On the War Inside American Buddhism, and the One I Have Not Resolved in Myself

I feel this argument in my own chest before I feel it as an idea. The world sits in a genuinely precarious place. 

Trump, Gaza, Israel, Iran, the accelerating climate, the sheer unaccountable weight of billionaire power, all of it presses in, and on some days headlong condemnation feels like the only honest response. 

Condemnation is also the water we are all swimming in now. Search any of those words and you will find no shortage of people already shouting about them. The strange effect of all that shouting is that its targets appear entirely unmoved by it.

Among the many ways we cause harm to ourselves, to others, and to the world, lying may be the most insidious. Not only because of what it conceals, but because of what it permits. A lie is not simply a false statement. It is a moment of rupture, from reality, from integrity, from relationship. And it is often the seed from which far greater suffering grows.