Stefan Schindler – Page 3

A plea for sanity and virtue, Part 1

Posted on April 29, 2019May 5, 2019 by kathiemm

by Stefan Schindler

Part One: Resurrecting the Wisdom and Spirit of Tom Paine, Mark Twain, Emerson, and Kurt Vonnegut

Future historians will write that, with all too few exceptions, the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party is the difference between neurotic and psychotic. They will show that America’s self-destruction was caused primarily by three factors. 1) A lack of viable multi-party pluralism. 2) A lack of authentic education. 3) The failure of the mainstream news media to inform, edify, enlighten.

Almost all mainstream news media in the USA exemplify “fake news,” and this has long been the case. Their primary function is to ignorate, not educate. That’s precisely why, for example, Americans ended up with such viciously criminal presidents as Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Cheney-Bush, and Trump, and why most American citizens remain equally oblivious of the war crimes of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, and Obama.

There is nothing in American history as unpatriotic as the USA Patriot Act. And there is nothing in recent American history as self-defeating as the overturning of the Glass-Steagall Act and the passing of the Citizens United Act. Yet most Americans could neither date nor explain these democracy-shredding events.

Americans are the most historically illiterate citizens in the advanced industrial Western world. They are products of an educational system almost wholly devoted to ignoration. Right-wing religious and neo-conservative radio and television have in recent decades made the problem infinitely worse. Newt Gingrich and his beloved bastard Rupert Murdoch institutionalized the postmodern quantum leap into the vortex of political and news-media sophistry and lies.

Insofar as most teachers, politicians, journalists, intellectuals and scientists fail to emphasize these points, they embody what a modern philosopher calls “bullshit.” A kind of intellectual masturbation which, along with omnipresent advertising, is the curse of the modern world. A self-imposed alienation from the catastrophic lack of relevant insight that dominates what currently passes for “civilization.”

We face a quaternity from hell. Economic apartheid, another Great Depression, ecological apocalypse, and nuclear holocaust. What is to be done?

Commit to a life of voluntary simplicity and lifelong self-education. Demand an end to the American empire. Bring the troops home and have them engage in ecological cleanup, reforestation, infrastructure repair, and the nation-wide building of solar panels, windmills, and recycling centers.

Promote discussion of universal health care and progressive taxation. Challenge the Pentagon budget. Support authentically progressive people and causes. Institute comprehensive and forceful regulation of the banking system. Educate about the nation-wide Savings and Loan institutions destroyed during the Reagan Administration. Become historically informed. Be the change you want to see in the world.

Vote in local as well as national elections, not least in order to preserve sanity and virtue in local school boards.

Monitor your children’s education and teach them what they are not learning in school, especially about modern American history and imperialism since World War Two, and most especially about the wholly unconstitutional and morally depraved House and Senate Un-American Activities Committees in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the not-so-surreptitious efforts of the Republican Party to bring them back to life.

And meanwhile spread the word: What we do to others and the earth we do to ourselves.

Shanti Sena and the Modern Blooming of Ahimsa

Posted on March 21, 2019March 21, 2019 by kathiemm

Gandhi Memorial at the Peace Abbey. Author: Stefan Schindler

by Stefan Schindler

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Kindly join me in appreciating that The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey “family,” near and far, belong to an unofficial organization – Seth would call it an Unfoundation – called Shanti Sena. Shanti Sena means Peace Army. It was founded by Mahatma Gandhi in India in the 1920s.

John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and The Beatles – unofficially and unknowingly, but with great determination – joined Shanti Sena in the 1960s.

So did Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, and Yoko Ono. So did Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama. And Paul Newman, James Baldwin, Joni Mitchell, and Muhammad Ali.

Today, their life and legacy is carried forth by Greta Thunberg, Victor Wallis, Vandana Shiva, and so many others, recalling the courage of conscience of Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, Thomas Merton, and Oscar Romero.

In this sense, then, we – as honored members of the Engaging Peace community and supporters of positive peace – are all students for a democratic society; indeed, for a global village of ecological sanity and egalitarian harmony.

T. S. Eliot ends his poetic masterpiece, “The Wasteland,” with … “Shantih shantih shantih.” And thus, I salute you. For you are bodhisattvas and kalyanamittas.

A bodhisattva is committed to a life of learning and service; and, therefore, to the active practice of “positive peace-making,” rooted in ahimsa (non-violence). Kalyanamitta means: “virtuous friend” and “spiritual companion.”

Let us recognize that the dream that never dies also grows. And let us remember that the dream was never over, because John never ceased to IMAGINE.

Therefore, let us keep the faith, and daily water the seeds of peace with our commitment to justice and universal brother-sisterhood.

The Shanti Sena does indeed endure. And together, with a reverence for Mother Earth and the sacred spark that grew us in the womb, we are – Yes, we are! – creating a Rainbow Bridge to The Peaceable Queendom.

