A Reconciliation Story from Sri Lanka

I was privileged to be a Leadership Trainer and Consultant to the British Council in Sri Lanka during the period 2001 – 2011 mostly at the height of the civil war.  https://www.britishcouncil.lk/about/70-years-sri-lanka/stories/lalith-ananda-gunaratne

 

Sanjeevani Munasinghe, Head of Programs at the council and I tried our best to focus these sessions to contribute towards peace building - in the design and delivery of these programs.

   

We mixed the the different communities - Sinhala,Tamil and Muslim schools in most of the programs (Dreams + Teams, Connected Classrooms, Intercultural Dialogue and more) to help keep the grass roots together as the government and the Liberation Tamil Tigers of Ealam battled the horrible war.    

The story below comes from an Intercultural Dialogue program  my colleague Mihirini De Zoysa – Corporate Druids - https://mihirini.net/ and I facilitated - the first session a few months before the war ended in May 2009 and this particular program, a few months after.  

Tensions were high as the Sri Lankan government and the Sinhala people felt triumphant after the end of the war leaving the minority communities vulnerable. 

 

Many of us felt the war had taken the soul out of beautiful and diverse Sri Lanka and there were no winners.  Everyone lost something during the war, starting from our humanity, innocence and many lives.

Therefore, it was a heartening to be a part of this project to train a talented core group of university students from different communities - on leadership, team work, emotional to relationship intelligence, dealing with cross-cultural issues and conflict, mindfulness, project management, design and facilitation of training programs.  

 

They formed the core group, called it SITHEN to honor the diverse people who spoke Sinhala, Tamil and the English languages in Sri Lanka.

The core group - with our support, designed the Intercultural Dialogue project and the two sessions bringing university students (60 for the first program and 80 students for the second) from the different regions and communities – Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and Burgher – together to take the first steps to reconcile differences and to realize how similar everyone was.  

 

It was in finding our common humanity - everyone was able to transcend those differences - often prejudiced through the influence of parents and family, community leaders, schools, society, media and the government.  

During the second session I had a serendipitous and emotional encounter which took me back to 1973 as a 14 year old and I wrote about it in this story below.   

 

It was published in the Sri Lankan newspaper - Sunday Times on 11^th November 2009. https://www.sundaytimes.lk/091101/Plus/plus_02.html

I dedicate this story to my friend, P. Thillainathan who passed away in 2011.

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11th November 2009
  

“We Tamils are ever friends with you….”

An accidental encounter with the son of a childhood friend from pre-war Jaffna brings nostalgia and hope

