..續本文上一頁e Buddha was in danger of being attacked physically, he used his mindfulness, intelligence, and compassion to subdue the person who was about to attack him, and he didn”t have to use his martial arts. Misunderstanding brings fear and anger, and we immediately think of the gun and the army as the only solution. But there are many nonviolent ways to protect our country and ourselves. Violence is the last resort. When a country is united, when it has wise leaders who practice deep dialogue and deep listening, the country has many friends and doesn”t have to use its army a lot. Instead the soldiers spend their time repairing roads, building bridges, and helping communities.
Q. How can we help our leaders become better
A. Our leaders have good seeds in them and they also have negative seeds. They may be surrounded by people who don”t know how to water their good seeds and who continue to water their seeds of fear, anger, violence, and greed. That”s why we have to find ways to get in touch with our political leaders and help them. Protesting is a kind of help, but it should be done skillfully, so it is seen as an act of love and not an act of hate.
Political and business leaders have a lot of energy and the desire to fulfill their wishes. Some of these desires may be very wholesome: the desire to stop pollution, bring an end to social inequality, restore peace, transform and bring change into the world. But that doesn”t mean that they don”t also have the desire to be powerful, successful, and famous. So there may be several conflicting desires in our leaders. We can help them to become aware of their motivations and see how to harmonize them. The way is to help them to understand themselves.
Our leaders generally believe that they understand themselves and the world, and that all they have to do is act. But that”s not true. They haven”t understood themselves enough. They haven”t understood the world enough. This is a reality. None of us understands ourselves perfectly, none of us understands the world enough. It”s good for a practitioner to be humble enough to recognize that she has to learn more about herself and more about the suffering and the situation of the world.
We can help our leaders not to be too sure of their understanding of themselves and of the world. You should be able to listen to them and to use loving speech in order to help them to make progress on the path of self-understanding and understanding the world situation. When they act, we want them to act in the context of a Sangha and be able to make use of collective insight.
The practice of listening deeply to oneself and understanding oneself well, of listening to the world and understanding its suffering is the same for everyone, whether they”re inpidual practitioners, for political leaders, or business leaders. There are many business leaders who want to do good things, who want to use their companies to promote more social equality and well-being. But they”re encountering a lot of difficulties. Some of them have to make compromises or they may lose their position and their career. Our leaders have their own difficulties. We can”t simply blame them for the world”s problems. We have to understand them before we can help them.
There are many ways of approaching leaders. All of us--carpenters, machinists, journalists, writers, filmmakers, educators, parents, lawyers, nurses--can write letters, make phone calls, carry signs. We can express ourselves in such a way as to bring about awareness and help with the transformation of our collective consciousness. This is the work at the base; transforming the way we think, helping all of us to see things more deeply and clearly. Every one of us can do this in our daily life. That will contribute greatly to the awakening of the world. Our political leaders and business leaders will profit. We have to speak to them. We have to shine light on them. But before that we have to shine light on ourselves.
Q. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a leader with the ability and the knowledge to truly transform the world into a place of peace and cooperation. Will we ever have such a leader again
A. Martin Luther King, Jr. is still here. There are among us more than one Dr. King; there is continuation. But we have to be very observant in order to be able to recognize his or her presence and offer our support and our help. Often, we feel that we need a leader outside of ourselves--a Buddha, a Gandhi, or a Martin Luther King, Jr.--to show the way. But we have the Buddha inside of us. We have Gandhi and King inside of us as well. We are interconnected. We don”t need to wait for some other person to be the change we want to see in the world.
One of the ways we can help is to show the people who have a lot of money and guns that they can be truly happy. There are many people who are powerful and rich but who suffer very deeply. They believe that happiness isn”t possible without money and power. That kind of thinking is at the very root of war and social injustice. If you can give those people a taste of true happiness they will be able to change their way of thinking. But you can”t just change their thinking by talking. You have to do something else. You have to show that you are truly happy, even if you don”t have a lot of money. According to the teaching of the Buddha, these people have the seed of enlightenment in them also. If we manage to touch that seed, they will abandon their way of thinking, and they will serve the cause of peace. In this way you yourself help the continuation of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the world.
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