Tricycle | Awake in the World

AT THE TIME of my first Buddhist retreat, in the early eighties, I was quite active in the antinuclear movement. I wrote articles on disarmament, worked with nuclear-freeze groups, and worried, deeply, that my friends, family, and familiar world would disappear in one hot blast.

On retreat, the threat of nuclear war seemed far beyond the sunny farmhouse kitchen in which I drank my tea. Indeed, I "forgot" about nuclear war until the last day, when I looked out over the frozen pastures and wondered if anyone had dropped The Bomb in my absence. I wondered, too, if I could escape the pain of the politics of war by meditating, devoutly, for a very long time.