Sitting in the train to Jaffna on that August day in 1973, discovering a landscape I had never seen before is vivid in my memory. The 4th Kandy Boy Scout Troop from St. Anthony’s College headed by Scout Master Senarath Basnayake was on an adventure of discovery.  It was an exciting trip, like going to another country - men in white vetties, women in colourful saris, the rickshaws, many Austin A 40s parked in a row, interesting aromas coming from the streetside vendors aroused my senses that this was all different.  Our hosts from Jaffna Hindu College guided us through the streets to the school which was going to be our home for the next few days.  Each of us were assigned mentors and P. Thillainathan - wide smile and friendly - introduced himself to me.   The next few days we had various Scouting activities including an early morning hike to Point Pedro.  We woke up at 3 a.m. and three hours later we walked into the white sands of Point Pedro to a glorious sunrise and a cup of Kitul Palm toddy.   What stuck in my mind the most was how friendly everyone was. Thillai took me to his home for a night where I got a real taste of Jaffna hospitality. I was  looked after like one of their own. I left Jaffna with a heavy heart, hoping that someday I will return.  Before we left, our new Scout friends – Puvirajasingham, Vivekanandan, Yoganathan, Muruganandan, Amaranath, Balachandran, Mahes and Navaratna Rajah - wrote goodbyes in my log book, which I cherish to this date.  One from Mahes said, “We Tamils are ever friends with you”. Thillai wrote, “Hope we will meet again and again.” Thillai also gave me a photograph of himself which was my reminder of those good times.  Thillai and I corresponded regularly and continued for a few years after I immigrated to Canada in late 1973. I lost touch with him about 1977 and never heard again from him. Over the years, I wondered about Thillai and by that time the war had broken out. Yet, I yearned to meet him again, but feared whether the worst had happened during the conflict. Intercultural Dialogue The second Intercultural Dialogue (SITHEN) workshop organized by a core group of university students for students was held at the MAS Institute for Management and Technology in Thulhiriya in September.    The first workshop held in Polonnaruwa in April this year did not have the participation of Jaffna University students as they did not obtain Defence Ministry approval to travel south. The war was yet raging.   To our delight, British Council, who sponsors this project, informed us that Jaffna University was participating in the second workshop. On day one of the programme, I wanted to talk to the Jaffna students to get some impressions of life there but found no time. On day two during afternoon tea, I found the Jaffna team sitting outside and struck up a conversation.    I mentioned that I had visited Jaffna in 1973 with my Scout Troop. They all joked saying that they were not even thought of then as they were born in the late 1980s.    My attention was focused on Arjuna, with a wide pleasant smile who then said, “My father was a Queen Scout at Jaffna Hindu College and he would have been there in 1973”. I asked his name and he said, “P. Thillainathan!”  I choked on hearing this. Not in my wildest thoughts had I imagined that there could be a connection with Thillai here.     Watching all this was Lufthi, a SITHEN team member from the University of Peradeniya. Lufthi got excited and yelled out, “Call him, call him” to Arjuna. Then I quietly asked him whether he was still around and to my relief Arjuna said, “Yes, he is a retired banker from Hatton National Bank and now lives in Manipay”.    The mobile signal in Manipay was not good, but we managed to have a conversation and I could not believe this was happening.  It was surreal. I later wondered as I told the tale to my wife Samantha on the phone and she said, “There must be an energy that drew you to Arjuna out of everyone else there”. The purpose of the SITHEN workshop is to bring the different communities together, especially with a focus on the divided Sinhala and Tamil students.  The Jaffna students told me how amazed they were at the way they have been welcomed by the southern Sinhala and Muslim students.    Living all their life through the war in the north, their perception of the Sinhala people as oppressors was very different to the warmth and the hospitality they were experiencing here. Maran, just graduated in Bio-Science from Jaffna said, “We are so happy that our Sinhala friends accepted our side of the story”. He was talking of the debate, discussion and a dialoguing session that formed the process of learning about each other, putting the past to rest and forging a new future together. Maran went on to tell me that Nishanthi, the only girl in the Jaffna delegation was so fearful of coming south, but now having made some wonderful friends already, did not want to go back.   As I sit here with these 60 students from Colombo, Moratuwa, Jayewardenepura, Kelaniya, Peradeniya and Jaffna Universities, the positive energy and hope in the room is palpable. So much so that I feel compassion for those people who live their lives with the certainty that every Tamil is a Tiger and every Sinhalese a racist.    Immersed in this fear and hate, they are missing out on the richness of humanity, the understanding and love that is natural to us all and fail to see the uncertainty of our being, the feeling of oneness with the universe – being interconnected – that our own Vedic and Buddhist philosophies espouse.  Even if these perceptions were true, I see the importance of dialoguing, opening the lines of communication in a creative way, finding a middle path to enable skillful discussion in a safe environment to address the past and look to a common future. This is what the workshop offered everyone and it easily achieved its objectives.  The sessions focused on dealing with the practical challenge in the universities with the polarization of the three communities and sought ways to creatively work towards bringing them together.  After the dialogue, there was a call to shed old thoughts, perceptions, prejudices – write what you wanted to change on a paper and a symbolic gesture of throwing it into the garbage and burning it.    Thushara, a Moratuwa University student came to the middle and said, “I no longer call myself a Sinhala, I am Sri Lankan” to loud cheers and then someone else wondered, “In calling ourselves Sri Lankans, do we rid ourselves of the Sinhala and the Tamil identities ?” a question that we may all ponder as no one had an answer.  Thillai being alive and well made my peace more complete as Sri Lanka as a nation works towards peace, as I often wondered whether he had been a victim of the war too. Indeed the Thillainathans were victims as their home was destroyed in the war and they lost everything, including the photos I had sent them.  I count my blessings as I never lost those seemingly insignificant symbols of the past that give me a sense of comfort, security and continuity. My photo of Thillai and the old Scout log book from the 1970s remain intact.  “We Tamils are ever friends with you.” Thank you, Thillai and friends for reassuring me of that. I did wonder from time to time, but never lost hope. The 4th Kandy Boy Scout Troop in Jaffna - 1973     The Sunday Times Link:  https://www.sundaytimes.lk/091101/Plus/plus_02.html

