A Glimpse Into Why I So Strongly Oppose Trump

One thing that I know to be true is that both major political parties have long been largely taken over by wealthy corporate interests. There are several exceptions within the Democratic Party, but most democrats and all republicans are in the pockets of Wall Street and Big Banks, the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, the prison industrial complex, the animal and agricultural complexes, etc. Big Money has indeed infiltrated our political system and all corporate funded American media. And this is the root of the enormity of the crises that we all face today in our country and across the world. This absolutely must change.

However this is not why Trump poses the enormity of the threat that he does to our nation and the planet. Here are some of the profound concerns shared by myself and countless others:

1. He is in the pockets of enormous wealthy interests who pose a profound threat to American democracy. This video piece first shared with me by my youngest son highlights the facts of Trump’s involvement in and support of Project 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=284OgviS_kY.

2. Trump is an enormous threat to life on Earth. He is  in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and plans to wipe out all policies and practices (which are already completely insufficient) to address the climate crisis. He is completely uninformed about the human causes of our warming planet and the climate emergency we are in. His plans to drill baby drill us all into oblivion — which dooms my grandchildren and all children everywhere on Earth. He is totally ignorant of the fact that we’re already in the midst of the sixth major extinction — the first ever to be human caused.

3. Trump has long been aligned with fascist dictators who mirror what he aspires to. He has a history of cozying up to Putin, Netanyahu, Viktor Orbán, Bolsonaro, Kim Jong Un, and other dictators. And they all know that Trump’s severe narcissism makes him easily manipulated by praise into doing their bidding.

4. Trump stands against the rights of women over their own bodies. This is putting countless women’s lives at risk and the doctors who are their physicians.

5. Trump is a misogynist who has a documented history of sexual assaults on women. He demonstrates no accountability or remorse.

6. Trump is the antithesis of all values which embody love, compassion, empathy, wisdom, a dedication to truth, consciousness of and commitment to Do No Harm,  a commitment to recognizing and alleviating the suffering of others, and the experience of connectedness and a dedication to standing in protection of all of life.

7. Trump is the embodiment of his projections, very much including his criminality, distain for democracy and disregard of the rule of law, and his strenuous efforts to disregard the will of the American people and derail the peaceful transfer of power to Joe Biden.

8. Trump suffers from the same malignant narcissistic disease that my mother did. This is manifested through chronic pathological lying, an inability to feel empathy and compassion, an extreme sense of entitlement, chronic polarization of us against an Other, the inability to own any mistakes or shortcomings or being anything other than the best in everything, directing violent behavior towards anyone who doesn’t feed his narcissistic supplies, projecting his self-loathing (that is the root of his narcissism) onto others in the form of extreme and relentless dehumanization of others — his misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, and on and on. The malignant narcissism in and of itself makes him extremely dangerous to the welfare of our nation and the world.

I could go on. Please also know that if someone in the Democratic Party was running for the Presidency and exhibited these same behaviors and beliefs and characteristics that I would be doing everything humanly possible to stop them. Trump terrifies me. He must be stopped.

Bless us all and may the 

highest good prevail,

— Molly

Terry Tempest Williams: Resisting Fascism Includes Respecting Our Environment and Fellow Species

Deepest bow of gratitude and love, as always, for the deep courage, wisdom, love, and unrelenting strong voice of Terry Tempest Williams on behalf of truth and a highest good for all of life on Earth. — Molly

Empty docks at the Antelope Island Marina due to record low water levels on the Great Salt Lake, near Syracuse, Utah, in 2022. Photograph: Rick Bowmer/AP

I do not think it is a leap to see our exploitive relationship with Earth as part of a centuries-long war against the environment

By Terry Tempest Williams

Standing on the edge of Utah’s terminal Great Salt Lake is to witness the religion of over-water consumption in the desert. Our thirst is greater than this inland sea can bare as it is disappearing in the shadows of climate chaos, extreme heat and a megadrought not seen in 2,500 years. Twelve million migrating birds depend on this water body for food, rest and breeding. Flocks of Wilson’s phalaropes, small and handsome shorebirds, spin in saline waters creating water columns alive with brine shrimp and flies and resulting in a feeding frenzy. American avocets and black-necked stilts stand stoically in the shallows. Thousands of ducks are sprinkled on the lake like pepper. Water and sky merge as one. There is no horizon. All appears well in this serene landscape of pastel blues animated by birds. It is not.

