WHY KNOT

The inspiring website, www.ecobuddhism.org, not only has His Holiness the Karmapa’s aspirations and instructions for saving the Earth, but also teachings by my beloved guru Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche. The site has posted one from Oxford, England late in 2007 in which Rinpoche candidly addressed the sad subject of denial. After he made aspiration prayers for the environment, some very clear headed human asked if we all weren’t behaving exactly like the Tibetan monastic and social elite of Lhasa back in 1950, myopically partying as usual despite abundant evidence that a Chinese Communist invasion had become a clear and present danger. Here is the exact question:

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche observed in his memoirs that Tibetans simply did not want to hear about the impending Chinese Communist invasion of Tibet in 1950, even though there were obvious and abundant signs. Is there a parallel with the global human situation now?

And here is Rinpoche’s answer: “This is pretty much the same phenomenon Tulku Urgyen was describing. It is very parallel. Because it is a parallel situation, we need to wake people up about global warming. We should make aspirations and recite prayers. And we need to have a lot of publicity. These two together will make powerful, effective action.”

Lamentably, we Americans seem to have supersized the Tibetan way: we are in denial about denial. All the news fit into print keeps revealing how ineffective aspirations, publicity and facts are in even denting the armor of entrenched habit. Story after story says this country is belly up. States can’t pay their bills, sick people can’t either, 10% of the working public can’t get a job and 10% of houses have been foreclosed. China doesn't want our money to be the gold standard, Iran and Pakistan don't want our politics, Europe doesn't want our advice, nobody wants our shoddy products. The United States of America is as bankrupt as General Motors for the same reasons: the past is past and we don't want to make the changes necessary for the present.

Someone should give the Senate and its corporate handlers a prize for defying gravity. Now is the time, yet it is beneath them. They and we are so stuck in old ways, there are no wheels in revolution. Howard Dean has diagnosed these people as seriously addicted to same old same old. The so called climate change bill passed in time for Independence Day doesn't change anything about our dependence on fossil fuels, least of all dirty coal burning, and the gutting of national health care seems a ditto. With health insurers using our premiums to set our representatives against our best interests, you don't have to wonder who those hired voting hands really represent. Welcome to supersized NIMBY. Change? Not In My Banner Years.

The news, which includes stories that not even Obama wants to make minor changes like abolishing the discharge of gays from the military even if he knows it's the morally correct thing to do and would snap everyone to attention, defies the law of impermanence. You can't help but think the evident yearning polls show in this country for financial fairness, medical attention and environmental fitness--for radical change--is being almost as ruthlessly repressed as the yearning for voice and democracy in Iran. No matter how many Paul Reveres ride the news cycle warning us what could be coming, nothing happens-- except the guys at Goldman Sachs get even bigger bonuses, with a side of blessings from the Federal Reserve, dba the Federal Deserved.

Addiction to the status in the status quo and the instant high of fundraisers blinds people to the present fast fading fate of planet Earth and equally fast fading glory of this country. That's the sadly exact replay of the comfortable Lhasa elite. With their own health care, private planes, limousines and prepaid travel, our so-called representatives have become Mad Magazine cover boys grinning like a good Lhasa aristocrat: What me worry? As though they're going to be immune to climate change and carried heavenward in some political rapture, they turn their tongue to the other cheek, their one and only concept of Other. Except of course for the soul mate in Argentina.

As it's portrayed daily in the news, Wall Street and Washington business as usual has become a great visualization of everything the Buddha listed as a cause of suffering: attachment (to the past), aversion (to change), massive ego or self-interest uber alles and massive denial of the absolute truth of interdependence and impermanence. Throw in lack of generosity, discipline, exertion, and wisdom. America has indeed become Tibet in 1950. Even though we know what happened next, we have made no change in the denial of change.

Alarms may go off, but they don’t necessarily wake people up. That's the truth of suffering.


~Sandy Garson
"Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"

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