Finding Balance in Warp Speed Organizations - Uncertainty, Rituals to Equanimity

Organizations have become stressful places because scarcity and competition is the norm for most - do more faster with less for efficiency and profit.  This changes what many of us thought of as certain – a job for life, a safe, happy place to work and grow and the security of it. 

It is a difficult challenge for most in the modern world, which purports the illusion that everything is certain and permanent, when nothing is permanently satisfying nor dependable.  Modern consumer society, through education and the media, deludes our senses with a certainty of the material world, so we work and play hard – yet when we do stop and reflect something gnaws away at us – we are not quite satisfied with the result. 

Deep down, we know that nothing is for sure, but bombardment of the message of instant gratification with a mirage of certainty keeps us occupied and out of balance.  This delusion has us searching for happiness in the wrong places.         

We know birth and death is certain, as with suffering there is bound to be happiness too; times of fame will balance with periods of insignificance; praised at times and there will be blame too; good health could be followed by illness; we gain some and lose some - all a part of the ebb and flow of life.    

Our challenge is to live well and find peace with this see-saw of pleasure and pain. Impermanent nature of it all is stressful, made worse by our constant search for anchors of certainty.

What is counter intuitive in our search for certainty is that those anchors can be found within us through an inward gaze and mindfulness.  This is where a personal practice comes in. 

Importance of Rituals

In a 2001 Harvard Business Review article The Making of a Corporate Athlete written by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwarts presented the “Performance Pyramid”, an elegant way of finding anchors in our fast paced chaotic world.

Loehr and Schwarts present this model in a corporate context, as what prevails in the world prevails for organizations.

The Performance Pyramid - Loehr and Schwartz

The pyramid shows that a combination of physical, emotional, mental capacity is required to reach a spiritual capacity.  This spiritual capacity - finding meaning in our lives is what helps us to be grounded and skillful with uncertainty and chaos. 

Attaining this requires a combination of an inward gaze and inquiry to the rituals - exercise, sports, quiet time, yoga, meditation to good eating habits, sound sleep, cultivating trustful, compassionate relationships and a happy demeanor.
   

Happy People at Google

Organizations like Google have realized this secret as their emotional intelligence expert and engineer, Chade-Meng Tan articulates in his talk at the UN in 2012.  Google’s goal of creating a happy and a compassionate workplace has paid dividends in innovation, productivity and profits.  

                                                   

Their signature program Search Inside Yourself has three steps; 

1.    Attention Training

2.    Self Knowledge and Self Mastery

3.    Creating Useful Mental Habits

Tan states; “attention is the basis of all higher cognitive and emotional abilities. Attention training creates a quality of mind that is calm and clear - the foundation for emotional intelligence.”

Emotional Intelligence, Self Knowledge and Mastery

Emotions are based on our needs and feelings. When our needs (or wants) are not met for certainty and order, we become anxious and may feel fear.  Meditation is the way to develop that attention and focus to keep our thoughts in check, as we are not our thoughts.  We can change the narrative of our thoughts when we find space to validate the needs that give rise to feelings. 

Training our minds to focus, we have clarity on our cognitive and emotive processes and able to question feelings that arise.  We gain power when we are able to observe our thought process objectively and discern whether the needs we perceive, poses a real threat or not.   

