The concept of Awareness, so central to Buddhism, is one that seems hard to define and increasingly difficult to witness being practiced in the breakneck pace of our society. I infer a vast difference between knowledge, merely an acceptance and retaining of fact, and awareness, which in my mind is a connection to, and by extension an appreciation for, every circumstance. Now by appreciation, I certainly do not mean that I am "happy" that every circumstance exists. Quite the contrary. Situations both close to home and across the oceans leave me horrified on an almost daily basis. understanding, that is the difference. I understand that the baby in the Congo, the little girl in Cambodia, the young boy in Palestine and (and this is a far more difficult one) - the criminal in Kingston Penitentiary - are connected to me by our mutual birthright and that therefore every strike against them in the form of hostile aggression or passive ignorance dishonours my humanity. I understand that each time I ignore a vagrant on the street instead of meeting his eyes and saying "Hello", I deplete myself. I know it because I feel it each time I decide to choose blindness or feign deafness. We are all too human and sometimes we simply cannot handle what it means to have senses intact. It is painful and brutal to look at the reality of man's inhumanity to man and the devastation that nature - so long trespassed upon - can wreak in retaliation. For where there is hearing and sight there is responsibility.
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