It was the ice on the truck that beckoned to me when I was six years old and playing on the one-way street near my home in North Philadelphia. Continue reading
Tag Archives: War
Owning the mental illness amongst us
Mental illness scares the shit out of me. The very term conjures up images of some crazed guy with wild, straggly hair and a demon-like smile of malevolence. Steven King kind of comes to mind when I think of someone who might be a little touched in the head. A Stephen King character, that is. Not Stephen King.  Continue reading
My ‘Vietnam War Recall’ starts tomorrow
“I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, and more desolation. Some of these young men think that war is all glory but let me say . . . ”War is All Hell!”
-
American Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman
9-11 is Our Generation’s ‘Day Of Infamy’
Like December 7th, 1941, the date of “9-11” will go down in American history as a new generation’s Day of Infamy.
In my lifetime, it ranks up there with the horrific day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  Continue reading
Songs offered hope to Vietnam War grunts
Musical refrains from Rock & Roll songs helped get me through the Vietnam War. I didn’t know all the lyrics of the songs, only those short parts where I’d stop what I was doing and raise my voice in unison with the lead singer.  Continue reading
Recalling some cool summers in the Army
Summer always served as a “new beginning” for me when I was in the US Army. I got drafted on the Third of June and did my basic training in the hot, dry air of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. I can’t tell you how many push-ups I did during the two-month training session, as the meanest drill sergeant I ever saw brought fire to my poor soul by running me everywhere and cussing me out to force me into fighting shape. Continue reading
A rant against disrespect, hurt & the war
Much of what I know about war was what I learned while playing as a kid. You know, using a stick or a broken branch from a tree, I’d pretend it was a rifle to shoot the bad guys who were out to get me and the rest of the good guys in my old neighborhood.  Continue reading
Cause of All Wars Questioned in Confederate Flag Controversy
President Barack Obama may have raised an issue on all wars when he eulogized a fallen comrade on June 26, 2015, at the funeral for the pastor of the AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
While never detracting from the valor that Confederate soldiers fought with in the Civil War, he offered a plain and simple truth.
The cause they fought for was wrong.  Continue reading
It was me an enemy sniper was trying to kill
A Sniper Takes Aim at this Young Lieutenant
A Viet Cong sniper was trying to kill me. Some motherfucker hiding in the trees, the bushes, the triple-canopy jungle had just shot at my platoon. I thought he was shooting randomly, despite the debris from the ground, grassland and other tiny bits of rock that struck me from a bullet’s ricochets.
No, he was aiming at no one but me! It’s taken me more than forty years to figure that out. 
Now I must try to answer the question, “Why was I spared?” and what will I do now with my life after seeing I got a second chance to live it toward a more purposeful ending?
Christ Almighty! How could I not detect this assassination attempt on my life in 1970? We had heard all the stories about the life expectancy of lieutenants — especially the second lieutenants, the lowest of what are called “junior” officers.
“Sixteen minutes.”
Yeah, you read that right. Some “urban legend,” gave the new-in-country officer no more than the time it might take for a helicopter to touch down in a “Hot LZ,” a landing zone where guns were blazing. Sixteen minutes was all the time it took for an enemy sharpshooter — a gifted sniper — to beam onto the newbie leaving the chopper to get his first salute in a combat zone. The lieutenant would end up dead before he’d finish returning that salute.
Who knows where that story originated? But there was some truth to it.
————-
A sniper killed First Lieutenant Victor Lee Ellinger, the leader of the Third Platoon in my outfit, C Company. By all standards, he was a veteran, having been in the bush some three months before he was hit. The enemy killed no one else during the brief firefight.
When he went down, the platoon sergeant called the company commander, who ordered me to help Vic’s troops, only to learn he had died while I force-marched my platoon. We had to medevac out two soldiers who suffered heat exhaustion during the long, hard, fast slug I put them through. A forced march is a journey in “quick time,” a fast walk just slightly below a jog.
Throw in a 20-pound backpack in sweltering heat over a distance of half a click (500 meters or half a kilometer), and it could be quite grueling to breathe, let alone march quickly.
