Essay for
September 2005

Compassionate Retaliation

We are living in an age where compassion is fast becoming a secondary, or even an irrelevant, aspect of our lives. The push pull demands of daily living are fraught with endless dramas of economic, social personal security and safety concerns. That intensity focuses our attention on survival, which appears normal. Animals do the same thing. However, animals only take what they can use, whereas humans tend to accumulate 'things' to make their life better or easier. The deceptive trap within the accumulation is that there is always something newer, bigger or brighter and the accumulation becomes a recycling affair without end. The 'things' that appear to make our life easier and more comfortable also keep us tied to survival intensity, inducing a false protection in order to maintain those 'things'. In turn, that false protection creates a border, encircling those 'things' as well as relationships, locking our compassionate insight within that circle. Widening the circle can be blocked by many aspects of living, from our accepted or created beliefs to the daily news.

The 'circle of protection' is easy to witness when one's belief is pitted against another belief. The protective border is forged into the armor of each, potentially blocking any form of compassionate interchange, maintaining the 'circle of protection' as real. It is a stalemate or standoff inducing border wars, both personal and national, undermining the safety and security the 'circle of protection' supposedly created. This is the world we live within, surrounded by our self-created protective borders. It is rarely appreciated that only compassionate insight contains the ability to remove the armor created by those borders, allowing them to be dismantled, everything else deals with the superficial periphery of the border.

The daily news can do the same thing. Ceaseless two to five minute news cuts of misery, suffering and disasters potentially blunts and numbs our ability to see into the depth of whatever human suffering is being portrayed. Its superficial nature breeds superficial insight, until that news permeates our personal 'circle of protection', then the depth is felt. The moment our 'circle of protection' is breached our border defenses are activated, and compassionate insight becomes the first victim. Our compassionate insight is being corralled into a tight 'circle of protection', creating borders that foster mistrust on both sides of the border. This applies equally to individuals and nations, and the results of that mistrust can have devastating consequences for everyone on both sides of the border.

Borders insulate those within from those without. When under threat, real or imagined, the borders are raised, creating both a false protection for those within and potential retaliation toward those without. Self-protective borders are both a shield and a sword. When that form of armor exists, understanding a perceived threat exists within a veil of mistrust created by that armor. The armor is the superficial protection, creating that cloud of mistrust, preventing causation to be uncovered, as only the superficial is witnessed. The mist that shrouds causation can only be removed by its opposite, trust, and that takes courage. This is 'turning the other cheek', and trust is the foundation for that action.

Unguarded trust is courage that wins no medals. It must withstand mistrust, taking all that mistrust can give until it is exhausted, allowing trust to surface of its own accord, and that is 'turning the other cheek'. When mistrust is converted to trust, by trust alone, causation of the mistrust will be discovered hidden in the self-protective borders.

This process takes courage. Everyone possesses that courage but our own self-created border protection can prevent it from coming into fruition. Unguarded trust is the only way to remove the shrouding mist to discover real causation by eliminating the superficial borders that mistrust relies upon. Discovering causation reveals why the mistrust exists, allowing each to examine the contrary borders of another without using one's own border as a filter. A bond of trust naturally develops that will neither attack the borders of another, nor will it be necessary to defend one's own. Border wars end and a natural protection will arise of its own volition as there is nothing to attack and nothing to defend.

