Densho Digital Archive - Margaret Stanicci Interview (denshovh-smargaret-01-0023)

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KP: Can I just ask one question about this part of your life? You're trying to, well, put it back in context, first Japan attacks your county.

MS: Uh-huh.

KP: 'Cause you're an American. And then your country decides you're the enemy, 'cause you're Japanese.

MS: That's true.

KP: And now you're trying to, it sounds like you're trying to figure out how that comes together. I mean, how did you relate the Zen with, you know, the obvious war atrocities of Japan with, I mean, how, were you able to put any of this together and try to understand what that was about?

MS: Well, only in the larger context. It's not in terms of specifics. The deep part of Zen is you really go into what they call the silence or the void or something. But it's really, and then it's been translated "nothing," you know, "nothingness." But it isn't nothingness. It's "no-thing-ness." It's "no-thing." What it is is energy. It's pure energy. And it's energy of different qualities. It's almost like you have spectrum after spectrum of energy. And so, and then each of those have qualities. So, and a lot of the, I think in terms of religions, if you go way back in their religion, you get, you get that. But, so, and that's where the universality of the religions comes, I think. Which is something I'm kind of pursuing now actually. So, in a very interesting way. But in terms of... there didn't, I don't think there had to be any... see, you don't have to, like analytically or rationally... some things you cannot understand rationally, you see. As a matter of fact, quantum really comes much closer, yes. That was the first thing I realized in terms of quantum. Which I had to work on because it's like, okay they had both that either/or bit. And it had to be, it's not either this or that. Well, we had been taught right along Aristotelian "either/or." And yet now we were asked to say, "Oh no, it's not either/or, it's both and." And how are you gonna do that? So in my life as things came, you automatically are doing this either/or bit. And I said, okay, let's see how we can do it without the either/or, if they're both "and." And you have to work a different way. Yeah, it's a very different way.

KP: And that helped you understand how Japan and America came at odds and how you came in the middle of that, do you think?

MS: In a sense it's like, no, you don't have to anymore. [Laughs] You don't have to anymore. It's just...

KP: It just happened.

MS: Well, it's like, it makes sense in a much, much larger context. It's, it's ... oh, it's like the, in the evolution of an individual, evolution of a nation, and evolution of a larger grouping, and then eventually the evolution of a total world, you say. And you all go through your growing stages. Every one of 'em has to go through the growing stages. And they haven't, we have not arrived there yet. And so, but they're struggling toward it and I think they're steps that had made toward it, so...