QUESTION
Greetings dear Venerable Robina,
I hope you are well and thriving!
I have been struggling with a question to myself: “How can I be politically engaged as a practitioner?”
I have talked this through with friends and we have been chewing on this for a while.
The advice of one of my teachers is: “To help a bit politically as you do, is excellent for now, if done with a compassionate mind and without getting angry, otherwise better to abstain.”
I am really trying to stand up for basic human rights. Signing petitions, trying to educate myself on what the powerful in our country are doing right now. And going to protests with signs like “Respect People & Planet” and “Let Love Motivate.”
Still, I see in my mind there is frustration and compassion. I am in shock at how immigrants and those with brown skin are being treated, harassed, and disrespected in this country. I don’t see the “due process.” I don’t see the warrants. I see unidentifiable, masked men grabbing folks and aggressively putting them in unmarked vehicles and disappearing them. It looks like kidnapping. I hear the stories of the ICE detention center in Florida and the mistreatment there. It just seems so cruel and unnecessary.
I feel that our country’s vulnerable populations are being disrespected. I feel sad, confused, afraid, frustrated, helpless …
There are so many things going on in our country right now that make me want to stand up for my values … and (hopefully) the greater good of us all.
I would like to see those in power be more compassionate. I would like them to see their interconnections and respectfully honor them (with both people and environment). I would like to see them apologize for being unkind in any situation. And I would like to see them showing that they really want to serve the people. To listen, to respect, and to serve … with humility and morals, kindness and wisdom.
I don’t want anyone to suffer in this situation. I don’t wish harm to anyone in power. I just wish they would start acting in more open-hearted, kind, skillful, compassionate ways.
I do feel frustrated. Which is a kind of anger, right?
So, to me, it seems I need to disengage.
If I think about the long long term, I need to get enlightened. Which means following my gurus’ advice and practicing as they suggest.
And to watch my karma. Especially with anger being so destructive.
However, disengaging feels like I am turning my back on the vulnerable and suffering. I think of my bodhisattva attitude and that just doesn’t sit well.
Dear precious Robina, I know you were an activist for so many years. Could you share any wisdom you have from your experience?
I feel my path forward is not clear.
Whatever I do going forward, I am going to need to develop more skills, determination, compassion, and wisdom.
Thank you for your help,
N
ANSWER
Dear N,
Yes, I did my political activism before I got to the Dharma!
Nothing wrong with it: look at the Tibetans! They’re excellent political activists!
But as your teacher says, of course it must be based on compassion — and that means compassion for the harmers, dear one!
If you can’t muster up that, don’t bother, because the motivation is anger and that’s useless. It’ll just destroy you and harm others.
We all love His Holiness for his approach of not retaliating to the Chinese Communists who’ve been destroying his country for 80 years.
But why is this his approach? If we’re Buddhists we need to do the analysis.
Anger is what happens when we don’t apply karma. If you actually think it all through and really apply karma, with certainty you will not be angry.
Of course, His Holiness doesn’t go into karma when he talks to the world; he just points out the destructiveness of anger.
Let’s analyze a bit deeper. What is anger? Hear what it’s saying. Anger says, “How dare they do this to these innocent people, they don’t deserve it!” Right there, it says everything.
Anger is a complete misconception. And it’s based on the other misconception, attachment, which says, “They only deserve good things!”
Both are assumptions that have no basis in reality at all. From the longterm point of view – and this means countless lives – both anger and attachment assume that the victims have played no role in what is happening to them, including all the happiness. We just think everything is bad luck and good luck.
But as we know, the Buddhist view is that all beings come from countless past lives and that everything we think and do and say programs us, leaves seeds in our mind that just naturally ripen in future lives.
It’s not punishment, not reward, because there’s no punisher and no rewarder. As His Holiness says, karma is like self-creation. It’s a natural law that plays out every second in the mind and lives of all beings.
When this is clear, even a little, then you have a sound basis for understanding why the suffering is occurring. Then you will be able to try to do what you can to change it. Just like the Tibetans.
A friend of mine, Jigdrol, years ago was telling me about how as a young monk in Lhasa he was part of the uprising. It was the young monks and nuns who spearheaded it: so courageous.
He was arrested, then released. His friend had his head blown off. He was arrested and tortured again, and released again. And then decided best to escape to Nepal. Then his brother was murdered, his father was murdered. And so on. Terrible suffering.
There were tears in his eyes. I said, “Jigdrol, do you ever get angry?” And he laughed and said, “Angry? What for! It was our own fault!” So casual, so natural, not self-pity — just an ingrained confidence in the view of karma.
And there’s the other story I tell about two young Tibetan nuns who’d been imprisoned and sexually abused and tortured in prison who had compassion for their torturers because, as one of them said, “we realized that we had harmed them in the past” – and, crucially, because the harmers will suffer terribly in the future.
They say that the bodhisattvas have such compassion for us sentient beings because we don’t understand that we all create our own happiness and our own suffering.
But in our culture, which just takes it for granted without question that we’re created by either a creator or our parents – and this view is deep in our bones – when we hear this response we’re totally shocked! It sounds like blaming the victim!
But karma refers to all the good things that happen t00, all our happiness. But we never think this. We only think about the bad stuff!
This view is hugely different, of course, and even though we’re Buddhist practitioners, we just don’t dig deep enough in to analyze it and join the dots.
With this in mind, get out there and do your best to change the world! Perfect!
As Martin Luther King said, it’s good to see fault, it’s good to see injustice – but then say, “What can I do to help?” That’s compassion!
As His Holiness says, when we’re motivated by anger, our actions don’t last, we just give up. But with compassion, we never give up.
Love,
Robina
QUESTION
Thank you so much, dear Venerable Robina.
I will take some time and really soak my mind in these ideas. I really appreciate your perspective!
I will share your thoughts with my friends.
Thank you so much for living your life in the Dharma.
ANSWER
Become the best political activist, just like His Holiness!
Rx