The Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan

There is a beautiful saying from Sicily. It goes something like this:

"Troubled waters offer no reflection."

That is a very true saying, and quite apropos about our world. I was recently told by someone who just seemed to be on top of everything that the reason for it was to avoid thinking about anything else. When you stay busy, there is no time to think about anything, no time to reflect. Perhaps the same goes with troubled times, and I am not sure whether it is true that troubled times prevent clearer thoughts and reflection, or if a lack of such thoughts provide troubled times. It seems a question similar to wondering if the chicken or the egg came first. There really is no answer, it seems.

There surely exists no shortage of tragedies stemming from human stupidity to write about. We see it everywhere, and the results of our world situation presently speaks of the blindness and stupidity and excesses and unbounded greed of the stupidest and most arrogant among us, who always seem to have too much power and influence. They always seem to get their way, blessed with this strange and unique ability, and never as fully as when times are not normal. Again, take a look around the world right now. These hardly feel like normal times, have not felt like normal times for a while now (this is just my take on it, admittedly). People are predicting the end of the world, more extremes in both religion and politics, and more extreme attitudes by average, everyday people, has made life here less livable. Again, just my own opinion, but I certainly do not feel alone in thinking this.

These thoughts have entered my mind because of a beautiful book that I just finished recently, Khaled Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns", which I wrote a review on in an earlier blog. The story takes place in and focuses on Afghanistan, from the 1950's through to the Soviet invasion, to the days of factional fighting among power hungry warlords that immediately followed, through the years of the Taliban, and finally, post-invasion Afghanistan's struggle to return to some semblance of normality. Hosseini created wonderful characters that represented the past and the present for men, women, and children, one male and one female for each. These characters came into contact and conflict, with one another, but the tale is, ultimately, a tale of hope, although it certainly does not avoid tragedy.

I am writing about these gigantic statues that were recently destroyed by the Taliban during their reign in Afghanistan, mostly because of the focus that Khaled Hosseini gave to this unfortunate incident in his brilliant A Thousand Splendid Suns", which I wrote a review about earlier this month.

It seemed just fascinating that these statues carved into the side of a mountain, and dating back many centuries, had towered over the Bamiyan Valley for so long, and were destroyed by such a temporary, but obviously extreme, regime. A Taliban regime that felt itself the true representatives of a "purer" form of Islam, and enforced it over the land that they briefly ruled with an iron first. In the process, priceless works of art and artifacts of substantial historical value were desecrated and destroyed at their hands, on their watch, and all because of some ideological idiocy and extremity, to say nothing of the toll it took on the people who lived under such ruthless and militant stupidity. The Taliban will likely be placed among some of the more notorious regimes in modern history as among the most extreme and arrogant of regimes. They might not have had death camps or millions dead at their hands, but the brutality with which they ruled will not be soon forgotten. Unfortunately, they never seem to go away, either, and they remain active even as I write this.

Yet, in some respects, it may even be fitting. After all, Buddhists, and Eastern religions in general, place great emphasis on detachment. Sooner or later, these gigantic statues were going to crumble to the ground, much like sooner or later, the mind that is thinking this piece, and the fingers that are typing these characters to eyes that are reading it, will all eventually be deadened. Eventually, we will all find our way to rejoining Earth, and the cycle of life. In that respect, the Bamiyan Buddhas that were destroyed only met what would have been their ultimate fate.

