I walked with Aussie in the deep freeze of 15 degrees and enjoyed it. Twenty-three years ago, when we first arrived in New England, a young landscape artist told me: “Winters are long and hard here, so you have to decide. Get the right clothes and get out in all weather, or stay home for 4-5 months.” I got the clothes, Aussie provides the inducement, and out we go. I especially appreciate it after being cooped up in the house recovering from infection.

Walking on romantic, snowy, bucolic paths, no one in sight, Aussie started sniffing intensely and I saw it: a big splotch of blood where two paths meet, surrounded by red smears and prints of large boots. She found some small things to happily chew on, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her to Leave it. It was surely a deer shot by hunters in the waning days of our hunting season, ending by New Year’s. As of January 1, no more red jackets for her or bright orange hats for me, no more men in fatigues with big guns and trucks.

One deer didn’t make it. But this feels like a long and hard winter, which often means that more will starve as February and even March come round with little or no vegetation for them to eat. There’s more and more beauty in the world, and in its midst are the red blotches of humans and non who just don’t make it, or barely survive.

I read Jon Stewart’s words regarding the killing of Rob and Michelle Reiner, whom he considered close friends. He said that there are lots of thoughts and feelings around that terrible event, which often reduces the Reiners to footnotes in their own tragedy. What to do with children so seriously addicted, carrying so much anger? How close to keep them? How far? The bottom line, he said, was that they were not safe in their own home. They were full of light, they let the darkness in, and the darkness had its way with them.

His words have stayed with me all this time: “They were not safe in their own home.” You can be as liberal-minded and open as you wish, try to love all people, let go of judgment, open your heart—and are you safe in your own home? Are your children safe in the home? In your wish to be expansive and at ease in all situations with all people—are you safe in your own home?

This reflects many of the arguments I’ve had with folks in Israel, who shake their heads at me, informing me that I’m an impractical idealist and reflecting that while I feel safe and secure in New England (as long as I wear red or orange in hunting season), they don’t feel that way in their own home, which casts a whole other light on things.

Bernie never espoused nonviolence, probably one of the few Buddhist teachers who would not stand behind that. There are lots of great teachers who advocate nonviolence full-heartedly, as well as some activists whom I greatly admire, including the Palestinian Sami Awad, currently serving as Co-Director of Nonviolence International from his home in Beit Jallah in the West Bank.

Bernie, of course, loved the metaphor of the one body that we’re all parts of. The toe, the elbow, the molar in back of your mouth, the belly-button—all have their functions and uses, all are different from each other and still make up one body.

But if gangrene sets in, he asked, what then? Do we try to be open to gangrene? Do we say it has a right to live like the rest of us? Faced with an aggressive cancer, do we try to accommodate and reassure? Or at some point do we draw a line and say Stop! Do we take preventive measures? Do we pro-actively defend ourselves? Do we cut off the arm with the gangrene in order to save the body?

He didn’t say that gangrene was bad or an enemy. Gangrene was just gangrene; cancer is just cancer; both are doing their things—and both can consume their host and themselves. He wrote: “For me, delusion is any opinion we are attached to. Opinions are neither right nor wrong, neither enlightened nor deluded. They are simply opinions. Any opinion we are attached to is delusion, and then we ourselves become full of delusion.” That included an attachment to the beautiful concept of non-violence.

There is no reason to hate, fear, or call people or things names. I still remember the great John Wayne accepting an Oscar shortly before he died, referring to “The Big C” which he was being treated for and saying he’d lick it. Cancer is cancer, stroke is stroke, but don’t let your attachment to any concept, no matter how noble or holy, get in the way of dealing with situations with intelligence and compassion.

I feel this way towards Vladimir Putin, who’s so attached to a vision of restoring the great Soviet empire (whether the people in neighboring countries want to join or not) that by now nothing will deter him but a firm and fierce opposition by countries who understand what is at stake. I feel that way towards terrorist groups committing horrific acts of violence in the name of religion, often devastating their own people in the process, be it Hezbollah, Hamas, or even the dictatorial Islamic regime governing Iran, not to mention ISIS or al-Qaeda.

I feel that way towards any fundamentalist group, regardless of religion, that bombs, rapes, and massacres families en masse in the name of their version of God. I admire the Founding Fathers of this country who, back in the late 18^th century, understood the danger of combining temporal power with religious belief and legislated separation between the two. Now, more than ever, they seem to have been way ahead of their time, not because religion isn’t important for civic life but because it’s too important to let fanatics and demagogues dictate its priorities.

By the way, I feel the same way towards any army or government that calls those groups names and labels—terrorists, fanatics, monsters—and then systematically annihilates not just the “evil cells” but much of the body around it.

Bernie told me that years ago he was invited to do a radio talk show in Chicago. The moderator invited a woman who led her own African-American church. They were both in the studio, she looked at him and said: “I know you Zen people, I know you wear black. I don’t talk to people wearing black, those are the people of death.” And she wouldn’t talk to him the entire broadcast.

“There was no talking or listening with her,” he told me. “What could I do?”

“Some moderator,” I said. “What was he thinking, inviting the two of you?”

But that’s our life. Eventually, everyone and everything shows up. And we, too, must show up not with some blind faith and infatuation with some ideal, but with awareness and clarity that don’t conflict with an open heart.