Fully committed to nonviolence, the process is to hold an open mind, the “don’t know mind”. Then “bear witness” to that which is out of alignment, and finally to “move appropriately”, more and more fully committed to nonviolence. 

So here we go again, bearing witness to the erosion of checks and balances, to the participation of the people by the people, and for the lack of regard for collateral damage caused from pushing ideological, religious and political views in favor to those of more and more extreme wealth. 

This is the work. We are here to bear witness to the devastation that comes from those desiring more and more wealth, more and more power, to leaders with little regard to the impact of the collateral damage caused from such actions. We bear witness to those committed to fighting, deepening our commitment to not fight. We stand tall in the face of their arguments and persuasive sales pitches as we find our grounding from our own wisdom and experience. We stand upright and make a plea for more healing and less hurting, for more belonging and less othering, for more “we” and less “us vs them”. More wisdom, less propaganda. More power from opportunity, less forced control of the people from fundamentalist religious/political ideological beliefs.

I recently made a Facebook post showing my golden retriever toning in harmony to my trumpet. There were a couple comments about possible pain this may cause to him. One response drew the conclusion that it was causing pain. In truth, this is a deep ritual practice that emanates from the heart. It’s a call to wake up to the illusion of being separate, to the poisons of fear and greed, and our need for healing rather than continued fighting.

Mojo and I have done this every day for more than four years, sometimes twice a day. Toning for healing has been a spiritual practice for me since 2003. There are times during trouble and deep wounding when it’s too early to introduce words. This became all the more clear to me when toning the horn at Virginia Tech after the mass shooting in 2007. Mojo was a gift of grace to me at the beginning of the pandemic. The grief in October 2020 was tremendous and Mojo spontaneously joined in the healing tone when only 10 months old. We both meet this ritual with tremendous vital energy each and every day. My experience and research shows no evidence that this is a painful experience for him. I’m sure there are those whose experience and research could draw another conclusion. This seems to be the problem we have today. There’s a lack of awareness to the field of epistemology, how we know what we “think“ we know. We debate, argue, fight under the illusion that somehow “we know and others don’t“. I can’t conclude that Mojo‘s howling is not painful at some point. I can only take my experience and research. Others have their experience and their research and they can only come to a temporary conclusion. In effect, this is the essence of wisdom from R D. Laing. He claims that I have my experience and you have your experience. I have my experience of your experience. You have your experience of my experience. And on and on this can go. We will never have each other‘s experience so all we can do is deeply listen to one another for better understanding. Can you imagine the world today as John Lennon did when writing the song “Imagine“? Can you imagine putting even a small percentage of our military budget toward the very sophisticated skills needed in listening to each other for understanding rather than dominance and ideology?

Over the years of doing this Mojo and I have come to listen to each other in deeper ways. His tone is entraining more and more to the tone of the trumpet just as I’m entraining to his howling tone. These tones go deep into my ancestry and the ancestry he has with the wolves. Our experience has shown a tremendous healing impact with these calls back to wholeness, healing and unity consciousness. It’s our simple way for making a wake up call to the gift of grace and the opportunity to move through another day with deepening resolve to not cause harm.

After more than 50 years of a daily zazen meditation practice it seems it can be summarized with one word: attention. With full wholehearted attention to the moment, the mind can settle down from its busyness. Awareness to the body and present moment surroundings is what gets attention. Yet, it’s only natural to be distracted, to lose attention, to drift and daydream, and even fall asleep sometimes. This is why my teachers in the early 70s used at kaisuka slapstick. When they saw that we were drifting and drowsy, they would use this instrument to bring us back to full awareness. 

The other day, while meditating outside, a beaver‘s tail had the same effect on me. The loud slapping of his tail brought me to full attention. It’s so difficult today when culture has become very sophisticated in drawing our attention away from the moment. We seem to have little awareness to the present moment as we live on a constant diet of dissatisfaction, complaint, and mindless consumption. There have been a number of events where culture has been slapped into attention. These were moments where we have humbled ourselves with a deep sense of compassion and stewardship for each other and the planet. However, we seem to keep coming under the cultural influence of small tribal thinking in times where we need magnanimous thinking. We are times where we need more healing and less hurting.