Members of Desert Lenten Experience hold a prayer vigil during the Easter period of 1982 at the entrance to the Nevada Test Site. Their sign reads “They will beat their swords into plowshares.” In the public domain. Author: National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office
Will we ever turn our swords into plowshares? The question
haunts us still.
The kings of caprice cast shadows on the wall, and thereby turn us all into victims of their elephantiastical delusions. Plato’s cave . The matrix of manipulation. The self-crucifixion of what passes for civilization. A crime so horrific Thomas Merton calls it “the unspeakable.” Yet John Lennon spoke its polymorphous perversity with scorching clarity: “They torture and scare you for twenty odd years, then they expect you to pick a career.”
It’s been said that memory and imagination are what make
humans human. If that’s true, then what
we are – and what we do – is a function of what we remember and what we
imagine. Difficult indeed to remember
what one has never heard or read. Even
more difficult, then, to imagine what could be.
Jean-Paul Sartre said: “A writer has a place in his
age. Each word has an echo, as does each
silence.”
Faulkner said: “The
past is not dead. It’s not even past.”
Dylan said: “He not busy being born is busy dying.”
Thomas Paine said: “These are the times that try men’s
souls.”
We are all on trial now.
Jeremiah’s prophetic warning was never more relevant: “You shall reap
the whirlwind.”
“The Wasteland” is not just a poem by T.S. Eliot; nor merely a medieval legend, best portrayed in Parsifal’s quest for the Holy Grail. The Wasteland is our fate, unless we change our ways. The Weapons of Mass Destruction that threaten our collective survival are matched in power only by the Weapons of Mass Dysfunction which turn humans into lemmings stampeding toward the cliff.
Chogyam Trungpa invites us to “recollect the sanity we were born with.” To do so is to break the chains of illusion which cripple both memory and imagination.
Martin Luther King said: “We must
choose between nonviolence and nonexistence.”
To be or not to be – the choice is ours. To educate or ignorate – that is the question. Courage of conscience is our only hope.
Do you occasionally feel that you’re about to go crazy? Or think that perhaps you already have? Do you often feel like Don Quixote, vainly tilting at windmills? Yes, probably. But then you remember the meaning of the term Greater Fool. A Greater Fool is one who exhibits greatness in commitment to peace, no matter how foolish that commitment seems in a world intent on going mad.
You remember that you are not alone. You have comrades. Millions of brothers and sisters equally committed to kindness and compassion. They too are Greater Fools, like Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Romero, Tolstoy, Emerson, Tagore. Like Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day, Helen Keller, Vandana Shiva, Amy Goodman, Naomi Klein. Like Martin Luther King and Muhammad Ali. Like Mark Twain, William James, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn. Like Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, George Fox, Matthew Fox, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama. Like Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Susan Sarandon, the Trung sisters of Vietnam. Like Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. John and Robert Kennedy, too. Greater Fools, one and all.
And, yes, The Beatles. “All you need is love,” they sang, and you hum it every day. War without end seems to be the world’s way, and yet you never cease to chant, “Give peace a chance.” The Statue of Liberty weeps. Mother Earth is crucified. Storm clouds darken the horizon. And yet you sing: “Here comes the sun.” Yes, I am you, you are me, and we are all the walrus. We have each other. We keep the faith. We persevere.
Chogyam Trungpa, combining Tibetan Buddhism and Zen, called it Crazy Wisdom. So, yes, it’s OK to be a little crazy, as long as your craziness is that of the Greater Fool. Humanity may elect lunatics for leaders, and go about their business sleepwalking through history. Yet you, at least, are awake. Indeed, you are part of The Great Awakening. You belong to The Global Peace Abbey. It welcomes all and has no walls. We are warriors for peace, on the cutting edge of evolution. There is no greater satisfaction, no greater joy, no greater service.
So rejoice, my friend. The angels sing your praises, and lend you unconditional support. The reward for service is increased opportunity to serve.
An Illustration of the Golden Rule by Norman Rockwell used as the cover of the April 1, 1961 edition of the Saturday Evening Post. In the public domain.
by Stefan Schindler
The failure of Judaism, Christianity and Islam to embody their ownmost message of peace partly contributes to the increasing appeal of Buddhism in today’s postmodern war-torn world. Also, there is something absurd – counterproductive, self-defeating, and morally obscene – about the profit motive that is the engine of war. We must put a stop to that engine, before it puts a catastrophic stop to us all.
Transforming swords into plowshares, peace is the fertile soil for the world our children deserve; where schools are gardens of learning and the streets are daily bedecked with festivals, fairs, and creative arts; where cooperation has primacy over competition; where truth and goodness combine to produce beauty for both young and old.
Such is the Buddhist social democratic vision for a peaceable kingdom, offered to the world in what the Dalai Lama calls “a common religion of kindness.” Practical; peaceful; communal. Guided by Socratic dialogue and debate; where “virtue is pursuit of virtue.” Guided by what Thomas Paine called “common sense” and “the rights of man.”
To recall what Chogyam Trungpa calls “the sanity we were born with,” is to embrace voluntary simplicity, lifelong learning, and compassionate service.
It is to take the heart of the Torah – the Golden Rule – and make it the guiding light of an awakening culture: a culture committed to an ethic of universal brother-sisterhood.
It is to recognize that to be is to interbe. That individual authenticity is a function of learning, self-discovery, creative evolution, and service to community.