No One ever Shot at Me in my Old Neighborhood
I didn’t bargain for this shit! Growing up in the city, I’d gotten into my share of fights, but no one ever shot at me.
But there I was, the man in charge. I never thought of the chaos a sniper could cause by shooting at the leader. He was out to get me, and he had me in his sights. I did not know that then. (I thank God for temporary stupidity. It’s kind of like temporary insanity, but that won’t get you off in a court of law.) I never put the shooting together with the target of the shooter. I thought the sniper was simply pinning down the squad I was leading, not shooting directly at its leader, me.
I moved forward but fell back when another round of fire rang out. Again, I felt some dirt and whatnot spray over me. But I still thought it was us as a group that he was shooting at.
No Hand-to-Hand Combat, No Fixed Bayonets
The entire time I served in Vietnam, I never saw the enemy up close and only got glimpses of him in the distance as we’d approach one of his encampments. I’d shoot in the direction of that glimpsed object, hoping I’d hit something or somebody. But I never knew whether it was me or someone else in my platoon who’d end up killing someone. We’d come across a body, and that would be the only time I’d come face-to-face with “Charlie,” the nickname we gave the enemy.
No one I knew in Vietnam ever engaged in hand-to-hand combat. We used no fixed bayonets, and I threw only two hand grenades the time I was in the field, because we hardly ever got close enough to heave ‘em. We’d probably end up hitting a branch and have the explosion backfire had I tossed any more.
Had I known then that a real person was “gunning” for me, I think I would have acted differently. It would have shaken me, instilled more fear in me. I’d be more cautious and more tentative in my actions, following orders, and passing on orders.
Combat Bravery Arises in Love for the Other Soldier
Oh, I’d still go a little “berserk” when someone got shot, and revenge sparked a fury that made one’s actions foolishly heroic. I’d charge like a madman when going to help a fallen soldier, as I did when learning that the third platoon had walked into an ambush and needed help from our platoon.
To hell with my safety, there were others worse off, and I believe I speak for every man I ever fought with by saying that any bravery we might have displayed arose from the love and compassion we had for the other guy.
I survived the war in Vietnam. I was never wounded, although I developed a hearing loss from artillery fire and claim it as a disability with the Veterans Administration. There are lots of psychological scars that flare up when stress triggers a traumatic memory. It’s called Post Traumatic Stress. But I am pretty much intact. But what’s keeping this vet alive all these years?
Why was this Combat Soldier Spared?
Today, however, I have a question that only a higher command can answer. Why was I spared? Why was another killed and not me? Is this just survivor’s guilt? I could have, perhaps I should have been shot. But why was I not?
More importantly, what have I done with a life that was given to me by Fate or whatever power in the universe you want to name? What am I to do with myself now?
————–
The following is a conversation about this Blog post shared elsewhere:
Holy crap Michael, I just got the message here and I have to reflect on the story some… what I feel though, and the perspective I take now on “why life” is that it was your choice to live, to survive, and yet only to realize this so many years later. You helped those souls in you charge survive … it all has meaning, it is a free will universe, yet so many abdicate their natural rights … Do you ever speak to the men in your platoon?
I have had no contact with any of the guys I served with except for a fellow lieutenant from Arkadelphia, Ark. He was Charlie Ellis. I spoke to him on the phone a few years ago after getting his number from his mother, who was still alive.
He had a Degree in Economics when I knew him in Vietnam. He was a tall southern boy with a lazy drawl to his voice. He came up through ROTC while Victor Lee Ellinger — the other junior officer — and I went to OCS.
I learned that he had “Found God” and became a lawyer just like me, serving as a public defender somewhere in Arkansas. We talked about our buddy who was killed by a sniper and commented on how moving our visit to the Vietnam Veteran Memorial was for both of us.
— A damn public defender. Still practicing. Still journeying on his spiritual path.
The Universe is amazing, and you can never truly understand the wisdom that is out there!
New bucket list headed by state of Alaska
North to Alaska!
