Tag: John Lennon

ODE TO THE HUMBLE-KING

Posted on by kathiemm
Martin Luther King nominating Thich Nhat Hanh for the
Nobel Peace Prize.In the public domain.

By Stefan Schindler

Note from Kathie MM: Today, tragically, is the 50th anniversary   of the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., whose courageous leadership on behalf of peace and social justice has been receiving renewed attention this year on this blog and elsewhere. Today, please immerse yourself in this new ode to the  King from Stefan Schindler.

                    ODE TO THE HUMBLE-KING

“Wealth, poverty, racism, and war. These four

always go together,” said Martin Luther King.

His words ring with urgency and truth,

as we applaud the awakening of youth

from the nightmare of parents in the voting booth

choosing more of the same: carnival of greed,

devoid of shame; goes by the name “land of the free,

home of the brave,” but is in fact Plato’s cave.

“He not busy being born is busy dying,” said Dylan.

And yet, “toy guns that spark” will never kill

the “flesh-colored Christ that glows in the dark”

who still teaches compassion. “There are no passengers

on spaceship earth,” said Buckminster Fuller.

“We are all members of the crew.” This is something

John and Robert Kennedy knew. John Lennon too.

Meanwhile, the dream … is not over. We continue to …

Imagine: a Peaceable Kingdom on earth, free of strife;

where music … is the medicine of life.

These are, indeed, “times that try men’s souls,”

Thomas Paine declared, not really all that long ago,

when the country was young, and sought to be free

from the oppressive grip of tyranny. And now it falls

upon you and me to keep the faith, shine the light;

keep the fires of peace and justice shining bright

for all to see; as Buddha did on Eagle’s Peak.

Yes, we seek: the triumph and the glory of The Good:

planetary peace at last, in a spirit of … universal …

brother-sisterhood. I believe we can; I believe we will;

inspired by the life of Martin Luther King, whose words

still sing, and legacy still … shines like the sun.

You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.

Spreading, now, the Golden Fleece upon the beach

that is the shore to the dream come true, we know who

carried the torch and lit The Way. Each day,

what a sight! Precious, with beauty and delight.

In the sacred hoop of the Peace Abbey School

of Life Experience, gathered in Unitarian ring,

we celebrate Gaia, Gandhi, Romero,

and remain inspired by … the spirit of

Martin Luther King.

 

Stefan Schindler; Peace Abbey Cottage Celebration of the Life and Legacy of  Martin Luther King; The Life Experience School; Millis, Massachusetts; April 4, 2018.

Stefan is 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 Schindler received 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.

 

 

Sabbath Satori

Posted on by kathiemm
Stefan and John.
author: Lewis Randa, Life Experience School.

by Stefan Schindler

“Do we want to preserve the traditions – the history, prayers, rituals, and faith – which make Judaism distinctive, or do we want to become just a bunch of ethicists?” An ethicist advocates virtue, and the rabbi’s question was rhetorical. Now stay with me here; this is not complex.

Sabbath is the Hebrew holy day, beginning on Friday evening and extending through Saturday. Satori is a Japanese Buddhist word for enlightenment. One Saturday morning long ago, when I was still a child and attending a religious instruction class at our local temple, I had a mini-enlightenment.

I was only 12, and I found the Sabbath morning class inspirational. It was intellectually stimulating in a way that school was not. That morning, the rabbi’s question struck a chord. The name of that chord is irony. A Jewish education is ironic because, at its best, it’s Socratic: it teaches one to doubt and inquire. The same is true of Buddhism.

I was too shy to voice my response to the rabbi’s challenge; besides, he was on a roll. But I have always remembered that moment. Adding a retrospective flavor, here’s what I thought:

Although my mother was a Christian, she converted to Judaism to please my father. During the process of her conversion, my mother asked the rabbi if there was a conflict in being both Christian and Jewish. She wanted to convert, but she also wanted to keep her Christian values.