The word “Buddha” means “awake.” James Joyce daily prayed that he “awaken from the nightmare of history.” Social democratic Buddhism – also called Engaged Buddhism – shows a path out of Plato’s cave.
Buddha’s “Eightfold Path” includes “right vocation.” Right vocation exhibits right thinking, right speaking, right intention, right action – for all of which, the guiding maxim is: “Do no harm.” Buddhism is therapeutic; and the world is much in need of healing.
Was it merely coincidence that the Spirit of The Sixties combined with the introduction of Buddhism to the West to plant the seeds of peace and love which still remain our best hope for a global civilization rooted in creative evolution?
Echoing the saints and sages of the ages, and their mythic tales of archetypes, Jean Houston forty years ago invited us to embrace the Aquarian challenge of “the possible human.” She invoked William Blake; and she embodied the pioneering spirit of Joseph Campbell, Buckminster Fuller, and Teilhard de Chardin.
Today, Richard Oxenberg invokes the spirit of John Lennon when he asks us to imagine “meanings beyond words to speak … where divinity graces humanity … agapic God of a thousand names and no adequate name … where the holy is healing and wholeness.”
Freedom from is freedom for. The enlightenment journey begins with disengagement from society’s Weapons of Mass Dysfunction, resounding through the land in what Howard Zinn called “declarations of independence.”
The enlightenment journey proceeds along what Carlos Castaneda calls “a path with heart.”
The enlightenment journey opens to the realization that the meaning of life is learning and service.
The two wings of Buddhism are wisdom and compassion. Wisdom and compassion are the twin roots of the tree of life of a culture that is civil, civilized, and awake.
Co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a recipient of The Boston Baha’i Peace Award, and a Trustee of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey Foundation, Dr. Stefan Schindlerreceived his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College, worked one summer in a nature preserve, lived in a Zen temple for a year, did the pilot’s voice in a claymation video of St. Exupery’s The Little Prince, acted in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and performed as a musical poet in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City. He also wrote The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Awards for Howard Zinn and John Lennon. He is now semi-retired and living in Salem, Massachusetts. His books include The Tao of Socrates, America’s Indochina Holocaust, Discoursing with the Gods, and Space is Grace; his forthcoming book is Buddha’s Political Philosophy.
Dalai Lama in Zurich, April 10, 2010. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author: Roland Zh.
by Stefan Schindler
There is now clearly a battle for the soul of civilization. Civility is losing, but there is still hope. The battle might be titled: “The Dalai Lama versus The New World Disorder.”
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama – spiritual leader of Tibet, and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize – is the most famous person on the planet. Not since Muhammad Ali has a single individual been so recognized and admired on every continent as a global voice for sanity, equality, and peace.
The Dali Lama offers the world “a common religion of kindness.” His offer is urgent because our survival depends on awakening from – in James Joyce’s all too apt depiction – “the nightmare of history.” The Dalai Lama reminds us that Martin Luther King was right: “Wealth, poverty, racism, and war – these four always go together.” That means so does their solution. Meanwhile, religion is all too often used as a shibboleth upon which to hang justifications for violence.
So, as the world becomes just too absurd, more people realize: It is better to swim against the current than to be swept over a cliff. The Dalai Lama represents a Renaissance of The Renaissance. A reawakening to life’s enchanting beauty, with peace as the only sure foundation for creative evolution.
The word Buddha means “awake.” Tenzin Gyatso is awake to Buddhist common sense. Enlightened self-interest is taking care of each other and the planet.
Compassion is the path to wisdom, and the fruit of wisdom.
Wisdom and compassion – the “two wings” of Buddhism – find expression in Buckminster Fuller’s observation: “There are no passengers on spaceship earth; we are all members of the crew.” Hence Martin Luther King again: “We must choose between non-violence and non-existence.”
How is it that Tenzin Gyatso, one of the world’s most broken-hearted individuals, is also one of the world’s most equanimitous and cheerful? The answer is partly that Buddhism always involves paradox, and partly that “awakening” is rooted in love-wisdom as the “strong force” of the universe.
Tibetan sage Chogyam Trungpa said: “Buddhism is all about recollecting the sanity we were born with.” That sanity is the jewel in the lotus at the heart of every human; it rings the bell of truth; and it sings with joy and creativity.
The battle for the soul of civilization appears to be reaching a breaking point. Those in control of The New World Disorder – the super-rich, directing the levers of power – consolidate their wealth with armed force. Economic apartheid is the world’s great divide. Modern industrial culture – profit-driven business as usual – cannot survive the strain.
Mike Marqusee, author of astute biographies of Muhammad Ali and Bob Dylan, was prescient: “The battles of the Sixties may someday come to seem merely a skirmish in a war whose real dimensions we have yet to comprehend.”
Must the absurdity of modernity be nothing more than a tragic opera ending in a sea of blood? No, says a global mind change at work, demanding sanity and reform.
The Dalai Lama is a symbol for a great awakening. His message embodies the heart of the Torah; a social gospel of The Golden Rule.
Exiled by Chinese conquistadores from his native Tibet, Tenzin Gyatso offers the world a timely version of Buddha’s political philosophy. That philosophy has edifying overlaps with Socrates, Taoism, Thomas Merton, and social democracy. Worth investigating, don’t you think?
An Illustration of the Golden Rule by Norman Rockwell used as the cover of the April 1, 1961 edition of the Saturday Evening Post. In the public domain.