Said the sage: “The reward for service is increased opportunity to serve.”

Om Shanti Om.

Don Stefan

PS: Here is the link to the Peace Abbey website: www.peaceabbey.org.

The Peace Abbey grew out of The Life Experience School. Together, they house The National Registry for Conscientious Objection; present The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award to individuals who embody the spirit of Shanti Sena; promote vegetarianism and animal rights; still hope to have the Memorial Stone for Unknown Civilians Killed in War planted in Arlington National Cemetery; and maintain The Pacifist Memorial Peace Park (in Sherborn), at the center of which is a nine-foot statue of Gandhi, fanning out from which are brick walls displaying bronze plaques in honor of those peacemakers who have received the Courage of Conscience and Champion of Peace awards.

Now, here is the link to a short, thrilling, video-tribute to The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey, created by film-makers at The Radiance Project. ………………………………………………………………………………….

Stefan Schindler is a philosopher, teacher, and poet. He is co-author with Lewis Randa, the founder of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey, of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection. Stefan is a frequent contributor to Engaging Peace; a Board Member of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey; author of The Courage of Conscience Awards for John Lennon and Howard Zinn; and author of Space is Grace, Discoursing with the Gods, The Tao of Socrates, and America’s Indochina Holocaust. His newest book – Buddha’s Political Philosophy – will be published later this year.

The Things We Carry Still. Part II

Posted on February 15, 2019February 14, 2019 by kathiemm

by Stefan Schindler

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.

TOWARD 2020 AND BEYOND

Posted on January 17, 2019January 17, 2019 by kathiemm

by Stefan Schindler

The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love. – William Sloane Coffin

Engaging Peace has a “comments” section that occasionally inspires stimulating dialogue. The editor of Engaging Peace has invited me to share my reflections on recent comments on my posts in, as it were, a main-page post.

I can’t see governments, including our own, fading away anytime soon (as Karl Marx hoped and predicted). Nor do I see in the near future a triumph of the proletariat, on either a national or global basis, establishing a civil civilization – a culture in which swords have been turned into plowshares, misogyny and racism at last relics of the past, and the common good of humanity resting on a firm foundation as cooperation takes precedence over competition. But I am not without hope that something sane, humane, and glorious may emerge from the mess we are now in.

America’s national redemption must come from the people, and their Judeo-Christian-Bodhisattva good-works on a daily and enduring basis. For me, that also means perpetual self-educating, increasingly honest socio-political discourse, and electing leaders brave enough to shatter the status quo. Embracing Thich Nhat Hanh’s notion that “To be is to inter-be,” I believe that love is the heartbeat at the core of our identity, and that, therefore, agape – universal brother-sisterhood – is our prime obligation as being-in-the-world-with-others, which Martin Buber expressed as “I and Thou.”

I believe that educated citizen activism is our best hope for survival. Given what’s left of our endangered democratic choices, that includes an obligation to vote for what is usually and clearly “the lesser evil.” For example, I believe that if Jimmy Carter had had a second term as president, the Reagan-Bush packing of the Supreme Court with Republican ideologues would not have happened; and, therefore, the judicial coup d’état in December of 2000 (the Supreme Court cancellation of further vote-counting, and their unconstitutional appointment of George W. Bush as president) would not have occurred.

I also believe that if Al Gore had assumed his rightful place in the White House, 9/11 would not have happened (with its subsequent multi-trillion dollar wars on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, constituting yet another of America’s “crimes against humanity”).

Also – and of profound importance! – President Gore (having already published his book Earth in the Balance) would have transformed America into a leading light in the world’s long overdue attempt to rectify destruction of the biosphere, and confront, with all due pragmatism and rapidity, the globally increasing dangers of climate change.

In short, who sits in the White House, in Congress, and on the Supreme Court, does make a difference. Yes, the system is rigged; but we can – with intelligence and determination – mitigate the damage, and by voting wisely, perhaps steer the ship of state toward democratic ecosocialism, fiscal pragmatism, economic security, and lifelong health-care and education for all.

Change will not come without intense struggle. We are in a battle for the soul of our nation, and I shudder to think that Thomas Paine and Martin Luther King lived and died in vain. The Bill of Rights is increasingly threatened, but it is hardly obsolete, and it is certainly worth preserving.

I do not know if we will, collectively, survive the next 50 years. I suspect that “civilization” as we now know it will indeed collapse. But I also believe that we have a socio-political obligation to steer a path through the trauma to a brighter global culture for all future generations.

We are blessed to live in a society where freedom of speech still exists, where the right to vote still offers hope, and where protest has not yet become a crime.

So I’ll end here with a potent, poignant, intentionally satiric and ironic quote:

Oh no! [Fox News] has discovered our vast conspiracy to take care of children and save the planet. – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; newly elected Democratic member of the House of Representatives.