10/1/86

It comes down to this. In order to
be victorious over unnecessary suffering
we must stand ready to be implacable
in the face of all tests of will. The
universe need not be defeated or tamed
in order to gain mastery over torture.
Nothing more is demanded than the
unwillingness to relinquish the possibility
of happiness. Something negative can help
to make us clear but it will never
be generative. We must not necessarily
persuade the universe to be sympathetic
or compassionate or even completely authentic.
Not that this is impossible but I believe
something else is demanded. More than a
few centuries have been devoted to this
cringing attitude of begging mercy or
beseeching the gods for deliverance. Nor
must we be indifferent to its indifferance.
Or, most of all, be indifferent to its
temptations. We must do more and something
far less submissive and self-sacrificing.
We must convince it of the lack of
necessity for death. No smaller demand is
possible. While we must die, we need
not die in the face of death, nor must we
beg forgiveness, although we have no choice.
We must eat and celebrate, we must drum
and we must demand the end of killing. Let
us tell the gods the killing must stop.
We can promise to cut away the already
dead without a grimace. We have done
this before and we'll do it again. But the
universe must be no longer permitted to
kill in our largest grip of
thought or rhapsody, or enlarged
or finely tuned perspective, We must
deny to our heart's fullest conviction
the necessity of death. If we cannt
know what it is, we must dare it to
enter, to tell us what it is. My brother and
sister looked into the face of death
and lived to tell the tale.The poet
was right, we must demand no less: give no
dominion to death, banish it forevermore.