The news from the Gulf of Mexico is not good. A glob of oil the size of Illam is drifting toward shores stretching from New Orleans to Miami, Florida, engulfing everything in its path in a coat of toxic slime.
Further to the north and east, Eyjafjallajökul has unfortunately stopped pumping helpful ash into the atmosphere, allowing toxic-spewing airlines to resume their around-the-clock air-polluting operations.
But what is really making me icky was best expressed by one of my Nepali students this week. On the topic of the Gulf spill, she mentioned, “And Americans don’t even make the connection, BP and the huge cars they drive everywhere...”
As someone who has driven from one coast of America to the other countless times, her comment stopped me cold. It’s true. We don’t. Scanning the hundreds of articles in the media over the past month on the spill, there has not been one lead headline that alluded to this connection; no headlines calling for less use of oil, instead, just ones reporting on the blame game being played out between oil producers, the US government, and the “innocent” petro-consuming public.
You see consumers never seem to be held responsible for their addictive habits; the blame goes to those that deal the “drugs” that drive the masses. Officials that regulate the flow are also burned at the stake, just as Obama is about to be tarred and feathered over the BP incident. Yet the soccer mom who is taking her gas-guzzling SUV out for a spin to the supermarket is oblivious to the results of her own consumption.
This oblivion is really weighing heavy on me as of late. As Taiwanese workers at the Foxconn factory are committing suicide faster then Kamakazies during WW II, I, however, am still contemplating new 4.0 features coming to my iPhone. For those that don’t know, Foxconn is just one of thousands of Chinese-style sweatshops that exist only to bring us the latest and greatest in electronic gadgetry.
As a giant oil blob resembling a nightmarish monster mouth poises to devour something the size of Louisiana, I want to find my way back.
Asian sweat produces iPad joy. Transportation convenience results in wildlife deaths. Wanton greed grafts misery and pain. I know, no news here but I just can’t move on today.
I used to think that awareness might be an answer. Certainly the numerous NGOs that I work with think so. But living in Nepal has taught me that awareness is of no consequence. For example, we are all aware here that pollution is bad in the valley yet we all carry home our stuffs from the cold store in plastic bags and clog our wide walkways with all forms of combustion vehicles.
So then if awareness is not key, making connections surely must be. Connect the Dots, to use the latest buzzphrase. Connect your plastic bag to the one in the cow’s mouth outside. Connect your car exhaust to Auntie’s asthma. Connect your second-story brick home addition to kiln donkey and child abuse. Connect my obsession with gadgets to worker suicides in Taiwan. And so on and so on with the dot connecting...
Yet making these connections did not stop me for a moment to, say, salivate over the thought of a new e-book reader. And for those that do think sanely day in and day out – those making these environmental connections (as if dot connecting were their sole purpose in life) – the dukka continues regardless! That must be frustrating.
As a child, those small puzzle books where my favorite...the ones where you took a crayon and just scribbled all over the cartoon pictures – and on some pages you got to connect the dots with a pencil to produce an outline of a horse or spaceship. I could spend hours doing those as a child and even forget that Dad had brought home a new color TV a month earlier. As a child I wasn’t distracted by the media – I just wanted to solve the strange puzzling universe surrounding me. I wanted to build things and fix things and wanted a new doggy to play with. Somewhere along the way...I lost my way.
And now today, as a giant oil blob resembling a nightmarish monster mouth poises to devour something the size of Louisiana, I want to find my way back.
The words of my teacher haunt me whenever I am in this mood. Pray. Meditate. Think Bodhicitta. Or just not think...
“I think therefore I can’t be,” Thich Nhat Hanh
The entire situation would be deadly depressing if it had not been for my teacher giving me the Tibetan name of Jigme Gaton, which he told me translated into Fearless Festival. I mean, how can one be sad when one’s inspiration is to live life as if it were a 365-day a year jatra?
So even as I sit here feeling pretty polluted (in more ways then one), another religious axiom keeps popping up: How about drinking all this poison in and turning that into amrit? Yeah, how about that!
Too bad the Gulf of Mexico is more than one can swallow in one gulp.
Writer is quirky-kinda expat happily living in the Kathmandu valley with Nepali family, friends, and a very large dog – and is not so often seen practicing his religious trainings.
"herojig@gmail.com
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