That’s where I’m headed next week, and I’ll start checking off the newest box of my “bucket list,” the list of things I want to do before I “kick the bucket.” Continue reading
Hoping for a lofty goal, I write a lot & often
(Question 2 on Hope)
You may also have experienced this kind of hope, (See https://contoveros.wordpress.com/?p=12505&preview=true) but not thought of it in those terms. Think of a time when you felt sure you were going to attain a lofty goal, even though the path to the goal was not apparent. That is the hope that comes from your being. Describe this feeling of certainty in your journal. – Deepak Chopra 21-Day Meditation Experience (Feeling Hope) I was a buck private in training as a soldier in Fort Dix, NJ, when I had a vision, or what Zen Buddhists call a “satori” or moment of clarity of what I needed to do with my life.
Hope to One Day Write a Book
I was a buck private in training as a soldier in Fort Dix, NJ, when I had a vision, or what Zen Buddhists call a “satori” or moment of clarity of what I needed to do with my life.
I needed and wanted to write a book.
Not just any book, but one where I was the hero. Well, hero may not be the right word. In the book, I was to be the center of attention, while everything I’d write about would involve me and things that I had some sort of contact with. I used the model of the Bible as a guide.
I figured that the greatest book that there ever was should be the map and framework for my book. I’d be just like Christ, but not face crucifixion or circumcision. There was a driving force behind this idea. The idea stayed with me from the moment I was nineteen years old until I finished working for a living and found the leisure time to write about what I had discovered over the years.
Blogging Leads to Eventual Plans for a Book
I didn’t know that I would write a book when I started dabbling with a Blog. I started writing on WordPress the same month that Uncle Dom had died in 2009, and I guess I haven’t stopped since then. The blog became my way of expressing what I was seeing around me and what was happening to influence me. I learned that most of what I was learning was something I already knew, but had forgotten.
I think that much of spiritual knowledge is like that. We don’t get our “smarts” from someone or some book out there. We get it from inside, where true wisdom, love, and hope reside. It takes some of us a lifetime, however, to realize that. All we needed to do was to become as silent as Dominick, smile, and hope to visit that wise child inside who has never left us. The child becomes the guide and offers us the inspiration to set goals and to eventually achieve them.
Another Step In Writing Achieved!
You’re reading this right now, and that goes to show you that I achieved another step toward my goal. You can do it once you identify your goal and stick to it as if your life depended on it.
Your spiritual life will depend on it for you to follow through for your salvation.
(For the first question on hope, please see previous post with a click below left.)
Editor’s note. Michael J Contos, writing as ” Contoveros” authored two books by this date, one a novel about Francis of Assisi, his favorite community organizer, and a second one on his spiritual journey to Ithaca, NY.
Explosion shatters Peace but calm prevails
Question 2 of 4 on ” Feeling Peaceful“
Thinking of this same peaceful experience, imagine that feeling of calm becoming deeper and stronger within your soul to the point where nothing happening in the environment could shake it. Describe what that kind of peace would feel like physically, mentally and emotionally. How could this type of peace change your life? — Deepak Chopra 21-Day Meditation Experience (Day 3 — “Feeling Peace”)
Well, it would be hard to imagine my Peace in Vietnam being any better than what it was that day. It could have very easily been shattered by gunfire. Worse yet, the peace could have been destroyed with my heart and my soul wounded by something called friendly fire.
That’s what happened during another incident while leading men on a search and destroy mission in what we called the “bush.” I had called in mortar fire on a suspected enemy location, but one of the rounds fell on my squad. Five soldiers were injured and I thank God that none were killed.
- (Please see Part 1 at:
- https://contoveros.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/peace-found-inside-middle-of-Vietnam-war/ /)
Flashbacks of War Create PTSD for this Soldier
But, being the man in charge, the lieutenant, I got blamed, and I carried that shame and sense of utter failure with me all of my life. Peace evaded me throughout my adulthood as I battled what was labeled Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, an anxiety illness that causes flashbacks of the war when certain stressful situations trigger a physical, mental, and emotional recall of the trauma.