For instance, cut backs in some organizations mean sharing a workstation, thereby losing one’s own personal space.  This takes away a certain security – personalizing our own space with pictures of loved ones and decoration does give a sense of belonging and certainty.  So this change can throw us off balance.  This is uncertainty at work.

We may adjust our need (or want) when we discern the threat of losing our workspace, put it in perspective (gratitude for the job we have and it's advantages) and adapt to the new situation.   

Self knowledge is then our ability to discern real and perceived threats and that enables self-mastery.

With self mastery, we have more control over how we react to our changing environment, to realize what is real or not and take action. With self mastery we can question our habits and change them. 

Self mastery enables us to be creative and counter intuitive. In uncertain times, it is good to build trust in our work environment by being more open and generous rather than feed our selfish needs and wants. Good mental habits make it easier for us to look beyond ourselves.

Making Others Happy; Useful Mental Habits

Creating useful mental habits with good intentions is crucial for turning our own emotional intelligence to high relationship intelligence.    

Tan goes onto say, "Imagine whenever you meet anybody, your habitual, instinctive first thought is, I wish for this person to be happy. Having such habits changes everything at work, because this sincere goodwill is picked up unconsciously by others, and you create the type of trust that leads to highly productive collaborations.”    

My Sacred Time

Meditating in a mini-forest in Ottawa

My own daily sacred time for exercise and mediation includes an affirmation, where I say to myself; “How can I make someone happy today?”

This habit opens my heart and mind to be generous to help others in any way, from something simple as holding a door open to larger acts that require time, effort and even letting go of something that may be important to me.  I then appreciate the opportunities to help others as it helps me put life in a better perspective. 

Cultivating a mental habit of generosity, without expectations, enable me to live through my uncertain life with more grace and equanimity.  It creates abundance rather than scarcity. 

Committing to a Personal Practice

As our professional lives and workplaces become more complex and uncertain, a personal practice of meditation, exercise, yoga complemented by good eating, sound sleep and wonderful relationships is a good strategy to anchor our certainty in, so we can show up strong and confident to do our good work. When we feel good, we feed into a happy workplace.   

Google, founded by two people out of idealism to become a $ 21 billion company has the formula for success by creating a happy and compassionate workplace.  

"Touchy-feely stuff" takes many of us out of our comfort zones as happiness and compassion does not seem compatible with work.  Yet a lack of happiness in a place, where we spend more time than home can impact on our health and well-being.  If that is the case, getting out of our comfort zones may be a good thing to find happiness – even if it is at work. 

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Inspired by Monks and Nuns

In her simple Vesak message, Ayyā Medhānandī Bhikkhunī said at the Ottawa Vesak Festival to commemorate Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death on 2nd May 2015 at the Ottawa City Hall;  

“It is the inner journey to understand self and the nature around us that helps us find happiness rather than the world of external gratification.”

The native of Montreal, is a former international humanitarian worker and the founder of the Sati Sārāņīya Hermitage, a Theravada Buddhist training monastery for nuns in Perth, Ontario.

Ayya Medhanandi Bhikkuni Satisaraniya

She also expounded on the importance of a core practice of meditation, along with moral behaviour, to enable wisdom to realize and deal with our three defilements – ignorance, attachment (craving and clinging) and aversion (hatred).

While this is part of the essential practice for a Buddhist monk, her message was for us lay people to consider a personal practice towards mindfulness to discern the good from the not so good.  This could lead to peace with self and others by dealing with our own defilements. 

I have a special reverence for those who relinquish the modern consumer culture to follow the path of the Buddha as a monk.  What a difficult challenge it must be to give up our primal nature for power, pleasure and to procreate.

I have known many monks in my lifetime.  I met often, my father’s spiritual friends like the Sri Lankan scholar monk Venerable Piyadassi, the German born Venerable Nyanaponika and Richard Abeysekera (who might as well have been a monk) who devoted his life to the Buddhist Publication Society (BPS) in Kandy, Sri Lanka. A scene like the three of them in this photo at BPS is  vivid in my memory. 

