25/04/2024
A lot of people still ask me how did I end up in Italy. I may know a little more about this country having lived through some of the complexities of its modern history in the first person. The story is pretty much the same ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyhlTOTUHb0 ) but on days like today, I think about it a little more and the strange coincidences of living here. When I first started my new life in Italy, it was after some years living in the monasteries in England. In 1990, I came to help assist with the start of Santacittarama. A year later I decided to stay as a layman. It felt like a “get out of jail free” card. I had no clothes, no money but monastic life had smoothed over much of who I was. I didn’t have to rush back to the rat race of America and I could continue to support the monks and the monastery in other ways. With some trepidation and measured enthusiasm, I was ready to explore the practice in the world. Now almost 35 years have passed, the second half of my life in Italy. No longer the land my grandparents fled, its current government and history is still steeped in its Fascist past and I live, oddly enough, in a city born out of the massive Fascist public works program that drained the Pontine Marshes and continues to influence the politics and identity of the area. Today is April 25th, the anniversary of the Resistance Movement that liberated Italy from Na**sm and Fascism. Many of my friends here would correct me though. They would emphasis how Fascism ushered in a new era of economic growth, the expansion of industries, and Italian nationalism and sovereignty. My grandmother was one of these. She would lecture us with the same tireless phrases in her kitchen in the Bronx many of you heard as Italians growing up. “Mussolini made the trains run on time.” We now know that information technology can do that better. We also know that good governance can take many other forms. The world is changing. Again. It is not surprising. But many of us still hope for a time when there is more emphasis on virtuous government and the duty to care for others and environment is expressed more explicitly and capably. Our mindfulness practice helps us to experiment with this vision for ourselves and our families, as we try and organize around ways of being and conditions that are conducive to that unique dimension of “happiness” we think of as transcending suffering. May you all be well today and everyday. ( #8 è in italiano) https://youtu.be/rX4UCo3_XXY?si=Y7xgVjTJZMFpboZf
Check out my other videos in English! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI_1OaFswUQ&t=35sThis is a 15 minute metta meditation (universal loving kindness) by th...
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