The health of the Great Salt Lake is only as strong as the health of the human community that surrounds it. And vice versa. If the 2 million people living within the Great Salt Lake watershed with Salt Lake City at its center do not mobilize to put more water in the lake, the death of the Great Salt Lake will be their own. This will also be the demise of millions of migrating birds.

Why this ecological emergency does not move our state’s legislative body to act quickly by getting more water into a collapsing ecosystem is difficult to reconcile. Why they are advocating for measures to shore up the mining companies and lake-supported industries even more so.

If we see fascism as a system of authoritarianism under the rule of a dictator with disdain for democracy and pluralism of any kind, even other species; an insatiable desire for control that delivers a deleterious effect on those oppressed; and a fetish for righteous nationalism, then I do not think it is a leap to see our exploitive relationship with Earth – call her Gaia, call her Mother, call her home – as part of an ongoing agenda of a global fascist regime that for centuries has waged war on the environment. Money is the dictator. The value of a dollar weighs more than the life of a phalarope in most municipal decision-making.

This regime is not limited geographically to Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s Germany or Francisco Franco’s dictatorship over Spain for close to four decades after the Spanish civil war in 1939. We, as societal agents with an allegiance toward capitalism embedded in systems of dominance and species exceptionalism, are complicit. Our obsession with controlling nature has brought us to the brink of climate collapse, with species extinction and ecological fragmentation now a planetary health crisis.

Here is a footnote from history. During the Spanish civil war, the International Committee for the Salvation of the Treasures of Spanish Art, an international committee of museum curators and art historians, were concerned about the masterpieces in the Prado Museum being bombed by Gen Franco and his army who were fighting in Madrid. A plan was made to remove 525 paintings from the Prado and send them to Valencia in 1936. Under the cover of darkness, 71 trucks transported these priceless paintings from the Prado to Valencia.

These iconic works of art were finally stored in the safety of a silver-mine shaft in Figueras, Spain, where they stayed until 1939, having endured a harrowing journey of mountainous travel, broken-down vehicles and bombings. In the summer of 1939, these masterpieces were transported to Switzerland where they were greeted as ambassadors against fascism, featured in an exhibition at the Palace of Nations during the Geneva Expo 39.

The exhibition catalog reads like a Who’s Who in the annals of European art: 34 works by Velázquez, 38 by Goya, and 25 by El Greco, as well as paintings by Rubens, Zurbarán, Tintoretto, Titian, Van der Weyden, Dürer, Brueghel, and Hieronymus Bosch.

People from all over Europe came to pay their respects. After the exhibition, the paintings returned to Madrid by train, carried “on roundabout routes, with all lights in the coaches extinguished”. Ironically, Gen Franco, now in power, signed the paintings back into the custody of Spain where they came home to the Prado.

This is a local story with global implications. It’s about a small group of people mobilizing in the name of beauty and protecting their artistic history. Can we mobilize our love worldwide on behalf of our natural histories? Do we have the will and imagination to dismantle the hierarchy of our species in favor of all other species with whom we share this planet?

Of course, we cannot hide nature’s “masterpieces” as the Spanish resisters did, but we can stand in their defense and uphold their right to live and flourish. We are at war with an authoritative power structure hell-bent on killing every living thing in their defense of a “belligerent nationalism”. It’s a war we must win.

If fascism is an authoritative form of government, where does our own authority reside – within a dictatorship or our citizenship? Fascism can only go as far as the people will allow it. In Utah, we are making waves. There is a powerful citizen’s movement to protect and restore Great Salt Lake, a portrait of austere beauty. Indigenous leaders, ecologists, poets, artists, and musicians, with youth leaders from marginalized communities are calling for environmental justice honoring the intrinsic authority and priceless nature of all species. We will bring water to the lake we love – not only through the power of our tears in grief and in joy, but because as our consciousness rises, Great Salt Lake will rise with us.

