With the World Trade Center and the Dukkha of all people involved, it is quite important to give yourself time to reflect on it. And often, because of something like this, it's not just that particular incident, and the people involved in that particular incident who died that may bring about this interest, but also of the repercussions of such a thing and how it could affect not only the families of these people, but also how would it affect the world. So sometimes our interest is aroused in this way because of understanding the repercussions of such a situation. So it's okay to actually contemplate these repercussions and try see how it would affect not only the families of these people, but also how this attack on America could affect the rest of the world in a very dramatic way, and all the people involved in that.
To know when to pull back is often to ask yourself whether you have any power to influence what may happen. We don't want to get so caught up in it that we then get fearful and want to know every single detail about what is happening. Because for many of us, I know I don't have the power to influence the policies that came as a result of that. We have to protect ourselves from going into it too much, to learn how to care and not to care, finding that balance in between where we open our heart to the repercussions and the people who may be affected by this particular incident, but to know that we also have to get on with our life, and not be so caught up in the news that we have to see it all the time.
Asking ourselves, "Do I have the power to influence this particular situation. What may happen as a result of this?" And asking yourself whether you can influence this. Personally I have no way to influence because I'm not an American citizen, I can't vote there, and so I have no influence at all. This was helpful for me to step back a little and just try to feel with the world and understand that the world will continue to have wars, and have people in conflict, and it's been like that for thousands of years in the past and it will be like that in the future.
What can I do to protect myself from the dangers of Samsara? This can actually be a motivation to try harder in our own practice, try harder in our own practice to be careful of wrong views, because many of these incidents come about because of wrong views. What can I do in myself to lessen my aversions and making people different, that is separating people into "I am this and you are that"? Can I see the similarities between human beings rather than the differences? Can I learn how to have compassion not only for the victims but also for the people who brought about the pain and suffering for these people?
Again we try to focus back on ourselves and try to understand the lessons that this may have given us by opening to this Dukkha. And to ask ourselves what can I do? And what do I have the power to do? A lot of the time we see that we can not influence world events very dramatically, and make the decisions, but we can do a lot by lessening some of these wrong views in ourselves, the separation that we tend to create between groups of people. Try to increase the power of our compassion to not make it restrictive and selective, rather try to open out and also understand. And try to understand the different faces of compassion, so that we don't fall into aversion towards people who are making decisions that we may not understand.