Express peace in any shape or form until it becomes a worldwide phenomenon
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I found peace, however, while attending a five-day meditation retreat, and I was able to journal about my war experience. I felt safe and secure among like-minded meditators. I figured I could cry like a baby while with them, and they would still accept me despite my tears.
Writing about Worst Day of Your Life Hurts
I did cry, and it was refreshing. I also wrote about that day, the worst day of my life. And it brought peace to my heart. I saw how I had functioned as a calm and cool soldier under extreme conditions, never losing my composure when chaos erupted all around me. I became detached from the scene, the carnage, and I did my job to the best of my ability and then some, if I do say so myself.
Inside, I felt myself shatter like a pane of glass struck by a wrecking ball aimed right at me.
It was the first time I was able to do this. Look at that dreadful day without recoiling and feeling the guilt, the anxiety, the grief, and, worse yet, the shame. And I found that writing was indeed therapeutic. It is a method of meditation that I hope to continue over these 21 days of meditating through the Chopra Center for Meditation, where I plan to take it “to infinity . . . and beyond.”
Peace is not found out there somewhere. It exists within and can be found by focusing on that place inside that offers comfort, security, and forgiveness.
————–
— Michael J Contos, former US Army lieutenant, in response to question at the 21-day Meditation Experience provided by Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra. For more, see Chopra Center Meditation Experience)
Peace Found Deep Inside the Vietnam War
(Part 1 of 2)
Recall a time when you felt calm and peaceful, even though the circumstances were not peaceful. Write down a description of that event, and describe how you were able to be calm in that situation. What was the source of this peacefulness if it didn’t come from outside? — Deepak Chopra 21-Day Meditation Experience (Day 3 — “Feeling Peace”)
I had led my platoon in Vietnam for several months. We had encountered several firefights, but no one was killed or injured, thank God. But you never knew what the next day would bring, and so we were on edge, on the ready, so to speak, for anything that might have endangered us.
And then one day, I lead one of my two squads into an area where we came across a humongous crater that had been carved in the earth. I don’t know what kind of bomb had created such a massive hole. It looked as if it had been done several years before the ten or twelve guys I was leading had approached it and, circling it, decided to make our overnight “camp” there.
Calm and Relaxing Vibrations Greet Soldier
It was broad daylight, however, when we got to it, and there were still several hours of light left. I’ll tell you I have never felt so much peace as I did when settling in at that moment. I don’t know what it was that gave off such calm and relaxing vibrations. Perhaps there had been a monastery or some sort of temple there at one time.
Perhaps spirits from those prayers offered up to whatever gods existed at their time were still lingering in the vicinity.
Peace of God found in the middle of the Vietnam War for some lucky Grunts
———————–
I felt secure and comfortable. I felt I could rest and not worry about any type of attack, even though we didn’t let down our watch through the evening and overnight. It just seemed as if God had gathered us in his arms and was protecting us.
I hadn’t felt the Presence of God since I was twelve years old. I didn’t recognize it as a “presence” until recently, when I reflected on the more peaceful times in my life and determined that, strangely enough, it was right smack in the middle of a war.
Peace Provided for all of God’s Creatures
The peace came from within but also from the birds and critters that had returned to what must have been a burned-out shell shortly after the massive explosion. Bushes and small trees had started to grow along the sides of the crater. There weren’t that many flowers, but the foliage was pleasant to look at and comforting to believe it could conceal us from outside forces. Maybe it did.
And maybe that is what peace is all about, being able to go within, protected from outside forces.
— Michael J Contos, former US Army lieutenant, responding to meditation question posed.
(For part 2, please see: https://contoveros.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/explosion-shatters-peace-but-calm-prevails/)
(For more on meditation see Chopra Center Meditation Experience)
Breathing to ‘Right Self’ is a Lifetime Job
Divine Mother, Spare the Fem-in-’em Now
Take ’em. Break ’em. Make ’em.
O Grand Master, it is your females that will save this species. It is through their power, their innate abilities, that man will be saved. Compassion and love must rule the day again. And power must be crushed by the mallet of humility before any dare sends another child into war that old men dream of winning as if playing games of adolescent ruffians. 
