This line jumped off the screen. It’s from a Substack essay entitled A Day of Grief, Rage & Gratitude by Einat Temkin, a Mexican Jewish woman who wrote that, “The last three days, culminating in two concurrent funerals, literally just ended my ties with Judaism itself, forevermore. Just like that. From one moment to the next.” (Or perhaps end her ties with the Jewish community in that country.) Read it to find out why.

What struck me was the reference to humanity as the only community that matters in the context of Buddhism, a philosophy of life and, for millions, a religion.

For now, for the moment, as always, when human pain aches and burns and scalds and is unbearable, when life presents such suffering, and it seems impossible to carry on, I turn again, as always, quick as lightning back to the solid, undeniable, ever-reliable foundation of truth, Buddhism.

I feel certain, without a shred of doubt, that the miraculously undeniable, pure truth found in Buddhism will provide some solace, after what was done to my cousins, to my family, and to me, by the “Jewish Community” over the past three days, culminating in the most horrific, enraging funeral(s) I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. And I’ve attended a couple of doozies, especially having grown up in Israel and served in IDF in the 1990s.

How lucky and blessed we are, to have been gifted with a magical, infallible source of truth and comfort, that the Buddha somehow discovered all on his own, more than 2500 years ago, through a process of meditation and dialogue and study and debate and contemplation, a method and realization born of sheer determination, compassion, mindfulness but more than anything else, the realization that all human beings are the same and connected and a community.

Humanity is the only community that matters. (my bold)

In “How We Live Is How We Die” Pema Chödrön provides insights for just such moments: “As much as we might try to resist, endings happen in every moment—the end of a breath, the end of a day, the end of a relationship, and ultimately the end of life. And accompanying each ending is a beginning, though it may be unclear what the beginning holds. Chödrön shares her wisdom for working with this flow of life—learning to live with ease, joy, and compassion through uncertainty, embracing new beginnings, and ultimately preparing for death with curiosity and openness rather than fear. Poignant for readers of all ages, her teachings on the bardos—a Tibetan term referring to a state of transition, including what happens between this life and the next—reveal their power and relevance at each moment of our lives. She also offers practical methods for transforming life’s most challenging emotions about change and uncertainty into a path of awakening and love. As she teaches, the more freedom we can find in our hearts and minds as we live this life, the more fearlessly we’ll be able to confront death and what lies beyond.”

From pemachodronfoundation.org/product/how-we-live-is-how-we-die-book

Temkin invokes the horrific image of the ongoing genocide in Gaza:

My mind, as if of its own will, repeatedly, involuntarily, returns again and again and again, to the hundreds of thousands of human beings; exactly like myself, my cousins, my family; my sisters and brothers in Gaza, who have lost countless, endless, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and mostly, mostly, newborns, infants, babies, toddlers, children, teenagers and minors, to murder; murder most foul, EVERY day, EVERY single day, at the hands of the State of Israel. They have lost everything that allow humans feel like human beings, such as a place to live, a bed to sleep safely in, food to eat, clean water to drink, medicine and doctors and hospitals and schools, a way to make a dignified living, a safe space in which to raise your children, the ability to sleep through the night without being bitten by hundreds of plague-ridden rats.

It is an absolutely unending horror show, in that cursed destroyed place called Gaza, that has been going on for over two years, with total impunity, endless cruelty and no end in sight.

Can one even attempt to estimate such immeasurable pain and loss and heartbreak and suffering, when my family lost “just” 2 mothers in two days, and I find it impossible to process and am heartbroken and cannot sleep and am in so much distress? One cannot.

In the comments section I left a link to my recently published essay A Face Like Yours: A Romanian-French Poet Speaks to Us from the Grave, which conveys the same message from a Romanian-French Jewish poet who wrote an appeal to all human beings that resonates now and throughout the ages. His final words:

But when you trample on this bunch of nettles
that had been me, in another century,
in a history that you will have canceled,
remember only that I was innocent
and that, like all of you, mortals of this day,
I had, I too had a face marked
by rage, by pity and joy,

an ordinary human face!

Peace & Justice, MAA