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| all paintings by Mayumi Oda 💛 |
When American scientists split the atom, something terrible happened to us as humans, We violated the integrity of nature and invaded God’s domain. When an atomic bomb drops, it wipes out everything that anyone can care about. It destroys, men, women, children, and animals. It poisons soil, sky, rivers, and oceans for generations. It demolished buildings, homes, and even entire cities, and tears at the flesh of our hearts, minds and souls. The violence has affected and infected us ever since the Manhattan Project during World War II unleashed these gods of war and their deadly by-products, such as plutonium. Gaining the power of the gods, we left a lethal legacy to our children and descendants.* ~Mayumi Oda
The buzz around the film, Oppenheimer leaves a bitter, ill-at-ease feeling in my mouth and stomach. A celebration of a film lauded as a “brilliant, impressive achievement” feels disingenuous, incomplete.
I experience painful, bitter memories when I see or hear the names Manhattan Project, Little Boy, or Enola Gay.
It’s strange to laud the creation and creator of the atomic bomb. I was educated in public school and conditioned to disassociate the connection between the development of the atomic bomb and the destruction of People, Land, literal disappearance of Animals, Plants, Minerals. Sometimes only their shadows remained burned into the earth. Two hundred thousand people were annihilated from two bombs. Simultaneously, my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles were considered enemies of the state and incarcerated, living on desolate land behind barbed wire, soldiers pointing their weapons at them from guard towers, toward my people.
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| Hiroshima Peace Memorial |
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| Mayumi Oda |
The opening words by Mayumi Oda resound in a place deep in my heart. I know we are related through spirit and land; “When American scientists split the atom something terrible happened to us as humans, …the violence has affected and infected us.” Something terrible did happen.
Mayumi Oda (b. 1941) is an artist activist, born in Japan. She experienced the aftermath of the atomic bomb and became an activist engaged in social action for nuclear nonproliferation through painting and Buddhist practice.
We are still living with a desire for power over, of retaliation, retribution, domination. Mayumi Oda's art depicts fierce compassion and a desire to nurture, preserve life and our planet for future generations. She declares that patriarchal power “requires secrecy and control of information.”Oda’s power through art is a living meditation of freedom, space, vitality, openness, protection, blessing, abundance, and reciprocity. https://mayumioda.net/
We continue not only to develop and sell weapons of mass destruction and live with the toxicity for many generations for our plant, animal and human descendants. The disaster at Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant in 2011 released radiative toxins in the water, air, ocean, earth impacting sentient beings, seen and unseen, born and yet to be born. We are not separate.
We think we are separate. We are not separate from the innocent killed in Gaza, hostages held, hospitals targeted and destroyed, intentional starvation of sentient beings, death and displacement of people in Ukraine, Myanmar, Democratic Republic of Congo and much more suffering.
As a child when I learned about the atomic bombs dropped and detonated I was ill-equipped to understand the full weight of destruction. I felt it in my body, in the stomach aches of my young self, the pain of being called an enemy. When teachers and adults glossed over the atomic bomb with names like “little boy” and “fat man” they parroted the line,“it ended the war” without a pause or discussion of the hundreds of thousands of deaths, cancer, congenital disorders. I felt the tension in my body
Today there are advances in neuroscience, genetics and psychology to name and begin to understand trauma across generations. Untended trauma made it feel almost impossible to talk about incarceration in school, at home, with classmates. I remember being crystal clear as a young kid; my people were locked up in concentration camps.
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I recognize that the conditions of war reverberate somatically in my how my family relates to being descendants of those incarcerated during WWII (Tule Lake and Gila River) while having ancestors and living relatives in Hiroshima and near Nagasaki. As a child I didn’t have a place for the confusion, disbelief that people destroy other people, that so-called leaders allow and order annihilation. This is partly why untended grief, sadness, rage shows up now.
How will children and young ones today process their confusion and disbelief?
The buzz around the film, Oppenheimer irritates me and wakes up something that's been asleep. I've been asleep as part of a culture unskilled to talk about hard things without causing more harm. Through writing and direct action, I am choosing not to ignore, deny, push away, bypass the hard truths. We are really adept at glossing over traumatic experiences, dusting ourselves off, negating, whitewashing terror. I want to get better at recovering, healing and thriving. I want to continue to learn and grow to be more skillful to help children, young and old hearts struggling to process.
We rarely linger long enough, become solid enough, still enough to metabolize grief, loss, to fully recover and heal. I believe we miss an opportunity to wake up when something terrible is happening. We can learn ways to be more skillful with awareness of what's happening inside and all around us. I continue to share ways that mindfulness has helped to settle in stillness, to metabolize feelings and strong emotions through resiliency tools and toys to process and rejuvenate.
When something terrible happens, I believe something happens to our cells where spirit resides. Our ancestors knew how to process loss, death, grief through rituals, drumming, prayer, chanting, fire ceremony, and incense offerings. Mother Earth knows how to process and rejuvenate.
I’m here to reclaim my culture and to encourage us to reclaim our cultures that have been dormant, not lost.
I feel a well of deep medicine by retracing and bringing back my indigenous traditions as a part of recovering and healing.
From there I have the capacity to look more deeply, take responsibility to learn more truths of my heritage, ancestors, that have been hidden, denied, forgotten. I can see we were oppressors. I can see we are victims and persecutors in the long lineage of time. I am unlearning the ways I have been conditioned to bypass war, colonization, imperialism.
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| Dogen, by Kazuaki Tanahashi |
When Eihei Dogen, poet, philosopher monk was asked what he brought back after three years of deep spiritual training bringing Zen from China to Japan, he responded, a tender heart.*
I embrace the practice of honing my heart to be more attuned, more tender to the world. I haven’t yet had three years to go into deep spiritual training. I do have this life, perhaps many lifetimes to cultivate a tender heart.
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| Plum Village, France |
In a world that sometimes feels hostile to tenderness, I’ll continue to ponder, contemplate, write what I’m seeing, feeling, unearthing, as a tender earthling. Thich Nhat Hanh says, every feeling is a child, what a beautiful phrase to see the child in our feelings, to remember to tend to our feelings. To tend in such a way to begin healing.
I'm taking care and working through the strong feelings. Surprisingly, a film helped me to recover a sense of solidity and solidarity with humanity and reminded me of our intricate web of interconnection. intentionally vulnerable will continue, until then, please take good care of your tender heart.
*One Hand Clapping Zen Stories For All Ages, introduction
* Sarasvati's Gift Autobiography of Mayumi Oda, Artist Activist and Modern Buddhist Revolutionary
