Can Yemen retake territory seized by Houthis? as reflected on by Sensei Michael Jinpa
Early this morning at Harborview Point, the tide retreated. It left behind damp sand, broken shells, and stranded kelp. From the porch of the Clear Mind Zen Sanctuary, the water always gives an illusion of ownership. We imagine shipping lanes, private moorings, and who claims passage. Yet the ocean itself acknowledges none of these lines. It simply rises and falls, indifferent to our maps. It carries both our commerce and our grief. Can Yemen truly retake Yemen territory?
Reading reports of military maneuvers along the Red Sea coast in Yemen, one encounters an ancient human impulse. Factions vie to control or reclaim barren coastline. The headline asks whether lost territory can be retaken. From a military or geopolitical standpoint, the question turns on logistics, armaments, and tactical advantage. However, from a contemplative standpoint, the very premise reveals a deep delusion of possession. This delusion fuels our collective suffering. We speak of retaking ground as if the soil itself could ever belong to a banner, a government, or a militia. Ultimately, the earth remains unowned.
The Delusion of Possession: Can We Retake Yemen Territory?
In Zen practice, we return constantly to the truth of impermanence, called anicca. Nothing in this world is static. Therefore, nothing can be permanently seized or held. In my years as a hospice chaplain, I sat by many bedsides. People took their final breaths. I never once heard anyone speak of territory, boundaries, or titles won through conflict. When the body tires and the breath grows thin, illusions of control fall away completely. What remains is only the quality of love offered, the pain endured, and the peace made with what is. Nations and armies, however, operate under a stubborn trance. They believe land can be possessed forever if only enough blood is spilled to secure it.
Behind the strategic maps of the Red Sea coast lie real people. This endless tug of war pulverizes their lives. Coastal fishermen can no longer safely enter the water in their skiffs. Families scavenge for potable water amid rubble. Children grow up knowing the sky only as a source of sudden fire. When territorial ambition takes center stage, human beings are reduced to collateral geography. This reveals the root poison of craving and aversion in action. In grasping desperately for strategic choke points, leaders blind themselves. They ignore the immediate, luminous value of ordinary lives. Political ambition cuts short their days.
Beyond Conflict: Reclaiming Our Shared Sanity
Radical compassion asks us to look at such distant conflicts differently. They are not abstract chess games. Instead, they manifest our shared spiritual sickness. The anxiety driving the conflict in Yemen is the same anxiety that haunts our own hearts. It operates on a quieter scale. This includes the fear of vulnerability, the belief that security comes from domination, and the conviction that safety lies in controlling space around us. Yet true safety has never been established by fortifying a shoreline. Driving an enemy into the desert also fails. History shows us only the endless turning of the wheel. Today’s conqueror becomes tomorrow’s displaced refugee. This cycle generates only more bitterness.
To retake Yemen territory in any true sense, we must first retake our own shared sanity. We must also reclaim our capacity for mutual care. The coast of Yemen, like the rocky bluffs outside my window, will outlast every army. It will outlast every soldier who marches across its sands. The earth cannot be conquered. It can only be desecrated or tended. As long as our collective imagination measures victory by square miles of shoreline seized under fire, we will remain trapped. We create a famine of our own making. We remain unable to see that the ground beneath our feet is already shared by all who breathe upon it.
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