Ouch! Give up my manhood? Turn in my boxing gloves, my rifle, my drink? What will I become when I grow up? Who will I protect, gather food for, “sexualize” in thoughts actions and deeds my every waking minute?
Be Still and Know that I Am God
You will bow and respect for evermore your Divine Mother forevermore. I will take your life away as quickly and as surely as I have given it to you. Obey this: Be Still and Know that I Am God.
I need your strength to build, not tear down; to give hope and not despair; to “fight” without lifting a fist but by raising your spirit so mightily it will dash to pieces the most formidable enemy your kind has ever faced.
Give me your blood in the fields of corn and rice, not the fields of battles.
(See Divine Mother)
————-
Skillful Means Needed for Gentle Wisdom
Shed tears not for fallen comrades but for the joy in conquering obscurations you never thought could be overcome.
March proudly waving flags of festive, holiday colors to announce a new day is here, and that you will never return to the days of old guts and glory.
You will thrive only when realizing that skillful means discerned with honest and gentle wisdom must be employed in all human endeavors.
Love, tolerate, and above all, learn patience as the antidote to all the poisons your kind has been exposed to. Do it now. Tomorrow may be too late.
I will spare man, but only if he spares the feminine within himself.
Truly Living May Just Be Worth Dying For
The thought of going to prison never bothered me. I’d survive and flourish behind bars, where I’d have more than enough time to reflect and write which I have found is my true love in life.
No, I could kill without worrying about the consequences. It would be my first offense. I am certified as a Vietnam veteran with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I don’t see any judge or jury putting me to death for the crime.
All of this went through my mind when I was waiting at the train platform, and a rather tall, white guy walked in front of me. I was standing near the tracks. I was close enough and in line with others standing on either side of me that I never thought someone could make their way between me and the tracks. But the man did. He walked around me. He stood directly in front of me. No one else stood that close. I recall thinking how totally inappropriate and rude his actions were.
That’s when I Planned to Kill Him. 
I know how to kill, having been trained in the infantry and as a parachutist who learned not to care about pain. I got used to it, and bared up under it so many times, it became almost second nature to welcome it during a new and challenging task. Like murder.
No, I don’t know any Kung Fu or any martial arts. But I could break the man’s neck from behind. And, if that failed, I would wrestle him to the ground and die before letting him get up as I smashed his head again and again on the platform, caring not a whit about the mess I’d make. I’m strong. More importantly, I’m strong-willed.
Breaking an unwritten Rule is Dishonorable
He deserved to die, I rationalized and actually saw myself as a champion of the underdogs who play by the rules on train platforms. You have to honor another person’s space. You can’t stand too close to another person until or unless you see the train pulling up, and everyone tightens up the ranks, bunching together to stand at the spot you believe the train steps will come to a halt.
Why break such a rule? Why place yourself in front of someone else just because you’re taller than them are? Or younger? Or slicker? Someone like me may just kill you and use the opportunity to leave behind a staid and predictable life that’s losing whatever meaning it once may have had.
My action could be considered justifiable in a weird sort of way. No, not in a legal sense, but in a Karmic sense, if you know what I mean. I’d create some negative karma but prevent others from getting such negativity in their thoughts and desires to kill as much as I wanted to kill him. I saved them and the rest of all sentient beings a large and cumulative amount of negative karma, that I could be considered a saint in some religions.
Watching my Speech, Thoughts and Relations Now
I bring this up now only because I asked the Universe to correct my old way of life. Certain actions occurred in response to my wishes.
But instead of acting, I became a “watcher.” I was no longer the actor, but someone above myself looking down on my speech, my thoughts, my relations with others and events that became ripened by different causes and conditions.
No, I killed no one. But I entered a state of mind where I saw a different reality. A reality that has always been there but was blocked by my mind. My mind kept me busy with one thought after another: a fear here, an anxiety there. It jumped from an emotional thought from my past to a future where nothing, but catastrophes existed. And then my mind would race, with me having no control of it.