Terry Tempest Williams is a writer, naturalist and activist

Please go here for the original article in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/11/fascism-environment-climate-change

The Brazen, Absurd, and Dangerous Hypocrisy of JD Vance

It is deeply important to expose and illuminate the extreme dangers of the breathtaking poisonous propaganda constantly being hurled at the American people to help elect Trump and complete the horrifying transition of America into a fascist nation. These are perilous times. Being strong voices of truth matters! Deeply. — Molly

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance speaks at the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition dinner in Atlanta on September 16. Mike Stewart/AP

By David Corn

Hypocrisy is the fuel of MAGA. It decries “crooked” politicians, but its leader is a lying cheater and convicted felon who has flouted numerous ethics guidelines and been found to have engaged in fraud. It relies on the political support of conservative Christians who profess family values, but it worships a narcissist who has engaged in immoral and crass conduct (including sexual assault) that violates the core tenets of Christianity and who has demonstrated no sincere allegiance to faith. It claims to be a movement for hard-working, middle-class Americans, yet it embraces a politician and party that has provided whopping tax cuts for the wealthy elite and threatened to eliminate health care coverage for millions of Americans. Consequently, it’s no surprise that Donald Trump and JD Vance have plunged neck-deep into the muck of hypocrisy, as they exploit the two recent attempted assassinations of Trump to accuse the Democrats of debasing the public discourse with harsh rhetoric that casts Trump as a threat to democracy and of encouraging political violence.

This is particularly rich after Trump and Vance whipped up the phony and racist claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were purloining pets and turning them into meals. Their baseless demagoguery—in which the pair demonized legal migrants as illegal—led to bomb threats against schools and government agencies in that town. Yet, as I noted a while back, Trump, like any autocrat-wannabe, is a master of rubber-and-glue tactics. So now his line is: I’m not a threat to democracy. The people calling me a threat to democracy are the real threat to democracy. He knows that he doesn’t need to win this argument to defuse this line of criticism. Trump only has to muddy the waters and create a debate over who’s a danger in order to undercut this fundamental argument against his restoration. Debating this may seem absurd. After all, if a fellow who refused to accept legitimate election tallies, secretly schemed to overturn the results, and with his lies incited an insurrectionist mob to storm the Capitol to prevent the peaceful transfer of power isn’t a threat to democracy, who is? But this I’m-not/you-are bullshit could work, especially with low-engaged voters who might absorb the impression that there’s a fight to be had on this front.

Vance has taken point on this mission.

In a very long social media post, he slammed Democrats for degrading the national discourse by depicting Trump as a menace and blamed them for the assassination attempts: “The rhetoric is out of control…It nearly got Donald Trump killed twice…Kamala Harris has said that ‘Democracy is on the line’ in her race against President Trump…For years, Kamala Harris’s campaign surrogates have said things like ‘Trump has to be eliminated.’” And in the same breath, Vance defended his assaults on the Haitians and his circulation of the “the infamous pet stories—which, again, multiple people have spoken about (either on video or to me or my staff),” ignoring that these stories have repeatedly been proved false. He even had the chutzpah to suggest that criticism of his dissemination of this disinformation was the equivalent of censorship.

In a speech, he continued to try to claim the higher ground: “I do think that we should take this opportunity to call for a reduction in the ridiculous and inflammatory political rhetoric coming from too many corners of our politics…We can disagree with one another; we can debate one another. But you cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and if he’s elected it is going to be the end of American democracy.” (In response, CNN aired video of Trump on repeated instances decrying Harris as a “fascist” and a “communist.”)

And in another venue, Vance proclaimed, “We need to remember above and beyond that we must love our neighbors, that we must treat other people as we hope to be treated…We must love our God and let it motivate us in how we enact public policy.”

Vance doesn’t believe this. For years—long before his campaign to vilify the legal immigrants of Springfield—he has eagerly engaged in culture warring that involved dehumanizing and delegitimizing his fellow citizens. You’re familiar, no doubt, with his condescending disparagement of childless women who own cats. But that’s mild stuff for him.  

I’ve reported on instances when Vance has adopted harsh rhetoric and characterized the neighbors he doesn’t like as evildoers bent on destroying the United States. In September 2021, Vance, then a Senate candidate in Ohio, appeared on a podcast hosted by a fellow named Jack Murphy who ran a secretive men’s organization that claimed all major American institutions—universities, the media, the government, unions, professional organizations, nonprofits, and corporations—have been “infiltrated, corrupted, demoralized” and aim to “control you forever.” Murphy also once declared, “Feminists need rape.”

