Distorted Mirrors

All actions of our lives connect to the actions of others, forming within them an inextricable link into each others' hearts and minds throughout space and time. I believe that most people inherently know this, but it remains hidden - this is where we get selfish actions and actions that harm one another. I myself obviously suffer form this, as well. The point is that this inherent knowledge can make it very easy to predict and understand what people will do, but not necessarily what a person will do.

I was watching Al Jazeera the other day in Er Rachidia with another volunteer - Al Jazeera is merely a news organization here, not a terrorist tool - when a show came on about Nicaragua. after watching a few minutes of it, I realized that the US was not coming our very nice in it.

"This news program seems a bit one sided," I asked, "Don't you think?"
"Yeah," He replied, "Nobody really watches it here except for the uneducated. Most people who use Al Jazeera as their primary news source don't really know about what's going on in the world. Think of it like the Fox News of the Middle East."

I thought of that, but not only that, but also other news organizations, like CNN and MSNBC. Every one of them has their biases. The coverage of elections, the coverage of issues, the coverage of Democrats and Republicans by rival news media groups. And then I thought about other things - the issues in Tibet between the Tibetan media and the Chinese media. I thought of our coverage of events in the Middle East. I began to see them as though they were merely distorted mirrors, reflecting the events using their own biases and preconceived notions. And then I thought of how people view them, and then view reports of the reports, distorted mirrors reflecting off of each other until the original image become unrecognizable. And then I came to another realization.

Wherever you get your news - it does not matter if you get it from one source or many sources - you are going to get a distorted view of the events that occurred. This is reality, this is truth. It does not matter if you use only Al Jazeera or Fox or Huffington Post or BBC - you can collect as many distorted mirrors that you want in the name of being "balanced", but then you are left with a collection of distorted mirrors rather than one. You can watch as many programs about how "Big Business" or "Big Government" is ruining your lives - you can read about the treatment of Tibetan refugees, the US Army, Socialists in South America - you can read about how Muslim terrorists or the Republican Party or Communists or gays are trying to upend the entirety of human civilization - and all you will have are distorted mirrors. You will surround yourself with distorted mirrors until your entire world becomes a hideous shadowy figure of what it truly is.

I want to break all of my mirrors. I want to break the distortions that I have been taught to believe in. I want to hear the sound of shattering glass on the floor. I want to see the world for what it truly is. I can only do that by looking around me, at what I myself can see. A person cannot personally experience the entire world, but we can look around us and see the commonalities that we all share - our loves, our aversions, our desires - and we can see things that are common to us all.

Try it. Try to not use a news organization for a day. No, you will not be "uneducated about your world". Do not be afraid of what others think. They may have picked up another distorted mirror that tells them that some group committed an unjustifiable injustice against someone, or that some group is doing such and such to some other group.

But you know what? I just watched a rock fall down the mountain in the morning sun. I watched it tumble from the top all the way down, knocking down little pieces of the mountain with it, and I know that mountain will never be as it once was. I experienced the world changing, little by little. I saw it with my own eyes.

What do you see?

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many.
Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason, and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. ~Buddha