I realize what a privilege it was to associate with them from an early age and to later learn about their lives and teachings through reading and listening to stories.

Walks through the Forest

I looked forward to the walks with my father through Kandy’s pristine forest, Udawattakele to visit Venerable Nyanaponika’s hermitage when I was about 6 years old.  

(Thirty years later, while running a solar energy business in Sri Lanka, I was so happy to instal a solar electric system at this hermitage when American monk and scholar Bhikku Bodhi was there.)

The first time I remember seeing my father and Venerable Nyanaponika in a meditation trance in their lotus position  - their stillness scared me, as I thought they were not breathing.  I had my first conversation on meditation with my father after that.  

Venerable Nyanaponika, a Jewish German saw what was coming in Germany, made his way to Sri Lanka in the 1930s. He became a monk in 1936 under the tutelage of a fellow German, Ven Nyanatiloka (a former violin virtuoso Anton Gueth) who came to Sri Lanka in 1910 and established the Island Hermitage for western monks in the southern coastal town of Dodanduwa.  

Venerable Nyanaponika, was a great teacher and wrote many books on Buddhism and especially on the practice of mindfulness and meditation. 

He wrote this in his book The Power of Mindfulness. 

“One must know mindfulness well and cultivate its acquaintance before one can appreciate its value and its silent penetrative influence. Mindfulness walks slowly and deliberately, and its daily task is of a rather humdrum nature. Yet where it places its feet it cannot easily be dislodged, and it acquires and bestows true mastery of the ground it covers.”

I was influenced from a young age to carve out a sacred time and space for a regular personal practice.  I started exercising and running daily from the age of 13 and included a meditation practice.  Even though the morning push-up and sit ups dominated the later teen years and twenties, I managed to sit in meditation at least 3 times a week, to keep my practice alive.

Monk and his Motorcycle

In the 1980s in Canada, while at Seneca College studying Mechanical Engineering Technology, I cultivated a friendship with a young Jewish Canadian investment banker and motorcycle enthusiast turned Buddhist Monk, Bhante Vannassara at the Toronto Mahavihare Temple in Scarborough.  

His transformation from a heady life to a monk’s journey was fascinating, as I related well to his former life and intrigued by his current.  He provided intimate insights into renouncing all the things I enjoyed, to wilfully follow the path of the Buddha.  We had hours of conversation, usually in the evening, about what motivated him, what was happening to him - his thoughts, feelings and needs - as he focussed on the practice.  We often meditated together and discussed different aspects of the practice – focus, concentration, attention to quell fleeting thoughts and Vipassana – learning to see things as they are.

One evening, he interrupted an interesting discussion with, “that sounds like a Kawi 900, one the fastest bikes in the world and that was my last one” as a motorcycle zoomed by the temple.  He told me stories of how he would dare to take Toronto’s Don Valley Parkway – Gardiner Expressway’s sharp banked ramp as fast as he could, sparks flying from the foot pedal.  

He was not satisfied with the lack of meaning of the material world, so he was testing the edges of life with a machine. Then he found that he could do the same by going inward through path of a monk. Our conversations and my own inquiry revealed how challenging it must be to go against the grain, so I admired him much for renouncing the superficial temptations of life.  

As he advanced in his practice, put his Kawasaki motorcycle behind, he moved to a forest in the south of Sri Lanka around the same time I established myself in Colombo.   I met him once a year in Colombo, as he came to renew his Sri Lankan Visa.  

I saw his gradual inward retreat as his spiritual journey advanced. A group of friends and well wishers helped him to publish his book Wind Not Caught in a Net, which is a difficult read.  I keep going back to it as I advance in years and try to make sense of his deep treatise.   He has since moved to Myanmar to find more peace in deeper jungles for his continuing spiritual journey.

The Mahamevnawa Movement

More recently, before I moved back to Canada in 2011, I spent a day at a Mahamevnawa Temple in Matara, in a picturesque hilly property of hundreds of acres in the south of Sri Lanka.  I went at the invitation of industrialist Tissa Jinasena, the benefactor who built the temple.  He continues to manage the infrastructure and its utilities, so the monks can follow the authentic path of the Buddha in peace.  