The rabbi responded that ethics is the heart of the Torah; therefore, at the deepest, most important level, there is no conflict. He told the story of the Hebrew sage who was asked to summarize the Torah, standing on one leg. So the sage stood on one leg and replied very simply: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

And so, dear rabbi, on this glorious Sabbath morning for which I do give thanks, kindly allow me to say: I would much rather have a world of ethicists, committed to peace and the Golden Rule, than a world of religious rivalry and strife. Religious distinctiveness has its beauty, but it also contributes, tragically, to what Hegel calls “the slaughter-bench of history.”

I would, therefore, gladly abandon all religious difference in favor of – and here comes irony again – a postreligious world committed to what the Dalai Lama calls “a common religion of kindness.”

After all, isn’t what all religions have in common more important than how they differ?

And at the heart of all religions, is there not a common urge, prayer, and path to the Peaceable Kingdom on earth?

 

Socrates, Buddha, and Thomas Paine

Posted on by kathiemm
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 Schindler received 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.

 

Buddhist Social Democracy, Part 2

Posted on by kathiemm

by Stefan Schindler

In Buddha’s worldview, “each life is precious, endowed with freedom and opportunity.” The Buddhist social democratic path to peace offers widespread time and place for deconditioning.

Buddha says the institutions of society ought to serve schools, not the other way around.

Buddha’s politics entail an educational revolution, inspired by Whitehead’s maxim: “Boring teachers should be brought to trial for the murder of young souls.”

The heart of Buddhism is the fusion of wisdom and compassion: the enlightenment adventure, individually and socially. This includes reverence for language, and constant cultivation of the critical thinking skills necessary to combat sophistry in all its nefarious forms.

Buddha understood the perverse impact of sophistry on the welfare of the multitude. Socrates did too, saying at his trial that, actually, Athens was on trial. Socrates today would say King’s quaternity includes a fifth: “Wealth, poverty, racism, war, and sophistry always go together; and we cannot solve one without solving the others.”

As political discourse becomes just another form of the curse of advertising, the more a society sinks to what Thomas Hobbes called “the war of all against all.”

Socrates was condemned to death for his battle against the sophists. In modern America, the brightest lights of two generations – John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and John Lennon – were assassinated.

A national pedagogy of Socratic-Buddhist insight – with beneficent influence on the world – could slow contemporary America’s repeat of the self-engendered social implosion of classical Athens’ march of folly.

All the wars in the world are sophistically engendered, sustained by citizens seduced by schools and news-media that ignorate instead of edify.

Buddha’s emphasis on respect for language – and for knowing relevant information – is part of his therapeutic approach to healing the world’s woes. “Right speech” is another spoke on Buddha’s eightfold Dharmachakra.

Buddha’s political vision is heart-centered rationality, where the power of the state and all social institutions promote communal well-being. Communal well-being includes each individual’s freedom for self-discovery and creative evolution. Buddha’s politics are educational, pragmatic, organic. A community is a web of life.

The word Buddha means awake. Buddhist social democracy neither intends nor promotes religious conversion.

Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, daily declares he is a socialist, while saying also that the point is not to become a Buddhist but awake. He urges “a common religion of kindness.”

Buddhist social democracy blends holistic education, egalitarian economics, and a culture-wide primacy of cooperation over competition. Pope Francis – igniting a Renaissance humanism to redeem our spirit – echoes the Dalai Lama’s call to awakening.

If humans are walking question marks – and if philosophy is the journey from the love of wisdom to the wisdom of love – then this is what Buddhism teaches, and what the sangha practices.

Groucho Marx said: “Blessed are the cracked, for they will let in the light.”

Now here’s a Kenneth Patchen poem.

The scene of the crime which is also known as civilized living.

Until the Sun’s Wound is healed in our own hearts.

Love (which includes poetry) is to science

as the free and beautiful catchings of a child are

to the vile and unreturning throes of the hangman.

A feeling of passionate mercy. The rest doesn’t matter a damn!

                                                                                           Hallelujah Anyway