Thank you so much for this deeply important and powerfully incisive offering, dear Eric. I appreciate every word. Your threading of Japanese nationalism and the devastating slaughters it inflicted (a much fuller account than I’ve read before), with the comparable Zionist cooption of Western Buddhism with its silence on Gaza, is insightful and revelatory.

Your article is a very thorough account of what we’ve all been witnessing over the last 2 ½ years. Articles like this should be headlined in our Dharma presses, but alas, it’s a travesty to see how they have blocked any real inquiry into Gaza and Zionism. Really crazy.

As you went through the subtle levels of insight that should automatically lead to unpacking Zionism, I wonder (again) about the deeper insights of the founding teachers who have enshrined this silence. Is it all just performative? What have we been doing in this dharma scene that has rendered such an inability to even utter ONE word???? Totally baffling.

Thank you, too, for the Sutta/Sutra references at the end, laying out the clear positioning of the Buddha’s adherence to non-violence. I appreciate it, as I’m just penning a piece about armed resistance and non-violence in response to a challenge and inquiry.

My relief and appreciation, reading your article, particularly your naming of so many important points, is matched only by the depth of devastation at the abandonment of Palestine, and my own heartbreak and loss, to the point that I’m finding it hard to recognize what I’ve dedicated my life to.