Notes on Peace
Dear A and I were reading The Boston Globe at breakfast this morning as we do every morning. Usually A spouts indignation at the way a major world news story has been shunted to some small corner of an inner page while a sports hero decorates the front. It wasn’t much different today but on the inner page was the story of China’s crackdown on the Tibetan monks agitating for Tibet’s independence. It was a tiny article, about seven inches long, two columns wide—you get the picture. But what it said seemed huge to me. The Dalai Lama is threatening to resign if China cracks down further.
Here is a man who has been our teacher for many years. He has brought the deep practices of Buddhist meditation and observation, of compassion and respect for life to our consciousness. He has taught all around the world techniques to achieve peace and happiness and as a result he has become a beloved teacher, a person who is deeply respected. And faced with this sad and desperate situation, his own country occupied by an unwelcome force, he is saying he will step down rather than fuel violence of any sort. Think about it.
He does not allow fear in. Here, the worst has happened—his country has been overtaken and still he does not rally the troops or other world powers to lash out with force. He does not declare war. He says, if it will help to diffuse the situation, he will resign. He says that beyond everything human life must be honored and cherished. Human life rather than country.
Like I said, it was buried on page seven. To the editors of The Boston Globe and other mainstream publications the news is only that the Dalai Lama might resign. So far no thoughts on how his radical stance for peace might be the one true path that can lead to the real liberation where we can live without fear of war. But that liberation, as the Dalai Lama has tried to teach, is truly how we change our minds. He tells us if we can find the peace within, we will get beyond our own fears. We can only create peace on the planet when we find it in ourselves.
Curiously, after reading that, I sat down at my computer with my morning cup of tea and found the counterpart to that news on The Guardian Online, my home page, an independent liberal British paper. It was a four minute video of children in Sadr City, Iraq—one eight year old boy who sells drinks to commuters in cars from five in the morning until four in the afternoon to support his mother. And another boy in an orphanage, also aged eight, who, in trying to say how his father was killed by a car bomb when he was six, broke down and wept, a witness to the truth of the savage toll of war. It was almost unbearable to watch. This small boy knows too well what Dalai Lama is working to prevent. May his grief and the Dalai Lama’s patience teach us that radical change is not just possible but necessary.
March 19th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Yes, you got it. The Dalai Lama’s is a voice that is so full of peace and loving-kindness that - I swear - most people can’t understand it. As you say: who needs waking up, him or us?
The Boston Globe is, like most papers, an instrument that flourishes on dissent and conflict, and so when it comes across a voice that preaches the exact opposite it has to bury it on the inside pages, or twist what is said. Peace begins in many ways, and one of those ways is in refusing the cries that lure us into things that aren’t peaceful.
If the Boston Globe were a human being it’d be the sort of drama queen I’d never let into my kitchen, let alone spend any time with. Yet, every morning, there it is, and I’m reading it….
March 19th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
Well, I would not have seen that at all had it not been for that rag!
So, for now, we read on… 
March 20th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
mdf, It’s getting good coverage over here. Front pages and evening news. The brilliant Jon Snow,(Channel4, at 7pm GMT) has the best coverage. I don’t know if it’s possible to access it on computer.
Two nights ago we actually witnessed an angry Dalia Lama, and so rightfully and compassionately so. One could see that to be accused of inciting riot in Tibet in order to jeopardize the Beijing Olympics is not only preposterous but ridiculous. His Holiness just can’t get his head around it and has asked the Chinese prime minister to come to India to prove it. Gordon Brown is in China trying to smooth things over.
Last night’s news had ancient tribal Tibetans galloping on horseback, brandishing sabres and looking as if they just stepped out of the pages of ‘The Arabian Nights’. The Chinese (in riot gear and outnumbering them by maybe 1000 to one) swarming around like insects.
Meanwhile on the home front, ‘Gordon’s Government’ have given walking papers to the Gurkhas, who bravely fought for Britain all over the world for the last century, and are now to be deported in their old age, unless they have retired within the last 10 years.
The world has gone completely bonkers and of course the Dalia Lama knows it. He’s possibly reconsidering his reincarnation. Must reread ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ for levity and humour.
Happy Easter…Kx
March 20th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
mdf—Thanks so much for this thoughtful and insightful post. Nothing in The Globe this morning at all! Think we must cancel our subscription. The Dalai Lama is angry and it’s good to see how he uses anger so wisely. It catches China with its pants down.
Haven’t read Captain Corelli’s Mandolin but believe levity is a saving grace. Will order.
It’s a tough world out there right now but change is coming and we’re part of it! Onwards!
And Happy Easter to you too!
C xx
March 21st, 2008 at 11:44 am
Freedom of thought can never be suppressed! I simply cannot understand this lunacy—-although when I look at the erosion of freedoms here…..
Yesterday was the first day of spring. Even though we are supposed to get 2-4 more inches of snow tonight, I k-n-o-w that Spring is here. The songs of the birds and change in the quality of the light affirm. So it is with freedom.
March 21st, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Debra— Truly believe good things coming. Happy spring! Cold and blustery here but sun is shining!
March 21st, 2008 at 12:29 pm
the sun is rising over the hillside here. Birds are singing Spring songs. The birds at the feeder outside my kitchen window are putting on their Spring clothes. Goldfinches and cardinals and downy woodpeckers are joining nuthatches, chickadees and Carolina wrens. Promises of Spring!
Enjoy this beautiful day!
March 21st, 2008 at 12:39 pm
thanx so much for your comments. i WISH you were here in london, am looking for an art teacher (for middle aged women) bugger! will be back to read more of these posts, keep your dream of writing a book alive!
March 21st, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Thanks, again, Debra!
And welcome, forever young! LOVE that concept—forever young! The dream is ALIVE and WELL!!! THX!! Onwards with art! Follow along with my drawing class, if you like. We might be able to get some kind of exchange thing going.