An Indian (Native American) walks into a psychiatrist’s office. He says “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Doc. Sometimes I feel like a wigwam, and sometimes I feel like a teepee.” The psychiatrist says “I know what’s wrong with you. You’re two tents.”
One’s position in the political situation of our country, on either side, somehow seems similar to our Indian’s dilemma. In the one tent, it is easy to become polarized and to take a side. (My own inclination is against bullying.) On the other side, as a healer and teacher, or even as a good human being, I perhaps shouldn’t say that I’ll only work with people who think like I do.
The Buddhist Bodhi Satva vow, to work for the enlightenment of all beings, seems to preclude this. When someone asked the Dali Lama if he hated the Chinese, he said “There are too many of them to hate.” Indeed, there must be a path toward compassion available to everyone.
A famous Sufi teacher, a baker by trade, once said that “Dough is dough”. He demonstrated this by asking his disciples to bring those of all cultures and beliefs to his classes, and it was said that all benefitted. (from the teachings of Idries Shah).
Indeed, this dichotomy between knowing right from wrong, and yet still accepting people with different views of what is right and wrong, can easily cause one to be “too tense”, as was our Indian friend.
The belief that even one brought up in a culture promoting hate and fear may benefit from examples of compassion may yet unite us and foster the evolution of compassion. No one is expendable.
From the teachings of that venerable martial artist and sage, Master Po (When you can take the pebble from my hand, grasshopper….from the TV show Kung Fu), “Does the same sun not shine on all of us?”.
When Kwai Chang Kane was about to walk through the snakes in the pit (an episode in which he offered to trade a tyrant’s fears for someone’s life), he recalled in the ubiquitous flashback to his childhood lessons, that “Even snakes know heart. If one can truly become one with them, what animal would attack itself?”.
Our problems arise when we divide parts of humanity into “self” and “other”, and lose sight of that which we all share.
Namaste