I feel better now. I control my mind even in the most disastrous moments of life. Who’s to say they’re disastrous? Not me. Not anymore. I’ve gained the equanimity to treat the glorious and the profane the same way. As an observer. Not a slave to emotional and useless thoughts. Just an observer of the thoughts.
Try it.
It Could be Worth Dying For . . .
Vietnam War veteran recalls his journey
Dealing with the Vietnam War becomes a little easier each time I write about it. I “desensitize” myself. I now see my actions as separate from the emotions I felt while a young soldier, as well as the feelings of guilt many veterans like me, imposed on ourselves while readjusting to civilian life. It’s helpful when a high school student asks questions and you try to be honest and direct.
Continue reading
Where is the boy I left home for the war?
I knew a boy
Who went to war
And left his home
Behind him.
I knew him well,
That boy was me
And now I cannot
Find him.
— A Vietnam Veteran’s tweak of a World War II Sailor’s Song about War
Pinned for a Life above & beyond the call
While Neil Armstrong was taking a giant leap for all mankind, I had taken a small step toward adulthood one month after the moon landing, and I had no one to thank for it except my brother, who encouraged me to aim for the stars in becoming an Officer and a Gentleman in the Army of the United States of America.
I had weathered the worst six months of my life – worse even than my later combat duty in the Vietnam War – as I underwent the rigorous training in Officers’ Candidate School. We ran everywhere we went, and when we couldn’t run anymore, we’d run in place, waiting in line for chow outside the mess hall, or to use the latrine.
I was the second-youngest in a company of some 200 recruits – carrying a minimum rank of Specialist Five (E-5) – who learned tactics and survival skills and how to endure under the harshest conditions while developing leadership qualities. The youngest ones were targeted for even more physical and psychological drills because of our age.
Commisioned an Officer and a Gentleman at Age 20
The company commander once ordered me to do some 400 situps in a sleeping bag, relenting only after he got tired of counting, and I tore parts of my butt apart from sliding it back and forth against the ground so much. I’m surprised I didn’t tear a hole through the bag, but instead of forcing me out of the program, it encouraged me not to quit and to take whatever he was willing to dish out. At age 20, with nothing but a high school diploma, I earned the respect of several with college and graduate degrees who might have changed their minds about my leading troops.
Those of us who made it filed out of the auditorium at Fort Benning, Ga., having been addressed by some old, weathered colonel who appeared to be in his 70s and was still jumping out of airplanes – his latest count reaching more than 600 jumps! He looked a little crazy, “gung-ho crazy,” if you know what I mean. His eyes seemed permanently fixed wide open; he was jumpy and alert to the smallest sound or movement nearby. I would compare the hyperawareness and sensitivity I’d get from post-traumatic stress years later to his demeanor and makeup.
Being ‘pinned’ by my brother as a Second Lieutenant
But on this day, August 22, 1969, my oldest brother had prepared a ceremony to take place outside the doors of the graduation hall. Dressed in his regular working uniform as an E-6 (Staff Sergeant), he carefully removed two metal bars from a cardboard box. We called them “butter bars,” the yellow metal bars symbolizing the rank of Second Lieutenant, the lowest rank in the Army’s officer corps.
So many things went through my mind as I stood at attention, looking straight ahead, hoping my dress-uniform hat was affixed properly. I didn’t want to be out of order in any way, shape, or form at this time in my life.
What a Shining Moment!
My oldest brother, six years my senior, was about to pin the bars on my shoulder, officially welcoming me to a world where I would become an officer and a gentleman. I did not know then what the designation by an Act of Congress would actually mean. That would come later in Vietnam, when I’d see mortar fire hit and wound half a squad I was leading; when a Viet Cong sniper would shoot and kill Lt. Vic Ellinger, one of only three lieutenants in our combat infantry company; or as two soldiers under another lieutenant’s command would forget where they had placed their claymore mine trip-wire and walk into it, killing themselves.
That was all in the future, along with the PTSD that would raise its ugly head some 25 years after the war. It wouldn’t be all bad, particularly right after being discharged, when this young veteran would use a sense of failure to achieve success in academics, getting degrees in journalism and history before finding his other life’s calling years later as a public defender trial lawyer after obtaining a Juris Doctor Degree.
