How would a Buddhist solve the MiddleEast crisis?
Happy 2007. I was on the WDEV Mark Johnson show to talk about FireWife. My interviewer, Ken Squier, the owner of Radio Vermont, asked me in the end: How would a Buddhist leader solve the Middle East crisis? Sweet Buddha! I said. No, I didn’t say that. I managed only to raise both my eyebrows (for the degree of difficulty) and muttered something like “Buddhists are not evangelical by nature.” And I was officially and hopelessly tongue-tied. Thank Buddha, I was off air by then. But I have since been occupied by the question. This is a call to all Buddhists in all degrees of enlightenment, please share your thought, please illuminate. This is a humble call from a not so enlightened one. Thank you. And, how would the Dalai Lama answer the question?
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:20 am
*solve* the middle east crisis? That’s like asking “How would a Buddhist leader change a frog into a watermelon?” It’s an unreasonable question. The question should be, “How would a Buddhist leader *relate to* the middle east crisis?” Still, a very difficult question to answer. First, the buddhist leader would be asking herself how she could approach the situation without causing further harm. Such a leader might be thinking about ways to continue — or resurrect — what took place at Camp David several decades ago.
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:07 am
My understanding of Buddhist teachings is minimal. But chinese family teachings (mixed, blended, don’t really know how to differentiate between Buddhism, Taoism, Confucian and any other provincial beliefs) would lead me to agree with the answer “Buddhists are not evangelical by nature”. There are further meanings to this answer. Someone evangelical can send in more than 100,000 troops to start a war and subsequently repent and utter “I believe!”, thus “to Heaven s/he goes!”. Buddhists, or rather Chinese in general, believe in reincarnation and basically “You eat the fruit of what you sow”.
A Buddhist leader, should s/he be the cause of the Middle East crisis, had s/he sent in troops, split up countries, take away territory, plunder resources, killed hundreds of thousands if not millions, would walk the streets of Middle East as a monk/nun, owning nothing, not looking for material well-being and allow enemies to insult, torture and/or kill s/him. S/he would also bring forth the Buddhist teachings on how to end “Sufferings” and through self-sacrifice attain peace.