During this interview, Vance excoriated “elite culture” as corrupt and maintained that his success as an author and his stint as a venture capitalist had landed him in the middle of a “garbage liberal elite culture” that teaches citizens to hate America and that is dominated by wokeism, globalism, and social progressivism—the enemies of “traditional American culture.” He contended that the entire elite stratum of the United States was a subversive and malignant entity that plots to undermine the nation. His prescription: “Rip out like a tumor the current American leadership class and then reinstall some sense of American political religion, some sense of shared values.”

Vance called for a purge, and he had a plan: “One model is what happened to Germany after the Nazis lost or what happened to the Iraqis after Saddam Hussein, after we threw Saddam Hussein out. De-Nazification, de-Baathification.” Vance was comparing his political foes to the Nazis of Germany and the Baathists of Iraq—and the right had to go to war against them: “We need like a de-Baathification program but like a de-woke-ification program in the United States.” He even told Murphy that if Trump returned to the White House, Trump should ignore and contravene the law to mount an illegal effort to cleanse the civil service of anyone who was not loyal to the Trump cause: “When the courts stop you, stand before the country…and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.” Vance cited Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán as a role model for a second Trump presidency. 

Vance was not toning anything down. His message to Murphy was that desperate times require desperate measures: “If we’re going to push back against it, we’re have to get pretty wild, pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.” This was no call for a reasonable debate over policy. It was a demand for vilification and vengeance.

This summer, as I reported, Vance went further. He endorsed a new book that dubbed progressives “unhumans” and claimed they are waging an “Irregular Communist Revolution” to annihilate American civilization. The volume, Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them), co-written by Jack Posobiec, a well-known alt-right agitator and conservative media personality who promoted the bonkers Pizzagate conspiracy theory, urged a crusade to wipe out the “unhumans.” The book termed them “people of anti-civilization” who are “ugly liars who hate and kill.”

This was hyper-othering of political rivals and rhetoric that certainly could provoke violence. The “unhumans,” the book maintained, were behind the Black Lives Matter movement, in charge of academia, and controlling corporations, the media, and even churches. “They just want an excuse to destroy everything,” Posobiec and co-author Joshua Lisec wrote. “They want an excuse to destroy you.”

Vance gave a thumbs-up to this hateful paranoia reminiscent of McCarthyism and provided a blurb that Posobiec and Lisec have used to peddle the book:

In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through HR [Human Resources], college campuses, and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people. In Unhumans, Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.

Repeating many of the assertions of the tinfoil-hat crowd, Posobiec (who was part of the fraudulent Stop the Steal movement) and Lisec insisted that the riot at the US Capitol was a “lawfare trap” sprung to “destroy” Trump’s followers and “make them an example to any other Republicans who want to get uppity in the future.” They maintained all was calm on Capitol Hill until guards “fired on the peaceful crowd with nonlethal munitions and flash-bangs.” They wrote, “It was all a trap” and the “insurrection hoax was used to begin a purge of Trump supporters from the military and from public life.” The rioters were “well-meaning patriots.”

The pair argued that the right must be vicious and adopt extreme and underhanded measures to defeat the “unhumans”: “Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans. It is time to stop playing by rules they won’t.” As examples of those who successfully fought against “unhumans,” they cited Francisco Franco, Spain’s fascist dictator, and Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s fascist dictator. These two men they championed each waged brutal political violence. The Spanish government estimated that 114,000 Spanish civilians disappeared and were presumably killed by Franco forces during the Spanish civil war and his dictatorship. Pinochet disappeared and killed thousands. The book described Franco, who was backed by Nazi Germany, as “a great man of history.” And it justified the violence of Pinochet’s regime: “The story of tossing communists out of helicopter hails from Pinochet’s elimination of communism during the mid to late 1970s. Wherever Pinochet was, there was no communism.”

Ponder this: the Republican nominee for vice president commended a book that praised violent dictators and held them up as role models for the American right. By the way, this book was also extolled by Donald Trump Jr. (“teaches us how…to save the West”), Michael Flynn (“exposes their battle plans and offers a fifth-generation warfare system to fight back and win”), and Tucker Carlson (“Jack Posobiec sees the big picture and isn’t afraid to describe it.”)

Now Vance, who works for Trump, has the audacity to lecture others on the excesses of political rhetoric? He has demonized and demeaned his foes. He has called for purges. He has acclaimed a book that literally dehumanizes liberals and celebrates fascists who deployed horrific political violence. And there’s this: Not long ago, he told fellow conservatives, “The thing we have to take away from the last 10 years is that we really need be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power.”

