The last time I went surfing, I drove by a military base to get to the surfing beach. “Damn the military,” I thought.
Then I looked deeper: if Hawaii wasn’t made into an outpost for US military, I likely wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t be surfing.
My surfboard was made of petroleum products. My car burned gas.
Some lines from Thich Naht Hanh’s poem “Please call me by my true names” came to mind:
I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly. I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am also the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my people dying slowly in a forced-labor camp... Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion.
Surfing both connected me to nature AND was inseperable from things like the petroleum industry and the military-industrial complex. Seeing this, initially, was painful. It stripped me of the illusion of myself as “good guy,” who stands in opposition to those “damn, evil people.”
There’s this character from the show Shtisel named Nuchem:
In the show, Nuchem constantly berates others. His tagline seems to be “those damn, evil people.” In that moment of driving past the military base, I was exhibiting Nuchem-mind.
The antidote to Nuchem mind, to judgement, is to complicate my view of myself. I am not this perfect environmental hero, unsullied by ties to the petroleum industry and the imperialism of the US military, which conquered the once-sovereign kingdom of Hawaii. I’m only here, and able to have a leisurly day of surfing, because of all that.
Calling myself by my true names doesn’t feel great at first. At first, it makes me feel smaller. But over time, I actually feel larger, more connected to the world. By realizing that each of us contains healthy and unhealthy elements, I’m allowed to have unhealthy elements within myself.
Petroleum executives and military leaders likely enjoy connecting with nature, just like me. They are not “damn, evil people” completely, just like the pirate and the member of the Politburo and the arms merchant are also not 100% evil. We exist in complex and inseperable webs of interbeing. Surfing and the petroleum industry. Hawaii and the military. We are not pure and perfect and above it all. Call us by our true names.