The Mahamevnawa movement was started by Venerable Kiribathgoda Gunananda to propagate the authentic teachings of the Buddha, the Tripitaka Dhamma[i] in its original form, when it was seen as getting misdirected in Sri Lanka.  The temple welcomes any person, of any race or religion to go through the process to ordain as a monk.  Meditation and a life of virtue (sila) is the cornerstone of their practice to surrender the mind to understand the true nature of life.  

I had a fascinating conversation with Venerable Nawalapitiye Ariyavansa, the chief monk of the Matara monastery.  Ariyavansa Thero was a former finance professional as many of the monks are also former doctors, engineers and university students among others from various backgrounds and walks of life.  I was not surprised then to see their use of modern technology and social media to spread the Dhamma.

Learning from real Stories

My recent reading about many western monks who renounced their worldly life in books such as Seeing the Way – An Anthology of Transcribed Talks and Essays by Monks and Nuns of the Theravada Forest Sangha Tradition and a similar book Friends on the Path - Dhamma Reflections from Ajahn Sundara and Ajahn Candasiri, reinforces meditation as the core practice to this path.  Most of these monks were disciples of revered monk, Ajahn Chah of Thailand.  Their incredible journeys of giving up what we take so for granted – family, roof over their head, a place to sleep, carnal desires, food, security and safety from predators – are reflected so vividly in these stories.

Bhante Kovida, Jamaican born wandering monk and I have become friends over the last 4 years and his book The World is Myself - A Monks Travel Journal captivated me with wonderful tales of his travels.  The stories are interspersed with great wisdom he acquires from his mind and body practice where meditation and tai chi qigong is core.  

He introduced mindfulness to Health Canada in Ottawa, which has been received so well as a tool to deal with workplace challenges and uncertainties.  

Importance of the Meditation Practice

The Noble Eightfold Pathway is central to their journey as meditation – concentration leads to mindfulness.  Mindfulness leads to right view, wisdom, and right thoughts.  Right thoughts lead us to a life of virtue – right words and action and to a right livelihood. 

These monks show how they learn to act with virtue in the world, when they realize through their wisdom that karma – the cause and effect – the action and result of life, is all pervading.  The other realization is that all phenomena, whether mental or physical in this universe is impermanent (anicca).  Nothing is permanently satisfying or dependable.

I grew up knowing these simple truths on one hand and eventually realized that the material world is counter to this.  

I straddle both worlds keeping my senses open in inquiry, as competition tends to dominate my reptilian survival nature. The challenge is to find balance with my compassionate nature - open my heart to loving kindness, generosity and to live a life of virtue.  

Yet, I realize nothing is permanent and nothing is for sure – the delusion of certainty creates the suffering, if I am not mindful. 

This way I try to keep a check on the three defilements - ignorance, aversion and attachment.  As they ebb and flow, the notion of scarcity creates anxiety for the future, nudging me towards the edge to grasp and cling. 

Hence, the struggle continues to find that balance to discern between want and need, to keep greed in check and to live with virtue – as money and material life has its utility, especially when I have a family to nurture. 

I know it is my daily meditation, reflection  and the quiet time that helps to balance that dissonance within myself. 

It is a joy to be among these monks and nuns, steadfast on this path, to learn from them about their journey as they transcend the worldly life and find that state of happiness and peace on their path to enlightenment. When I realize our common humanity, I know I have choices too about how I may show up in the world. 

I am inspired by them to continue the mindfulness practice and inquiry without expectation and with patience as I learn to discern right view, right thought, right words and right actions. 

We forgive, we let go of those memories, because taking refuge in Sangha means, here and now, doing good and refraining from doing evil with bodily action and speech.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Bhikku Sumedho

Buddham saranam gacchami
I go to the Buddha for refuge

Dhammam saranam gacchami
I go to the Dhamma for refuge

Sangham saranam gacchami
I go to the Sangha for refuge.