It takes one to initiate that form of trust simply by recognizing it as a necessity to eradicate mistrust. One must also be prepared to suffer the consequences of that trust, until mistrust is removed. Recognizing how to solve the problem contains the seed to resolve it by stepping forward in response to that call, allowing the seed to germinate. Herein lays the need for resolute and sustained courage, as that form of trust is mistrusted by everyone who holds any form of border and you may appear to be standing alone in a seemingly David versus Goliath battle. It is here within this vision-isolation where the courage arises and lives within trusting one's own trust. This action is compassionate retaliation, existing on a subjective knowing that is rarely objectively confirmed. That form of knowing stimulates the courage to endure as it creates the trust to trust and not be drowned within the slime of mistrust. Trusting one's trust has no protective armor and carries no sword to retaliate against the slashing cuts and anger mistrust can produce. This is the core of 'turning the other cheek', as that form of trust requires no confirmation as it is not locked within success or failure of the action. That trust stands alone, requiring nothing beyond itself to sustain it. That takes courage, quiet determination and resolute but flexible direction, containing no goals beyond revealing unguarded trust that indirectly demonstrates what mistrust creates. It is a powerful but potentially lonely journey encased with the evolution of personal integrity.

Mistrust will always reject trust as mistrust survives within self-containing borders while trust is borderless. Mistrust is self-sustaining and self-limiting as its self-created borders continually give itself life. Pure trust, being borderless, easy absorbs the borders of mistrust; enfolding them within itself, withstanding the devastation those borders create until the borders are also absorbed and so neutralized. That is one long and difficult journey but the results create a real protection as versus a false protection created by living within borders. The individual or nation that upholds pure trust in the face of mistrust may never be recognized as the ultimate peacemaker, but that is the pinnacle of peacemaking, forging a secure and evolutionary pathway for individuals and nations.

Unguarded trust to overcome mistrust is compassionate insight in action: which is easy to write about but incredibly difficult to accomplish. For that form of trust to exist there must be a long vision of correctness, sustained by a personal knowing that intellectual knowledge cannot provide. It moves beyond belief and into a personal subjective knowing that knows that real causation will never be discovered by living within any form of protective armor, for that armor creates a subliminal mistrust in both parties. It may never be stated in such terms, but that is what armor does. With mistrust laying at the base of any investigation only superficial peripherals will be revealed. Tentative agreements may disarm an immediate protection requirement, but that is only aligning with superficiality, for the mistrust remains percolating under the superficiality to reappear with but the slightest of provocation, and the entire process continually recycles.

Going into battle with no armor is compassionate retaliation in action. Entering a fray with 'open hands' holding nothing to protect oneself, nor anything to cause harm to another, takes courage that only trusting ones trust can accomplish. That form of trust will ultimately overcome mistrust simply by being what it is, albeit with a fair amount of pain and suffering to reach that end. Trust will ultimately draw out trust in another, allowing each to feel protected without any requirement for self-created border protection. On the other hand, mistrust will always induce mistrust, initiating ongoing recycling and destructive events that will never end. This applies equally to individuals and nations as in both cases when trust is lost, mistrust enters to destroy what little trust may still exist, and the consequences of that loss are always destructive.

In any border war situation (personal or national), it always takes one to initiate trust to draw the same out of another, which is 'turning the other cheek'. On a personal level 'turning the other cheek' may appear weak when in reality it is a living form of ultimate strength. On a national level 'turning the other cheek' removes the necessity for physical retaliation as the openness of that action provides the opportunity to discover common ground that each can safely stand upon to discuss their borders with no mistrust of the other, which is a living and experiential form of equality. Equality means just that, a knowing insight that we have a common bond that binds us together as one. That common bond can grow from the simple realization that we are all human beings with identical worries and concerns. From that simplicity, equality is given an opportunity to flourish, building trust, binding each within a security that borders could never provide. Without equality, mistrust will always have fertile ground to grow within, which of course applies to both personal and national relationships.

The initiator of trust must stand upon a position of absolute equality and be able to withstand all forms of attack, without defending by any form of retaliation, always retaining the courage to live within trust only. This is necessary as the defender may discover the attacker is in fact defending, revealing the defender as the one attacking. Attack and defend positions perpetually give life to the other and each may be so subtle as not to be seen as initiating its duality. However, when the grossness of one or other becomes evident, you will always discover a subtle attack/defend duality that brought the grossness to life, either real or imagined. Understanding that process requires trust to rule over mistrust and that takes courage, which is compassionate retaliation in action.

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