I knew none of this as my brother George S. Contos fastened the metal bars to my uniform jacket, stepped back, and brought his right hand briskly to his forehead, saluting the superior officer that I had become.
Nothing in my life could compare to that shining moment.
Omega opens doors to lost PTSD veterans
I didn’t want to go back to Omega Institute this year. Each time I travelled to this land of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, I’d get high from the holistic experience. But then I’d change into an Ichabod Crane feeling chased by the Headless Horseman, who’d tell true-life stories that caused so much pain I couldn’t hold it inside. Continue reading
Keeping all Alive a ‘Lifetime Achievement’
After serving in the Vietnam War I turned my back on anything having to do with the military, and so I was totally surprised years later when, requesting my medals, I got one that I still don’t believe I earned. Continue reading
Seeing a Veteran’s’ History Never Repeats
Do all of us & yourself a favor.
Keep an eye out for a Veteran.
Actively seek out someone in your church, synagogue or temple and befriend him so that what happened in Philadelphia last week never happens again.  Continue reading
Resolve to Stop Anger from Feeding on Me
Anger.
It hits like a poison arrow causing me to drop what I’m doing and focus on the pain it inflicts.
Where does it come from? Is it shot from a bow of some unseen foe hoping to do me harm? Or does it arise from within when certain buttons are pushed, like a crazy bone reacting once a physician’s tool strikes that right (or wrong) spot?
My anger springs up almost immediately, spreading pellets out from a shotgun blast over a wide area, striking everything in its path, including the object of my ire as well as ones I never intended to harm.
The anger doesn’t dissipate once it explodes.
It lingers.
It simmers at a low boil, awaiting the opportunity to burn and scold anything or anyone my impatience forces me to look unkindly on and consider spraying upon. It pains and marks me as I hold it obscenely close trying to figure out where it came from, who or what caused it, and why I so easily fall prey to it whenever it erupts inside.
————-
You’re a fool,
Michael J.
Let it go!
Remove the arrow before the poison spreads and engulfs whatever goodness remains in you. It can destroy whatever love and compassion you tried to generate in life when cool-headed and away from less stressful situations.
Don’t try to analyze, categorize or editorialize the grave danger it poses. Don’t believe you can control it. You cannot “befriend” it.
You Can’t Tame it.
It’s too strong and it will demand control of and over you every time.
Sure, you may have needed to use it to right a wrong, to defend with all of your might against some evil, to even kill so that an innocent could justifiably go on living.
But you must give it up! Use it sparingly, if at all, and release it as you learn the long, slow practice of patience.
————-
This could be first step in understanding that this poison will always be there, that there is a cause for its painful existence; and that help is available to forestall its deadly mission once you learn to walk a path you always knew you’d need to follow to truly awake.
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) can be treated and understood without having to face the slings and arrows of war day in and day out.
(Let me deal with the type of arrow that brought down a brave warrior like the Greek Achilles!
Open my Vessel for ALL Lights to Shine
Thank God for Buddhism.
What’s that you say?
I can’t have one in, and of, the other?
Are you telling this red-blooded American veteran that I cannot follow the teachings of the Buddha and still believe in the God of Abraham? Continue reading
Remembering warriors of all of our ages
“Warriors have been rewarded for their service or their families have been provided support, since the beginning of organized society. From the veterans of Egypt in the third millennium B.C. through the Crusaders of medieval Europe, to veterans of today, governments have compensated their military personnel or their survivors, for loss of life, wounds, injuries, or length of service in defense of the state. Continue reading
My Loving Prayer to Saint Francis of Assisi
I want to follow and not lead;
Give and not take;
Love and not hate.
Like you, I want to be a soldier of peace and not war; a kind and loving friend to the poor and a prodding yet mild abrasion to the rich. Continue reading
War is never the answer today (11-11-11)
On this Veterans Day, 11-11-11, what would you tell yourself if you could go back in time and greet that young man recently returned home from the war?