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[i] Tripitaka means "three baskets," from the way in which it was originally recorded in the 3^rd century BC. The text in Pali was written on long, narrow Ola leaves,

Out of Balance in Timbuktu

Every so often there is a movie that brings perspective to a seemingly intractable problem and this is it. I walked out of watching the film Timbuktu at Ottawa’s Bytown Theatre provoked into a deep reflection at a time fraught with threat and fear.

The movie makes light of the present polarization of the world between Islam and the rest through our common human nature, even at the far end of the world –Timbuktu in Mali. Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako,the film shows that Timbuktu is no different to any place anywhere as people want to enjoy life, to love and be loved, have hopes, fears and aspirations, seek meaning and purpose in life, yet nothing is certain and permanent. 

Reality of this tragic story is captured in a light-hearted way depicting Timbuktu occupied by Islamists bearing the flag of ISIL (The Islamic State of Iraq and the Lavant), now being called DAESH, not to recognize them as a state.

Among the many sub plots, the story revolves around Kidane, the musician and cattle herder living in the outskirts of Timbuktu. Kidane is a lover not a fighter, wants to live in peace with his wife Satima, daughter Toya and Isaan, the adopted orphan who herds his cattle every day.

Kidane feels the pressure of the interlopers, speaking a different language, with different customs imposing alien laws and rules – banning music, soccer, dress codes at their whim, meting out justice as they feel fit. This is compounded by Abdulkarim, the Islamist leader’s infatuation with Satima, as he conveniently visits his abode when Kidane is away. Yet, Kidane resists moving away, as all his neighbours had done to escape imminent danger.

It is then ironic, that Kidane’s fate rests upon an act he commits himself by accidentally killing a nearby fisherman, who had earlier killed one of his cows.

Kidane’s act seems to have been driven by his frustration of all this, when he decides to stand up for himself. Even though Kidane has to take responsibility for his actions, how much of it is a result of the foreign occupiers who have imposed draconian rules encroaching on his way of life?. 

Kidane’s fate of a death sentence orphans his daughter who’s adoration and love for each other is so emotionally depicted in the movie.

This story is no different to any human narrative played out over time, except by now we would have expected our humanity to have evolved through a personal practice to a higher level of consciousness and a way of life – away from our alpha male dominant model of command and control, which brings misery to many for the power of a few.

Delving into Our Biology

Let me take a step back and examine this from a basic human nature point of view – starting with our biology.

On one side, every human being has a reptilian nature to seek power, pleasure and to procreate (3Ps). This is what enables our survival and propagation as a race. However, if this is the only narrative and Darwin was wholly right when he said “survival of the fittest”, the human race would have wiped itself out by now, as many DAESH like vicious movements have come and gone causing misery over the ages. Yet, nature has a way of balancing itself for its own survival. 

The very survival of the human race is due to this nature’s balance based on feedback loops. Inherent in our own biology is also our mammalian limbic brain wired for love, compassion and empathy, which corrects the unabated greed for 3Ps.

We have survived as a civilization because we are thinking, feeling spiritual beings to balance our primal reptilian instincts. The very nature of our propagation comes, for most, from a loving union to a birth of a new being, followed by unconditional love to the infant who needs care and attention until they become self sufficient. Our limbic nature, based on love, is what tames to balance the reptilian quest for power, pleasure and procreation.

The balance comes from the internal moral compass driven by our heart and head, that influences the decorum, the virtue, the social norms and rules that we set for ourselves, as a human society, to do what is right to live in harmony and thrive as a community.

When I see this nature inherent in us, I cannot see how evil empires like DAESH survive in the long run, unless the rest of the world continues to demonize Islam and Muslim people, giving them a reason to take up a cause to find meaning and purpose for themselves.

Maslow’s Wisdom

The Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, shows when the bottom three tiers of Physiological, Safety and Need for Love and Belonging are not met, we lose our power of balance. 

