“Combat is so religious and spiritual! Get up each morning and go out to die!” Al Sever, and American Vietnam War veteran who served for five years as a helicopter gunner texted me. For the first time I viscerally encountered the truths I could only access in theory and speculation. Having been deeply moved, for much of life, by the dialogue between God/Krishna and the warrior/prince Arjuna in the heat of battle, in Kurushetra an inner shock reverberated in my spine.

“I served from 1968 to 1972.” Al texted me some time later,”and I died on September 10, 1970 in the Mekong Delta.” Certain he had succumbed to autocorrect, I asked, “you mean you almost died.””No,” he replied, “I died and went into the tunnel to the other side.”

Those of us living under the diverse influences of globalism, and immigration have searched exhaustively through the pages of the Bhagavad Gita and its many interpretations for solace. The man who assassinated Gandhi, and Gandhi himself quoted the great epic – one finding inspiration to kill and one for non-violence. That Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, would quote the Gita when the first bomb exploded in Alamogordo, merely miles from the quaint homes of Los Alamos, New Mexico gives pause.

The simple truth of Al Sever, raised in small town Pennslyvania in the heart of a coal mining country with little luxury for great texts of the world is that the heightened sense of being that arises when one is tasting mortality with every breath holds within it spiritual truths. Now Alan – filled with painful wisdom wanders those battle grounds still pockmarked with bomb craters like the ancient capital, Hue – epic street battle that changed the course of the war, and Cu Chi tunnels where the Americans, their sniffer dogs, bombs, and tunnel rats could not destroy men who crawled through hundreds of miles of tunnel- some twenty meters deep and emerge long enough to kill and disappear again

Yet there is not a hint of malice for the enemy nor the enemy for him. Contrarily there is much respect between former adversaries and little trust in the conveyors of the war in his own country. It was duty. It was dharma. The scars have become grist for inner transformation to both him and the former enemy. Despite eschewing religion, Alan’s is a pilgrimage for meaning, whether in the rubble of the battle ground or in his multiple treks along Camino de Compostela.

Ironically, the capitalists fear of communism that drove the war has resulted in a nation racing to the highest growth rate in the world, fuelled by a powerful cocktail of one-party rule and unbridled entrepreneurism. Today Vietnam accrues the benefit of President Clinton – a draft exempt American –  normalizing the relationship between warring countries, and of Trump – another draft exempt American – whose ire toward China has meant opportunity for Vietnam.

Those of us who live lives anesthetized  by middle class comforts, secure in serving as cogs in faceless bureaucracies and corporations forever metered on quarterly statements are free to contemplate the philosophies with no risk. Those who have faced mortality in every breath do not shed any tears, and stand by in profound silence. To some a guilt ridden silence, to some a silence of ineffable pain, and to some a silence of hope. I wonder if this is what Krishna meant when he said to Arjuna, “Death is as sure for that which is born, as birth is for that which is dead. Therefore grieve not for what is inevitable.”