He wrote : "Since it was I who posted the picture, I guess the least I can do is add my two cents on my thought process in doing so: You see, my real problem is with the people who blow things up, destroy things, kill living creatures in order to win attention for their cause or to make a political or social point.
However right or wrong their cause may be, at this point it no longer matters: These people have completely lost their way -- they have allowed their ideology (i.e., their various theories about what life is and/or should be) to trump life itself.
Their love for their own particular ideas about and perceptions of the world has eclipsed their ability to love the world as it is. These people can no longer see what actually is they can see only what they have decided to see. And that is the darkest depth of Maya.
That is not a partisan statement either: I refer as much to George W Bush's assault on Iraq as to Bin Laden's assault on the WTC and Pentagon. I refer equally to the Israeli soldier who unnecessarily kills a rock-throwing Palestinian child, as to the Palestinean suicide bomber who walks into a disco full of Israeli teenagers.
And thus we come to the little girl in the photo. She is too young to have formed any social or political ideas. Such things are irrelevant in her reality. She -- like any child her age -- simply is. And for no particular reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, she got hurt by the ideologist's bomb blast.
The next day, like clockwork, of course the outraged Hindu fundies came out waving saffron flags and shouting for revenge against the Muslims, while elsewhere the righteously infuriated Muslim fundies celebrated the Hindus getting their come-uppance. But let us always keep in mind -- as Kochu pointed out here a few months ago -- that there is no person on earth who is less "spiritual" than a fundamentalist of any faith.
The truly spiritual people are the ones who are cleaning up the messes the ideological fundies leave behind. They are the ones working in the hospitals, extracting shrapnel from soft tissue, sewing and repairing damaged human meat they are the counselors, psychologically aiding children who lost parents, parents who lost children, wives who lost husbands, husbands who lost wives, passers- by who lost legs and eyes -- all to help the ideologists make their point.
Yes as pointed out in the New York Times article I posted yesterday, the truly spiritual are the ones praying in the temples and mosques and churches while their fundamentalist brethren are out "protesting" for the TV cameras in the street.
And that's why I posted the picture. Because regardless of the ideological "meaning" of the bombs, this little girl is the reality of their impact.
Whatever motivation or cause the ideologists may claim, this girl is the undeniable effect. All theories and justifications aside, she is the unalloyed Truth of the act.
"So let her image stand on our splash page
for a while as a silent witness to Truth"
