Flight 93 Memorial

Seen here, the 40 panels each with a name of one of the people on the flight. The slate walkway corresponds to the flight path which begins at the upper part of the memorial.

On the final day of my long motorcycle ride back from Colorado to New York I made a slight detour to visit the Flight 93 Memorial in Pennsylvania. This is the site where the fourth plane on 9/11/01 was brought down by the passengers to keep it from crashing into the White House or Congress.

The site was a former strip mine and the National Park Service completely transformed it into a large contemplative park. The white wall you see in the image is the wall of names. Only 40 people (including the crew) were on this flight so there are 40 panels. As is also the case at the WTC memorial, the names of the terrorists themselves are not included. Personally, I also see them as victims, of another sort.

Memorials of this sort can serve a vital function. Of course, the nature of this memorial is paying tribute to the passengers who certainly acted heroically in sacrificing their lives presumably to save hundreds of others. And naturally much of the memorial includes highly patriotic elements.

I thought of the story in the Buddhist tradition of the Bodhisattva who sacrifices himself by killing a pirate about to kill a large number of passengers on a ship. He took the "karmic hit." Although laudable, it is still a subpar outcome in the Buddhist sense: ideally the Bodhisattva would have been able to share the Dharma with the pirate and both would have awakened in this lifetime. That was not possible, so he choose the lesser of two evils at his own peril.

For me, what comes up, as it did on the day itself, is the question: why did these terrorists hate us? Of course, religious fanaticism was part of it, but not the whole story. Our nation's response at the time was to meet hate with war. I am not sure it got us very far, nor did it vindicate those who died.

From the Buddha's teachings in the Dhamapada: For never is hatred settled by hate, it’s only settled by love: this is an ancient law.

Sadly, this does not often seem to be the American way. But we must keep trying because there is no other way.