On Sunday while a US Navy Seal team was preparing to send Osama Bin Laden on his final mission, Erin and I rode in the annual Five Boro Bike Tour, a 42 mile pedal through the City of New York. The tour started in Battery Park, although cyclists lined up as far north as Canal Street. Although the weather was picture perfect, I still felt a chill when we rode past my old office building at 100 Church Street, a block away from the World Trade Center site. That’s where I was working on September 11, when 19 Saudi terrorists came within 20 yards of ending my life during my first week as an attorney for the City of New York’s Office of the Corporation Counsel. I pointed out to Erin the spot in the roadway on Church Street where a big piece of engine from UA 175 landed uncomfortably close to where I was standing that morning. I found a picture of it on the internet today; the first time I have seen it since 9/11/01.
911 was on my mind all day yesterday. It always seems to rise to the fore of my consciousness whenever I spend any protracted time in Manhattan. From 2001-2004 it was pretty much on my mind constantly. No amount of zazen or consideration of the relative nature of existence could help me make sense of the vents of that day. It took a long time, but I eventually came to terms. I was pretty angry for a while. Fortunately, in addition to being a Buddhist, I am also a tough, stubborn New Yorker,. It took the better part of three years along with countless gallons of wine and a fair amount of psychotherapy to get to the point where I was even prepared to deal with with the immensity of what I saw go down right in front of my face. I'd say I started to thaw out long after lower Manhattan had been sanitized for the tour buses.
All in all I think I’ve done a fair job of integrating all that fear and anger about that day into my life better than a lot of people who weren’t even there, if my countrymen’s reaction to the death of Osama Bin Laden is any indication. Eventually I was able to process the nasty stuff, in no small part thanks to a few years on the cushion and the growing realization that I needed to change the way my body/mind related to the event itself. Anger is an incredibly destructive emotion. I didn't start to get better until I embraced my own anger and let it go. It wasn't easy. I suspect that all the super-patriotic flag waving and blood-lust going on in the Country since Bin Laden was killed reflects the fact that a lot of people are still very angry. The anger is inchoate though; unfocused. We think its Osama that we're angry about, but it goes deeper than that. The attacks on the World Trade Center changed our lives, and demolished our sense of security. Whether Osama Bin Laden had anything to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center, and the facts on that are far from conclusive, he became a living representation of evil and the target of 350 million people's anger.
All in all I think I’ve done a fair job of integrating all that fear and anger about that day into my life better than a lot of people who weren’t even there, if my countrymen’s reaction to the death of Osama Bin Laden is any indication. Eventually I was able to process the nasty stuff, in no small part thanks to a few years on the cushion and the growing realization that I needed to change the way my body/mind related to the event itself. Anger is an incredibly destructive emotion. I didn't start to get better until I embraced my own anger and let it go. It wasn't easy. I suspect that all the super-patriotic flag waving and blood-lust going on in the Country since Bin Laden was killed reflects the fact that a lot of people are still very angry. The anger is inchoate though; unfocused. We think its Osama that we're angry about, but it goes deeper than that. The attacks on the World Trade Center changed our lives, and demolished our sense of security. Whether Osama Bin Laden had anything to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center, and the facts on that are far from conclusive, he became a living representation of evil and the target of 350 million people's anger.
Newscasters and commentators like to talk about the “shared experience” of 911, but forgive me for always feeling that there was a big difference between watching that mayhem on television in Ohio and standing a block away from people who were jumping to their deaths from the jagged fiery holes left by the jet liners. Watching the Towers fall from the comfort of your living room is an entirely different experience from running up Church Street as they start to fall on top of your head. In the days after the attacks I wanted to rip Osama Bin Laden's head off and carry it around lower Manhattan. After a few weeks though, I realized that I had no interest in flag waving and less interest in revenge. I, like many other New Yorkers, just wanted my life back. If you've spent any time studying Buddhism, you realize how futile a desire that is. Maybe that's why we're all still so angry; we want our lives back. Our safety. Our security. Deep down though, we all know it ain't gonna happen.
Yesterday morning when woke up to the news that Osama Bin Laden had been killed, I initially had no reaction whatsoever. I simply didn’t know how to process the information. Shortly thereafter I realized that for the first time in many years I was thinking about September 11 constantly. On the surface, Osama's death changes nothing whereas 911 changed everything. Warrantless wiretaps, the Patriot Act, Drone attacks, two wars in the Middle East, the TSA, etc. We aren’t the same country we used to be. As a lawyer I know what the last ten years of legislation passed out of fear and anger has done to the Constitution. In terms of our civil rights and damage to the rule of law, we may never recover. That alone is a tragedy. The greater tragedy of course is the loss of life, soldier and civilian, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Confucius had it right in the old saying, when you go off to seek revenge, first dig two graves.
Having witnessed so much death and destruction up close I find it hard to greet the deliberate taking of a life with cheers and flag waving, even if that life belongs to Osama Bin Laden. As Americans don’t we claim that we treat life reverentially and take it reluctantly? I'd like to think we're better than those who would use terror to destroy our way of life. Cheering Osama’s death with rallies and flag waving seems somehow unseemly. It was necessary, I can't argue with that, but any killing is a tragedy. Maybe our collective reaction speaks to the kind of country we’ve become over the last decade. Harder, a little more callous, a little less compassionate.
I’d guess if you went out into the streets and talked to New Yorkers they would tell you that yes, Osama Bin Laden being killed is a good thing for the world, a necessary thing, but it can’t change the past, rebuild the World Trade Center or bring back the dead. His execution may provide us with some transient satisfaction, but it is unlikely to lead to a new era of Pax Americana.
A lot has changed in the last ten years. Impermanence is an undeniable and inescapable fact of human existence from which nothing that belongs to this earth is ever free. Osama Bin Laden may be dead, but we remain, flowing, drifting through the rest of our lives. What place is there in that river for anger and revenge?
