Three Perfect Candidates: Political Pacifism

I sat three periods of zazen this morning. I needed that, considering the amount of controversy that has passed in front of me this week. Some of it started when my long-time friend of 49 years, Miss S., called Rick Santorum an asshole. My zen teacher calls us all buddha. How can someone be buddha and an asshole? If that wasn't bad enough, my best commenter-to-my-blog-friend, Kate, said that asshole is pretty tame. She went on to say what might have a little more impact.

I think ‘demonizing’ goes more like, “He is too evil to rot in hell for all eternity. He is Cain, cursed to walk the earth until the end of time. The only reason he looks relatively young is because he eats aborted baby dumplings all the time. If he were Buddhist, he could look forward to being reborn as a maggot in a pile of crap. Farts are too good for him.”

I asked my palates teacher to rename "bomber wings" to "angel wings" in my effort to quiet things down. She complied.

As I sat this morning, I thought (what everyone does even though we are told to follow our breath) about how the Dalai Lama doesn't seem to have anger toward the Chinese who have removed him from his homeland. He writes,

Anger is the real destroyer of our good human qualities; an enemy with a weapon cannot destroy these qualities, but anger can. Anger is our real enemy.

So why do I say that we have three perfect candidates? One makes too much money and doesn't give enough of it back to the other 99.9%. The second has ethical issues. And the third calls a baby that resulted from a rape "a gift" (though he adds the adjective, "broken"). One might say of this almost biblical tale, that these are despicable human beings, using some of Kate's metaphors.

But no, this is an opportunity to see who we are in the face of our dislikes. These men are our brothers. We are part of the same spaceship, whirling through space. Our problems are their problems. They have a different perspective than we might have. But are they fodder for anger? Is anything?

Anger gets in the way of love. It eats at us until we are sick. It keeps us from enjoying life.

"Well, why don't they just change their views and pay more taxes, and then I'll be happier?" you say. That may happen, but then someone else will say or do something that will offend us and we'll be cranky all over again.

We can choose to respond differently.

In some studies done by scientists invited by the Dalai Lama to Northern India it is shown that thinking can change the brain. We can choose not to complain and we can choose not to be angry. The amazing part of this is that we stop being angry people. Our hearts can open up to our brothers and sisters, and we can talk to them rather that throw darts at them. I love that line in the Lord's Prayer, "And forgive us our trespasses,: as we forgive them that trespass against us." It is much easier to be angry. And you need to remember that anger goes in both direction. Buddha said (heard this today in a dharma talk) that when you put more wood on a fire it gets hotter.