "leader" implies power...

We need to appropriate the idea that we are the leaders we've been waiting for.

More about Grace Lee Boggs and her affirmative philosophy at The Boggs Center website.

Martin Luther King: "If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, we must find an alternative to war."

"... We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers...

If we are to survive today, our moral and spiritual 'lag' must be eliminated. Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the "without" of man's nature subjugates the 'within', dark storm clouds begin to form in the world.

This problem of spiritual and moral lag, which constitutes modern man's chief dilemma, expresses itself in three larger problems which grow out of man's ethical infantilism. Each of these problems, while appearing to be separate and isolated, is inextricably bound to the other. I refer to racial injustice, poverty, and war...

Recent events have vividly reminded us that nations are not reducing but rather increasing their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The best brains in the highly developed nations of the world are devoted to military technology...

The proliferation of nuclear weapons has not been halted, in spite of the Limited Test Ban Treaty...The fact that most of the time human beings put the truth about the nature and risks of the nuclear war out of their minds because it is too painful and therefore not 'acceptable' does not alter the nature and risks of such war. The device of 'rejection' may temporarily cover up anxiety, but it does not bestow peace of mind and emotional security.

So man's proneness to engage in war is still a fact. But wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminated even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war. In a day when vehicles hurtle through outer space and guided ballistic missiles carve highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can claim victory in war. A so-called limited war will leave little more than a calamitous legacy of human suffering, political turmoil, and spiritual disillusionment. A world war - God forbid! - will leave only smoldering ashes as a mute testimony of a human race whose folly led inexorably to ultimate death. So if modern man continues to flirt unhesitatingly with war, he will transform his earthly habitat into an inferno such as even the mind of Dante could not imagine...

...we must fix our vision not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but upon the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody that is far superior to the discords of war. Somehow we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race which no one can win to a positive contest to harness man's creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all of the nations of the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a 'peace race'..."

– Martin Luther King, 1964 Nobel Lecture

Cornel West: "The essential thing is that we make love absolutely real."

(Cornel West's memoir: Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud)

Engaged scholar Cornel West on Twitter:

The essential thing is that we make love absolutely real. Love on our young people. They are our future!

More from earlier posts

#CollegeTaughtMe: Paideia - "deep education" -- learning how to die to live more intensely, critically, and abundantly. 3:08 PM Dec 14th via HootSuite

#CollegeTaughtMe: The aim of education should be to get people to shift from the surface to something substantive. 3:06 PM Dec 14th via HootSuite

#CollegeTaughtMe: You can have all the schooling in the world but if you're still on the surface you're not really educated...

Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats dominate our political, economic and cultural systems. 1:52 PM Dec 10th via HootSuite

And we have powerful, and often greedy, Wall Street oligarchs and corporate plutocrats. 1:52 PM Dec 10th via HootSuite...

“Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all.” -- Toni Morrison...

#LOVE can change the world 1:35 PM Dec 8th via HootSuite

More powerful words from Cornel West at his website and in this interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! about his memoir:

I just wanted to lay bare the truth of love in my life, the ways in which I’ve tried to bear witness to love, truth, justice...

And most importantly, for me, right now, I think we need stories of inspiration. These are very depressing times, very bleak times. Even the age of Obama looks like we’ve got profound disappointment. How do we try to galvanize our spirits and our minds and our hearts and souls?

...I am a bluesman in the life of the mind; I’m a jazzman in the world of ideas, which means I’ve got to forge my unique voice, tied to my vocation with a vision, and a unique style. And it’s a voice and style that doesn’t fit well within highly professionalized and specialized contexts.

A blues person is always one who keeps his funky and resists all forms of sterilization, sanitation and deodorizing of funky reality. And by sanitation, I don’t mean I’m against keeping things clean, but I don’t like those discourses that are so clean that they don’t allow the funk, like the squeegee men in New York, like the marginalized, like our gay brothers and lesbian sisters who are often dishonored and dehumanized even by some on the left, or forgetting of indigenous people.

I have a whole section here talking about I will never forget about my dear indigenous brothers and sisters, whose suffering is rendered invisible, and oftentimes, like the Zapatistas, they got to put on a mask in order to be seen at that level of invisibility, you see. That’s what a blues man’s about, telling the truth with a smile on his or her face. That’s Bessie. That’s Ma Rainey.