With his calls for illegal and ruthless action, his backing of Trump’s lies about 2020, and his support for right-wingers who hail political violence and condemn progressives as “unhumans,” Vance is himself a threat to democracy. Which is why he, like Trump, huffs that the actual threat is posed by those who point out how he and Trump endanger the republic. This hypocrisy is a crucial element of a con concocted to conceal their extremism. Trump and Vance are claiming the mantle of champions of democracy so they can attain the power to subvert democracy. And if the media doesn’t cover this adequately—and if not enough voters see through their cynical ruse—they may get the chance to do so.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, is available in an expanded paperback edition.

Please go here for the original article in Mother Jones: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/09/jd-vance-trump-haitian-immigrants-springfield-ohio-unhumans/

James Risen: Trump’s Conspiracy Theory Campaign

An excellent and deeply important article 

by James Risen in The Intercept. 

— Molly

Donald Trump at the Israel American Council Summit 2024 on Sept. 19, 2024, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Angelina Katsanis/Politico

By James Risen

Donald Trump doesn’t try to campaign on any real issues. Instead, he traffics in racist tropes and conspiracy theories as he tries to get Americans to go down a rabbit hole into a dark alternate reality where immigrants kidnap and eat cats, the 2020 election was stolen, vaccines are poison, and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is not really Black.

He has filled his third campaign for the presidency with a team that peddles conspiracy theorists, including Laura Loomer, JD Vance, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Racism, misogyny, and anti-intellectualism are at the heart of many of Trumpworld’s conspiracy theories, but it is up to Trump’s most loyal MAGA cultists to sort out the political meaning of each new harebrained idea they are told to believe. Meanwhile, the nation’s political press corps lags far behind trying to fact-check Trump and his minions, like King Canute trying to hold back the tide.

Above all, Trump has built his campaign around conspiracy theories designed to stoke racist fears of immigrants and minorities, exploiting the hysteria that grips many white Americans over the demographic changes of the last few decades that have transformed the U.S. into a more diverse nation.

This is not new for Trump, who announced his 2016 campaign alleging Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists. But this time around, stoking and exploiting racist fears of immigrants is essentially all that he’s running on.

Trump has frequently said that nonwhite immigrants are “poisoning the blood of the country.”

Considering his rhetoric, Trump’s campaign slogan might as well be “Blood and Soil.” That was the Nazi slogan calling for a racially pure Aryan German nation built around the pastoral ideal of rural life. It was also the original headline on a September 14 column in the New York Times by Jamelle Bouie describing Vance’s willingness to spread false conspiracy claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were kidnapping and eating cats. Faced with complaints from Trump operatives and other right-wingers, the New York Times softened the headline to mush.

But “Blood and Soil” does capture what Trump and his legion of conspiracy theorists are doing. Trump and the MAGA cult have turned their backs on the cherished American tradition that the United States is unique because it is built on shared beliefs, rather than whether someone was born here or immigrated here.

Members of Trump’s legion of conspiracy theorists live in their own swamps of lies and disinformation.

Loomer, an extremely online far-right figure who until now was perhaps best known for spreading the lie that 9/11 was an inside job, has been traveling closely with Trump during the campaign. Kennedy, meanwhile, who ended his fringe presidential campaign and endorsed Trump in August, has a long history of spreading anti-vaccine misinformation and has branched out to add baseless conspiracy theories that Wi-Fi causes cancer, that anti-depressants cause school shootings, and that chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender.

What binds these conspiracy theories together is the way they are designed to damage the credibility of experts, scientists, and governments. 

What binds these conspiracy theories together is the way they are designed to damage the credibility of experts, scientists, and governments. Well-informed and educated voters have fled Trump and MAGA, and he relies on so-called low information voters instead. 

They are far more susceptible than other voters to Trump’s racist lies, and winning over these voters with conspiracy theories is a way for Trump to shore up his base. 

While spreading the lie that Haitians are eating pets in Springfield, Trump and Vance have refused to denounce bomb threats and other threats of violence targeting the city as a result of their lies. The threats of violence have gotten so bad that the Ohio state police have had to step in and announce that it will help protect schools in Springfield, while Republican Gov. Mike DeWine personally debunked the rumors spread by Trump and Vance.