In fact, it reminds me of the Tibetan Buddhist practice of making delicate sand paintings, often worked on for hours, if not perhaps days, at a time, and then deliberately destroyed by the very hands that created them, to serve as a reminder of the impermanence of all things. There is a certain beauty to this practice, although I am not entirely sure that the comparison to the desecration of these statues quite fits. That said, done is done, and the statues that had stood wars and voyagers and weather and all else could not stand the arrogance that swept over that country during a period of extreme instability that hit it following the Soviet invasion. Who is responsible? The easy answer, of course, would be the Taliban, and indeed, they are primarily the ones to blame. But is that it? A simple, cut and dry answer like that would suffice, or is there more blame to go around? Can we blame the Soviets/Russians, who invaded the country and set in motion the chain of events that not only led to the instability that brought about the Taliban, but set up a climate that allowed Afghanistan to have camps that trained terrorists, and thus had a hand to play in the September 11^th attacks, which itself set about a chain of events that set yet another war up in a land that has really known nothing but war since that initial Soviet invasion more than thirty years ago? Maybe the United States had a role to play, because the strategy was to kind of look the other way when the Soviets showed signs of invading, which was a political strategy of almost encouraging them, luring them into what they knew would be a trap that would, ultimately, help lead to the Soviet Empire's demise? All it cost were the arms and legs of many Afghani children, and many Afghani lives disrupted and lost, in a land half the world away. Was it worth it? Or how America and other Western powers gave richly of their arms to the Mujahideen, who successfully fought off the big, bad, invading Soviet forces, only to turn these weapons on their own people once the Soviets were gone, yet they gave next to nothing when the time came to actually rebuilding the country, to trying to restore some semblance of stability and progress. Can Americans then be blamed for their selfishness in supporting the Afghani war effort in order to help bolster their claims of their own greatness, to claim "We won the Cold War!" while ignoring everything else? Can a legitimate argument not be made, then, that the United States had a hand to play in it's own future tragedy of September 11^th many years later, which was then utilized to inflict more tragedy and destruction on Afghanistan and, later on, in Iraq?

A complicated web of tragedies it was, much like the many strands of cobwebs that have risen the world over, where the intelligence, thoughtfulness, and the responsibility of good people has been largely abandoned, and allowed thinking to those who are incapable, and allowed actions by those who cannot be trusted to act in a responsible manner. These are the complicated web of tragedies that we are now paying the price for the world over, and perhaps people dream of some impending apocalypse, real reflection on the reasons why this world seems to shitty and hopeless right at the moment is just too much for most people. Like that person told me, let's just keep busy with things, and become addicted, so we do not actually have to stop and think about anything. Let's become workaholics, or alcoholics. Let's grab as much material wealth as possible to fill and decorate the walls of our homes that both hide us from the world, and in which we never have to really see the world as it is beyond our own lives. Let's allow our responsible leaders and the corporations that have these supposedly elected leaders in their pockets, to destabilize even more of the world so that they can extend the "freedom" of free markets, to plunder and rape the land and strip it of it's wonderful, but limited, natural resources. All because we are too stupid and arrogant and short-sighted to see beyond our own desires. All because we do not want to be bothered to think about the very real possibility that we are choking off future life as we know it, in order to live lifestyles that we probably know to be unsustainable in the long run. The Taliban may have been monumentally stupid and arrogant, but really, is the American government any better? At least the extent of the damage that the Taliban was responsible for hardly went beyond Afghanistan's borders. Can we say the same?

Yet, I digress. Indeed, the Taliban was a horrible chapter in human history, not just the history of one country. It is also an argument against not having a strict separation of church and state, I would think. The Taliban oppressed woman, destroyed these priceless items of their own country's history and cultural traditions, forced people who were not Muslims to wear yellow identifying markers. None of those are actions of a reasonable mindset. Whoever played a part in the responsibility, or the irresponsibility, rather, of allowing a regime like the Taliban to come into power, it ultimately did come to power, and the arrogance and stupidity of these men (and they were exclusively men in the Taliban), once in power, serves as an embarrassment to all of humanity.

Yes, all things must pass. The only permanent thing in this world is change. Tibetan Buddhists understand this better than most, and their sand paintings or etchings, if you will, illustrate this. Nothing lasts forever, and eventually, all things turn to dust. That includes people. As that song by Kansas goes, "All we are is dust in the wind".

It is just unfortunate that such a narrow-minded and short-sighted regime would have hastened the process so much, and to the detriment of us all, really. The Bamiyan Buddhas have largely crumbled and fallen to dust now, where they lay at the feet of the cliffs that they used to dominate, a testament to human stupidity and unnecessary tragedy now, rather than the human accomplishment and drive for enlightenment that they had once represented when they had stood. So, too, has the Taliban, who were gone when the dust finally settled in Afghanistan back in 2001, although they do seem to be making a comeback.

If you are interested, here is a decent piece on the history of these gigantic Buddha statues that once were, but are no more:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/archaeology/2001-03-22-afghan-buddhas.htm