The Day of the Dead – Honoring and remembering the dead – family, friends, beloved animal companions, the recent victims of the horrific Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, and the estimated 9,000 and counting now dead in Gaza, especially the children, and the dead in all the many places where there are wars and natural disasters, all perhaps equally movements of nature. May they all rest in peace.
What’s Happening in Gaza: Gabor Maté is a Hungarian-Canadian medical doctor whose work has focused on addiction and trauma. He was born in Budapest during WWII, and his maternal grandparents were killed in Auschwitz. His medical career has included family practice, palliative care, working with a population of people in a rundown part of Vancouver dealing with homelessness, substance abuse, HIV, etc, and most recently, working on trauma. His books include In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, about addiction, and The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture. He speaks here about how he sees what is happening in Gaza:
Thank you for posting this, Joan.
It is further proof of the value of our commitment to investigate our hearts and conditioned thoughts to root out the hatred and indifference which, if unexamined, is the cause off all suffering.
This unimaginable slaughter is the magnification of the inability or failure to do that .
May we all call on Love to redouble our commitment and effort to ease the suffering of the world. It might be all we can do, but it is essential.
Joan, as the granddaughter of an Auschwitz survivor and a woman living in Israel I am incredibly disappointed in the video you shared. I am well aware of what a genocide is, considering my background and the extensive research I’ve done on the subject, and what is happening in Gaza is not a genocide.
To take issue with what is happening is of course legitimate, to mourn innocent civilian lives is a must, but to take this incredibly complex issue and put it into black and white, and to throw the word genocide around when you clearly lack an understanding of either what genocide is or what the situation in Israel- Palestine is, is only spreading hate and misinformation. To describe the situation as if there is one side who is pure evil, oppressor and fully guilty for all suffering, and one side is pure good, victim, oppressed, is to show such a deep lack of understanding of the situation and such deep lack of compassion for everyone involved. I thought that after so many years of meditation you were wiser than that. More capable of understanding the complexities of life and the fact that rarely are things black and white. I guess I was wrong.