I Grow Up

Gandhi and Nehru:
Politically Opposed
but in harmony of purpose.

Whatever joy there is in this world

All comes from desiring others to be happy.

And whatever suffering there is in this world

All comes from desiring myself to be happy.

SHANTADEVA

I don’t mean to have this post to be pontifications extolling others to do as I say but to never admit what I actually do. In saying this it is also important that this blog isn’t filled with superficial mea culpas… or self-deprecating manifestation of false humility, if you please. It is the truth that displaces error… it is doubt that is expelled by faith… it is hope that exiles doubt... and it is the spirit of forgiveness that opens the doors that once seemed shut to me. In other words, I grow up.

Another subject related to this one:

I see people angry at “the system’ and willing to stand in the streets in protest. Ironically, I agree with most of what they see as abuses that need correction.  But, after close examination of history, it can be seen that when the driving force behind these protests is usually (as it was in my own case) an immature outburst of adolescent emotion, they will end in disillusionment and frustration. Or worse yet, if they succeed, these protests can end in double the oppression of a worse tyranny than that which provoked the original protests (I.e., as in Iran of the mullahs or the Egypt evolving into that of the Muslim Brotherhood).

The spiritual base I am compelled to operate from is no longer protest against evil nor can it be blind acceptance of it. It is a proactive attitude that transfers adolescent emotional contempt for authority towards a productive and creative cohesion of purpose. This is the attitude that the Dali Lama promotes against a far more demonic oppression of the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Of course, it appears that his efforts have failed because the spiritual Shangri-La at the top of the world has become a Chinese whorehouse. But evolutionary processes are at work here that sent Tibetan monks to flee to the West, thus transforming the spiritual dialogue in this country in a most powerful and positive manner. Who is so arrogant they can say they know how it will end? Not I, but all of us can feel in our hearts that occupying the streets and merely blocking traffic without a direction or purpose can not be the answer.

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