This is the power that helps our self esteem and confidence to thrive to be generous, gracious, as we are appreciated and accepted as a part of the human community. This dignity gives us meaning and purpose in life – which may well be self actualization. 

Profile most who join the likes of DAESH and you may find a lack of the first three tier needs in their lives.  Leaders of these movements know how to fill this gap and motivate with a purpose and a higher vision, even if it is self destructive.   

We have to come together as the rest of the world to seek creative responses, not only the same old one of “send in the guns” and now it is even easier – send in the drones and drop bombs from the sky. We know from the recent Arab world misadventures of the West in the folly of that blinkered approach. 

History also teaches us organizations like DAESH by its nature will burn themselves out eventually from within when supporters are left to realize their irrational and evil nature, as liberties are taken away, hypocrisy and the selfishness of their leaders are bared.

However, as long as they have an enemy, perceived or real, to come together for, more and more people will join. 

An Enlightened Response from the Rest

How can the rest of the world be more strategic and holistic in response to the extremism of groups like DAESH, rather than demonizing Islam and Muslim people and only dropping bombs?.  

How does the rest balance this extreme, reptilian, primitive response, which is made more lethal by technology, which creates collateral damage and tragedy that exacerbates the division?. 

How do we come together as a humanity - not as Muslim and the rest of the world - as fellow inhabitants of this earth, to find that better balance?.  

In her book Heretic Somali born controversial author and former politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali tries to find common ground with the majority of Muslims who view their religion as peaceful and spiritual.  Hirsi Ali, however, is a polarizing figure with her relentless call for Islamic reformation.  She has paid a heavy price for this, just as Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzaii has done for her campaign for female education.

Both Hirsi Ali and Malala are inspired to action from their own personal experience and no one else will ever really know what that was like. 

Just that, Hirsi Ali's response has been extreme leaving not much room for dialogue.  Perhaps this new book is way of opening the space to find a better balance.   

As we know, we cannot expect anyone to reflect for change by judging and calling them out first.

Hirsi Ali has so far given more ammunition for the extreme reptilian response we are seeing from the rest - the demonizing of Islam and Muslim people and the resulting battles.  

The Battle Reality

Battles do have its place in a holistic strategy as, sometimes, there is no other way.  The difference is the intention - defeat, and over power to dominate or find peace.  In our modern webbed world, over powering is not sustainable anymore as in days gone by, when distances were far and connections too few.

With an intention for peace, we may balance enforcement with facilitation.  Then we maybe more thoughtful in how we conduct our battles.    

As this DAESH battle rages on and as the world polarizes between Islam and the rest, this conversation, no matter how difficult, has to happen the world over in order to find common ground - and the likes of Hirsi Ali and Malala, are also prompting it.

Finding Nature's Balance through a Personal Practice

At the end, this is yet another one of those suppositions - "my interpretation, their belief, our ideology....",  they are all mental constructs and when we reflect, there is nothing for sure.   

Movements like this begins with an individual under delusion and joined by many for various reasons to find purpose and meaning. Yet they are all individual decisions that create the collective good or misery for many.

Finding the power of balance comes through a personal practice of mindfulness, which will give a person the time and space to discern between what is right and wrong. 

Personal practice can be inculcated through parenting, education and media, so every individual realizes the power they have within, beginning with the breath.  

This complemented by knowledge and interaction in a connected, global, diverse community of ideas and backgrounds; with the opportunity for quiet time, reflection and mindfulness; many may discern and realize the wisdom that any ideology that promotes draconian behavior goes against basic human nature - for virtue, decency, to love and be a part of the global community. That is taking personal responsibility.  

Nature, anyway, has a way of culling the extremes to find that balance – homeostasis - a natural system in which variables are regulated so that internal conditions remain stable and relatively constant. It is our personal practice that will help us align with this nature to live a happy life. 

As Martin Luther King Jr. suggests, that natural balance within us will eventually rise to the occasion - evolve in our hearts and minds to find ways to live in peace with self and all other beings.  

.....and some day, Timbuktu will find that balance again.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation.  The foundation of such a method is love – Martin Luther King Jr.