Political Solutions?
2024, April, Issue 92
“To see samsara, spend time in the big city. Hop on a bus. Meditate while being jostled around. Watch people coming and going. Watch animals and children running through the streets.
“Spend a lot of time in the center of a large city. Give money to panhandlers or muggers. Help little old ladies across the street. Talk to drug addicts in back alleys or bankers in their high towers. Watch the people with pressed suits dodging homeless mental patients who have not worn clean clothes in many months.
“Go to stockyards and watch as animals are butchered. Watch grocery store clerks presenting meat in shiny packages. Watch people gorge themselves at buffet restaurants. Attend a funeral.”
An excerpt from, The Frog: A Spiritual Autobiography, Spanning Many Lifetimes, pg. 280, © 2021.
Samsara has always and will always be the way that it is. Nothing other than awakening will remove the confusion, crazed intentions and endless suffering. Samsara, if you do not know already, is our condition of suffering, poisoned by ignorance, attraction and aversion. It is a belief in a separate self, conditioned by ego, kept in constant turmoil by this perpetual cultivation and defense of ego. Samsara is a dark place, filled with insanity.
To believe in politics is to believe that there is an insane solution to insanity. We need to look at this insanity, to see without judgement just what is going on here. It’s important to observe before we act. We need to understand this world around us before we decide what to do about it.
This simple act of observation and growing understanding is an act of Bodhicitta. Before we cultivate Bodhicitta, we need to first understand just what is going on here. This is not so easy. It takes great compassion to even begin to understand. Few are able to simply observe what is happening, or to see how everything really connects to everything. When we allow ourselves to see the entire picture of just what is going on here, the ugliness becomes much more pronounced than we may want it to be. We see things as they are and our compassion will naturally grow, our capacity will increase.
Politics is when confused people manipulate other confused people. To be a politician, one does not need even a single drop of wisdom, compassion or intelligence. A politician is an influential madman in the lunatic asylum. Sometimes they do good in the world; however, the business of manipulating others is sure to corrupt. A friend of mine years ago said that she couldn’t vote for a good man, because the world needs good men (and women). This was said as a joke, but the meaning rang of truth.
As you must surely know already, I place no confidence in politics. My confidence is placed with Spiritual Practice and the evolution of the individual through the awakening process. Politics is in the business of manipulating emotions, redirecting thoughts and forming agreements with those who are easily fooled.
We can look at any number of situations where an ideal society was created, only to lead to genocide or tragedy of one sort or another. One party builds something, the other tears it all down in an endless cycle of dysfunction. This is politics.
Political parties become religions that no one questions, and this leads to rebellion, and war, as additional turmoil becomes generated. People are divided by the color of their skin, their religion, their sexuality, their height, weight, the shape of their eyes, the type of clothes they wear, their hair style or length, or anything else that can be imagined. This is how it has always been.
People are miserable, and they easily fall into the trap of wanting everybody else to be miserable as well. This is samsara, and humans are not particularly bright. We seem to do whatever we can to create a world of suffering. Our ego ensures that this goes on forever.
When I died, I could see the complete futility of politics. There has never been a political solution that ever solved anything. Nations are formed with utopian ideals; and, in short order, lunatics are running the show once again, implementing war or genocide, or worse.
My master, Namkhai Norbu, talked about an evolution, that we don’t need a revolution, because that just leads to more of the same. What we need is an evolution.
If we wish to evolve beyond this trap of politics and worldly concerns, then we need to look inwardly, to meditate. We need to pay attention to each and every thing we do, every thought, every action, every motivation. We need to be present in this attitude of evolving. If we evolve, then we naturally cultivate Bodhicitta.
If the entire world, each and every person were to take personal responsibility, then the world would be transformed. This means that we take care of each other, we take care of our own mind. We must have the intention of Bodhicitta arising in all that we are. We need to have great compassion for ourselves and others, with the strong intention to awaken.
This means that we do what we can. Politics cannot improve the world as much as one evolved person who awakens.
Blessings in Light,
Robert Aho
I have volunteered on local boards for 20 years. I'm there out of a willingness to help. The problems towns face are complicated and there's always many sides. Being willing to listen to all parties and try to help the best you can really can make a difference in the built environment and people's lives. It's hard sometimes but I don't think it's pointless.