Vance’s role in spreading the vile falsehood about the immigrants eating pets has been particularly egregious — since he knows that he has continued to lie even after he and his staff were told that the stories weren’t true. He’s now added new lies that Haitian immigrants are causing an increase in communicable diseases in Springfield, which the director of the Ohio health department quickly said was false.

Of all of the members of Trump’s conspiracy legion, Vance is the most intriguing, because we can now watch, in real time, as he descends into a conspiracy theory-fueled alternative reality. Loomer and Kennedy have long since left reality behind, but Vance was as recently as 2016 lionized as a bestselling author and an important new literary voice and a Trump critic. Unlike many others who have slowly fallen into the madness of the alt-world, Vance seems to be making a very conscious choice to suddenly jump in, as if that was part of his bargain to become Trump’s running mate.

On CNN last weekend, Vance admitted as much. 

When confronted with the fact that he is spreading lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Vance said, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” 

Vance has sold his soul. Just like every other Republican who has allowed the GOP to be captured by conspiracy theorists.

Please go here for the original article: https://theintercept.com/2024/09/23/trump-campaign-conspiracy-theories/

Thích Nhất Hạnh: When We're Able To Embrace Our Suffering

May we each discover whatever it is that we need to increasingly embrace, open, heal, and bring tenderness to our hearts and all that we find there. And as we bring down the walls we may not even know are there, we open to the healing and wholeness not just of ourselves, but also that which our families and our world hungers for. With each year that we are alive, and with greater and greater depth, we can be the healing and the peace, be the compassion and the love, be the wise and the sweet and Sacred being that is our essence. We can do this for ourselves, for our children and our ancestors, and for all of our planetary sisters and brothers.

Bless us all, 

💗 Molly

Photo by Molly

When We're Able To 

Embrace Our Suffering

Some of our ill-being comes from hurt and pain in our own life; but some has been transmitted to us by our ancestors. Think of a stalk of corn that grows from a seed. Each ear of corn, each leaf, contains that initial seed. In every cell of that plant that seed is there. And just as the plant of corn is the continuation of the seed of corn, you are the continuation of your parents.

When you see a picture of yourself as a five-year-old child, you may ask yourself, "Am I the same person as that child?" The answer isn't "Yes" or "No." Your form, your feelings, your mental formations, your perceptions, and your consciousness are quite different from when you were that child. It's clear you aren't exactly that same person. But if you say that you are a completely different person, that's equally wrong. You and that young child inter-are with each other.

Before my mother gave birth to me, she had a miscarriage. The child who didn't arrive that time - was he my brother or was he me? We aren't the same, but we aren't totally different. My feet have been transmitted to me by my ancestors. When I walk, I walk with my own feet, but these  feet are also theirs. I can see the hand of my mother in my hand. I can see the arms of my father in my arms. I am my parents continuation.

There are those who have lost their biological parents, or never knew them, and have no chance to connect with them in person. There are also people who grew up with their blood relatives, whose parents are still alive, yet they are unable to communicate with them. In all these situations, even if you don't have a regular interpersonal relationship with your parents or your ancestors, your body and mind continue their suffering and their hopes as well as your own.

So if you have suffering in you and you don't know where it comes from, looking deeply you may see that this is the suffering of your ancestors, handed down from one generation to another, because no one knew how to recognize, embrace, and heal it. It's not your fault, nor is it their fault.

Many people are angry at their parents because of the suffering they experienced as children. They say, "That man, I don't want anything to do with him." You may believe that your father is outside of you, but your father is inside of you. Your father is present in every cell of your body. You can't remove your father from you. It's impossible. When he suffered, you suffered, and when you suffer, he suffers. Getting angry with your father, you're getting angry with yourself. The suffering of the parent is the suffering of the child. Looking deeply is a chance to transform and heal this suffering and stop the cycle.

So part of looking deeply into our suffering is to know that it is not ours alone. When we're able to embrace our suffering, we're also embracing our ancestors, and the healing goes back through the generations. When we practice mindful breathing to know how to recognize, embrace, and transform our pain, we do it for them as well as for us. Then we can heal not only our own suffering and that of our ancestors, but we can also avoid transmitting this suffering to our loved ones, to our children, and their children.

— Thích Nhất Hạnh

Excerpted from No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of 

Transforming Suffering