June 20

Being at the Bhavana Society has allowed me to have daily access to a computer. When I log-on the screen opens up to Google. It is so easy to select the news section and read all the headlines. Rarely do I read the stories but I was intrigued by the stories of the Downing Street Memos.

The initial reason for thinking about doing the pilgrimage was because I felt the war in Iraq was the wrong thing to do. Though I had no support for my view, I felt that the rational for going to war was a lie.

When I first started to meditate I had four very powerful experiences that I feel were past life memories. The first one happened when I was visiting Wat Pah Nanachat in Thailand. I was returning from a town trip with two other visitors. We were walking on the berm of rice patty heading towards the wall of forest that was Wat Pah Nanachat. To the east were several ominous black clouds. Then all of a sudden a line of five or six military helicopters flew below the clouds. It looked like a scene from a Vietnam War movie. When I turned my head to look where I was walking the two men in front of me were wearing military fatigues and carrying their rifles across their shoulders. The image lasted only a second but it was shocking. I just thought maybe I’d watched too many war movies (which was not my taste in movies).

A year later I was sitting a three month long retreat at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA. I had just finished the first three weeks of the retreat and had focused my practice on Metta (loving-kindness). I felt very peaceful and my concentration was pretty stable. Then one afternoon I was outside doing walking meditation. At a certain point I heard what sounded like a large transport helicopter just beyond my range of sight. One moment I was walking on a path as a meditator and the next moment it appeared that I was walking in a jungle. Not only was I in a jungle but also I could see that I was carrying a large machine gun and I was wearing army fatigues. The image I got was not like a photograph of yourself, but the view you would see looking out from your own eyes.

The next moment I was back as a meditator. Over the next few minutes the images switched back and forth several times. It wasn’t even just an image. When I was seeing out of the soldier’s eyes I could feel the humidity, smell the jungle, taste the salt on my lips, feel the fear in my gut. These experiences were very disturbing. They continued to come for about a week and in several of the visions I could see the soldier aim this rifle and shoot people.

The nada sound that I wrote about a few days ago was very pronounced at this time too. After a few days I started to get the sense that the nada sound was a child’s voice screaming in the soldiers head not to kill anybody. I had the sense that the soldier felt 45% that he didn’t want to kill, but 55% of him was influenced by his training. The training that said, “They are the enemy, if you do not kill them, they will kill your buddies, will destroy the USA, it is your duty as a soldier to kill.”

As the week progressed I had more and more of these disturbing images. I noticed the nada sound was getting louder and louder, it was if the child was screaming. I also noticed that the feeling from the soldier was becoming more like 49 / 51. Then one sitting while having a vision I realized that the killing of the “enemy” was actually killing me. In the vision I put the gun down and refused to pick it up. I remember thinking, “I will not kill anymore. I do not care if I am attacked, I will not kill.” I can’t really explain what happened next, but as soon as I made that resolve everything opened up and a healing began.

On two later occasions I had visions of a similar nature, and both of those were triggered by the sound of helicopters. The last time this happened I was an anagarika at Abhayagiri. I was fortunate to have the wise council of Ajahn Pasanno to help me work with this, because I was getting afraid of concentration practice. The last three experienced happened while I was doing a lot of meditation.

I asked a famous meditation teacher Ajahn Jumniun if these experiences were past life memories. I asked how do you know if a memory is a past life memory or just a strong thought. Ajahn Jumniun said, “With a past life memory you know.”

My gut feeling to this answer was, “Oh no.”

Ajahn Jumniun is the monk I wrote about earlier in the journal who gave me a bag of 52 amulets that he blessed. These amulets I sent to my cousin in Iraq. Not one of the soldiers who wore one of the amulets was harmed in their year of duty. Ajahn Jumniun wouldn’t say if the visions were past life visions, but said they very likely were. He also pointed out that if they were, that is not who I am today.

I’ve been reflecting about these visions the last few days as I’ve been struggling with the pain in my arm and neck. If I was a soldier in Vietnam in my past life and if I did kill people, it shouldn’t be surprising that I have a lot of illness and physical pain in this birth.

I do not know if those experiences were past life or not, but I do use the reflection on kamma to motivate myself to practice.

Yesterday I had the idea to do a journal entry just listing all the US service women and men who have died in Iraq since we started our pilgrimage. I’m sad to say the number of names would have been very long. I was shocked and very saddened to read all the names. I think it was close to 240 soldiers. I’ve also heard that for each soldier killed 6 to 8 are serious wounded or maimed. Of course the Iraqi casualties, to both police and civilians, are enormously higher than that of the US soldiers.

There is a pull in me that wants to get verbal and wants to get involved in a campaign to end the war. I’m resisting that pull and I feel the most important thing I can do is meditate and free my own heart of suffering, greed, anger, delusion. If I’m able to understand these things in own being then maybe I’ll be able to help others.