“Which Side Are You On?” ~ Pete Seeger

I grew up listening to Pete, on records and at hootenannies. I knew which side I was on. “They say in Harlan County/ There are no neutrals there/ You'll either be a union man/ Or a thug for J. H. Blair.” I was no thug. We were for the workers and peace. We were against nuclear testing and segregation. We marched and we protested. It was important to stand up. We had to take a side. I was proud to stand up.

This was who I was. I never questioned it until Roshi Bernie Glassman began to rock my boat. Was Bernie telling me that if I wanted to be a peacemaker, I couldn’t take sides? That’s what I was hearing. I thought the Zen Peacemakers should march in Washington, join the big protest against the Chinese invasion of Tibet. If Buddhists didn’t take a stand now, when? I couldn’t convince Bernie. It took me years to begin to understand. When we experience the oneness of life, there are no sides. There is only the one body. From the point of view of this experience of oneness, the peacemaker’s question is not “Who’s right?” but “How do we heal?” That was part of what Bernie was teaching me. There was more.

There’s another side. There’s always another side. To live in the ecstasy of the absolute, of the oneness of life, is not yet enlightenment. There’s also the uniqueness of each moment, of each being, and Bernie told me to hold both at once for it is the uniqueness of each of us that is our greatest commonality. We are all one body and we are all unique. There are no sides and, at the same time, there are. We are not just one body. We are also at war. Even if we understand it as a war with ourselves, a conflict is going on, and there are sides. If we want to make peace, we can’t cling to the absolute bliss. We have to bring warring sides together with all messiness of differences.