War is never the answer,
But only a failure on all
Sides to reach an answer. Continue reading
These are the True Signs of Our Times!
When I read the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were unfocused and without a coherent message, I took a closer look at them in Philadelphia, and discovered some were disheveled street persons looking for handouts, and one was a graduate school political science major spouting Marxist teaching.
They represented only one percent.
The remaining 99 percent of the other protestors were mostly young, highly educated, unemployed or underemployed men and women who got tired of the debt-ceiling fiasco and took to the streets to mobilize against the Tea Party followers.  Continue reading
“For the Signs, they are a ‘Changing'”
(From Part I, These are true signs of our Times/)
The greatest protest of our generation is seeking change in all shapes and sizes. You can see it in the signs the demonstrators carry, writing the letters out really big with magic markers so that passersby need not squint to get the messages.
There is not just one message, but many, which all have one thing in common: a belief that our world can do better for all and not just the few, the ninety-nine percent making $55,000 a year (per family) or less, as opposed to the one percent controlling some 40 percent of the wealth in the United States of America.
They don’t want your money, Mr. Entrepreneur, only your attention for a moral and ethical way of life that takes into consideration more than the Almighty Dollar.  Continue reading
You ask me: ‘WHY I AM A DEMOCRAT?’
Why am I a Democrat?
I was born this way.
No, that’s not right.
I was raised this way.
No, that’s not right either.
I chose to be a Democrat.  Continue reading
Acupuncture: ‘Dragon drives out Demon’
Healthy disdain for $$$ really not healthy
A taste of heaven offered here on earth
Injustice should make us all ‘go berserk’
Can a Wrong ever serve as a Right?
Going AWOL helps a boy grow into a man
Love Thy Neighbor: Don’t burn his book
Abraham, Martin & John Live On Within
College Life repeats itself each generation
Act of Contrition Helps Regain My Purity
I See You for the Very First Time, Don’t I?
Pain endures from struggles in a ‘Back’ Life
Concealing & finding Self –a life-long effort
Angels re-enter when you’re open to ’em
Spiritual wars should end at a dinner table
Psalm 46: Continue reading
Even on bad days, music can lift me higher
Labyrinth opens a hidden maze inside me
Don Quixote battles PTSD in Philly courts
I never felt more like Don Quixote than when I represented a woman charged with a crime.
And while I didn’t want it, I’d feel called to “champion” her, even when it cost me my reputation, my sanity and my very career as a trial attorney.  Continue reading
Saigon Lady offers wisdom at check out
Saigon Lady taught me about Life and Buddhism tonight. Continue reading
Mary’s Tears help battle Flashbacks of War
Answers to questions about Vietnam War
A soldier bows in salute to heartfelt words
Light shines here from a tip of the candle
‘Veterans are the light at the tip of the candle,’ illuminating the way for the whole nation.
If veterans can achieve awareness, transformation, understanding, and peace, they can share with the rest of society the realities of war.
And they can teach us how to make peace with ourselves and each other, so we never have to use violence to resolve conflicts again.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh
The following is a message I left shortly after writing the quotes from Thich Nhat Hahn. I’ll never forget the experience meditating with him and other veterans who got together during the retreat and even had pictures taken:
Contoveros 
“Ain’t gonna study war no more . . .”
That was the song veterans and family members of vets sang at the retreat with Thích Nhất Hạnh at Blue Cliff Monastery, upstate New York. We formed a group which included the daughter of General William C. Westmoreland, once the commander of the Army during the Vietnam War.
Thầy held a special place for veterans from the United States who faced war and believed we could help others see the futility of all wars!
(See https://contoveros.com/2017/03/15/thich-nhat-hanh-sees-the-suffering-in-us/)
Lyrics
I’m gonna lay down my burden, down by the riverside,
Down by the riverside, down by the riverside
I’m gonna lay down my burden, down by the riverside,
I’m gonna study war no more
I ain’t a gonna study war no more, I ain’t a gonna study war no more
I ain’t a gonna study war no more, I ain’t a gonna study war no more
I ain’t a gonna study war no more, I ain’t a gonna study war no more