Ikuo Hirayama, artist from Hiroshima: War is the "supreme folly of humankind"

(Image: Art Acknowledgement News)

Ikuo Hirayama passed away in December 2009, five months before the Miroku Project's Nara 2010: Conferences on the Future of East Asia, which he chaired, was to begin.

The renowned artist and Silk Roads preservation activist said that the wish for peace was the core of his work. His fervent quest was born when he was a fifteen-year-old living in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. That morning, he witnessed the atomic bombing "like a flashbulb had gone off right in front of me." Suffering from radiation-induced leukopenia, Hirayama knew he wanted to work for world peace but did not know how to do this until his mind suddenly filled with spontaneous image of the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang who defied his government to go in search of Buddhist texts:

As a child I suffered from the effects of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. This devastating experience has made me harbor a strong wish for world peace, just as I believe monk Xuanzang did. Identifying with him thus, I have wished to relive his journey of sacrifice and discovery along the Silk Road.

In following Xuanzang's footsteps across the Silk Roads, Hirayama realized the deep historical and cultural interconnections between Eurasia, Africa, and the Middle East, all the way to Japan:

What we call Japanese fine arts have their origin in China...If Chinese art objects of the early Tang age were excavated (in Japan) now, they would be taken for Japanese objects. With the passage of time, Japanese fine arts became recognizably different from Chinese fine arts, but in the Asuka, Hakuho and Tenpyo periods, that is, in the seventh century, the two were identical.

This realization of human unity helped to heal Hirayama's psyche and spirit. His journeys west also reinforced his knowledge of the devastation of war:

It’s no exaggeration to say that a culture can be wiped out in a second by war. Many ruins and remains found along the Silk Road are the result of war, the supreme folly of humankind.

It took the artist decades to recover enough personal strength to look backwards into his life, at what happened in Hiroshima. When he did, he was ready to portray the atomic bombing in his medium, Nihon-ga, the richly colored traditional Japanese paint medium using dry mineral pigments, which originated in India and was brought to Japan via the artist's beloved Silk Roads.

"Ikuo Hirayama says the wish for peace is at the core of his art work" by NPR's Robert Rand, published in 2008, explores Hirayama's peace activism through visual art and historic preservation:

Today, the Japanese city of Hiroshima is a thriving metropolis of 1.2 million that speaks with the rumble and squeal of streetcars and traffic. But on Aug. 6, 1945, an atomic bomb shattered the city, killing more than 90,000. Of those who survived, one man, Ikuo Hirayama, would go on to turn the devastation into art...

"There was a powerful flash right in front of me. I covered my ears. And there was a strong wind, and I squatted down and the wind went right over my head. And I then tried to escape through waterfalls of fire..."

Many of his friends died. Hirayama grew ill from radiation sickness and his white-blood-cell count plummeted, but eventually he recovered. He left Hiroshima, adopted Buddhism as a way of honoring the dead, and took up painting, practicing an ancient technique called Nihonga, in which colors are blended from ground-up mineral pigments, then attached to the canvas with glue.

Hirayama became famous as a painter of Buddhist images and of the Silk Road, the highway that brought Buddhism to Japan. His Silk Road paintings convey Hirayama's belief that the road, with its exchange of commerce and ideas, showed that cultures can interact constructively. The paintings epitomize a sense of hopefulness and cooperation, peace and tranquility, the antithesis to Hiroshima, 1945...

Two decades after the bombing, Hirayama finally returned to Hiroshima. He visited the city's Atomic Bomb Memorial Park, and found himself drawn by the hiss and flicker of a flame honoring the dead.

"I saw the color of the fire, which was orange. It reminded me of the day of the bombing, and I could not get rid of that color behind my eyelids," he says.

Hirayama immediately began sketching out what would become one of his most powerful works, a huge, six-paneled canvas called "The Holocaust of Hiroshima..."

(Takato Kageyama, who lost his parents and two sisters in the bombing, stands before "The Holocaust of Hiroshima." Photo: NPR)

Hirayama says that despite the sorrow and destruction portrayed in "The Holocaust of Hiroshima," the painting offers a message of hope.

"The Buddhist god is telling everybody to rise like a Phoenix, to stand up and live for all eternity," he explains. "I believe that art can overcome hardships. I believe that flowers can blossom from anguish and inhumanity. You can overcome these things and make something beautiful..."

"I started to create my artwork as a requiem for those who lost their lives in the war. The wish for peace is at the core of my work," says Hirayama.

Read Rand's entire article here.

— JD

Thich Nhat Hanh: "The Future is Contained in the Present"

The future is contained in the present. We can see that how we are and what we are and what we will be are the outcome of what we are and we are now...

To say whether we have a future or we don't have a future will not help. Either way it will not help.

To say there is a future may make people have false hope. It's not good. And if we say there is not future, then people will have more despair, and that's not good.

So I would be inclined to say that the future is in the present. Look and see for yourself. I would add that we should try to live happily in the present moment, and if there is real happiness then we will have a future.

People, in consuming a lot and trying to be rich, believe that they are happy, but we have to helpt them to see that their life may not be happy. We should try to help them find real happiness from looking at the blude sky—really looking—or looking at a child or a flower.

When people have a base of real happiness, they will abandon the other things that destroy. Maybe that's the most important thing to do now in order to have the future and the present. If we have the present then we have the future.

— Thich Nhat Hanh

(Image: NASA. This 1972 translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the southern hamisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Penninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is the Malagasy Republic. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast.)

Betty Williams: "The insanity of what's going on militarily in the world has got to be challenged."

I have to sit in rooms with men who justify military budgets by telling me it's for defense...

No doubt the dead and dying are very gratified they're defending them so well.

The insanity of what's going on militarily in the world has got to be challenged...

To look forward to a demilitarized world is not for idealistic fools. They call us idealistic fools. I've been called many names, but that's one I object to the most. It's not idealistic to say that the world must begin to live together without guns or bombs or better and bigger ways to destroy each other...

-- Betty Williams, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

Toyohiko Kagawa: "By the abandonment of war, we in Japan have emerged from the era of barbarism."

A typical modern state, encumbered with its heavy armaments but well-nigh bereft of other values...today seems nearer to the stage of barbarism than do many individuals. By the abandonment of war, we in Japan have emerged from the era of barbarism. Thus we have been afforded a chance to make ourselves the most progressive and civilized of all nations.

If we had only done this willingly ten years ago, history would have taken another course. But it is not too late for us.

Our new constitution will become a milestone in the realization of world peace.

After Presbyterian minister, labor rights activist, anti-war protester (jailed during World War II), and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Toyohiko Kagawa wrote this 1946; he helped lead the post-war grassroots Japanese struggle to preserve Article 9 against Cold Warriors intent on rescinding both the pacifist spirit and the law itself.

"Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all." -- Oscar Romero

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.

-- Oscar Romero

Martin Luther King: Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal

Martin Luther King on war and peace in Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community:

A final problem that mankind must solve in order to survive in the world house that w have inherited is finding an alternative to war and human destruction. Recent events have vividly reminded us that nations are not reducing but rather increasing their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction. The best brains in the highly developed nations of the world are devoted to military technology. The proliferation of nuclear wapons has not been halted, in spite of the limited-test-ban-treaty.

In this day of man's highest technical achievement, in this day of dazzling discovery, of novel opportunities, loftier dignities, and fuller freedoms for all, there is no excuse for the kind of blind craving for power and reesources that provoked the wars of previous generations...The question is, do we have the morality and courage to live together as brothers and not be afraid? Many men cry "Peace! Peace!" but they refuse to do the things that make peace.

The larger power blocs talk passionately of pursuing peace while expanding defense budgets that already bulge, enlarging already awesome armies and devising ever more devastating weapons...The heads of all nations issue clarion calls for peace, yet they come to the peace table accompanied by bands of brigands each bearing unsheathed swords.

The stages of history are replete with the chants and choruses of the conquerors of old who came killing in pursuit of peace. Alexander, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne and Napoleon were akin in seeking a peaceful world order, a world fashioned after their selfish conceptions of an ideal existence. Each sought a world at peace which would personify his egoistic dreams. Even within the life span of most of us, another megalomaniac strode across the world stage. He sent his blitzkrieg-bent legions blazing across Europe, bringing havoc and holocaust in his wake. There is grave irony in the fact that Hitler could come forth, following nakedly expansionist theories, and do it all in the name of peace.

So when in this day I see the leaders of nations again talking peace while preparing for war, I take fearful pause...

Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war. We are called upon to look up from the quagmire of military programs and defense commitments and read the warnigns on history's signposts.

One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal...How much longer must we play at deadly war games before we heed the plaintive pleas of the unnumbered dead and maimed of past wars?