In what sometimes seems like an incredibly dark and evil world, the only thing we can do as individuals and as societies is to put forth our own light in the form of hope, optimism and the idea that we are one race of people, brothers and sisters, who are connected at levels deeper than anything we can possible imagine.

Without hope, we would have never reached the moon. We would never have beaten small pox. We would have never defeated the horrors of Adolf Hitler.

With hope, we can eradicate AIDS and hunger. With hope, we can bring people together to create positive change in the world. With hope, we can heal the deep scars of war and hate that are etched across our planet. We can protect our Mother Earth and nurture ourselves.

It is only through hope that we can reach our full potential.

This is why one man’s message has sparked a political movement unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. This is why people of all political stripes are reexamining how they think about terms like “right” and “left,” words that have become ingrained in our national psyche and now dictate how we govern ourselves.

We can be pulled through life by fear, or we can take control of our own destinies by embracing hope.

Ésta es nuestra América. This is our America. We have to embrace the Power of Hope.

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From yesterday’s International Herald Tribune:

‘Magic is over’ for U.S., says French foreign minister

By Alison Smale

PARIS: Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France and a longtime humanitarian, diplomatic and political activist on the international scene, says that whoever succeeds President George W. Bush may restore something of the United States’ battered image and standing overseas, but that “the magic is over.”

…

Asked whether the United States could repair the damage it has suffered to its reputation during the Bush presidency and especially since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Kouchner replied, “It will never be as it was before.”

“I think the magic is over,” he continued, in what amounted to a sober assessment from one of the strongest supporters in France of the United States.

U.S. military supremacy endures, Kouchner noted, and the new president “will decide what to do - there are many means to re-establish the image.” But even that, he predicted, “will take time.”

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There is a part of me that is thankful for the Tibetans in Lhasa, Kathmandu, Dharamsala, the remote areas of Tibet and the other parts of the world who are so willing to take a stand for basic human rights that they would risk their very lives for it.

For Tibetan Buddhists, there is nothing more precious than this human life that each of us has, for it is through this life that we can work to dedicate our every action to ending suffering for each and every sentient being.  As a Tibetan Buddhist, I recognize and share in this moral imperative to serve and save even the most minute self-aware form of life.

Imagine, then, the immense amount of compassion and loving-kindness that a person must have for the rest of her or her people and culture to make the ultimate sacrifice and put this life on the line to face down Communist China in an effort to preserve those few remaining shards of the most peaceful civilization to ever inhabit this planet.

To be thankful for the protesters in India and Tibet can not be a good thing.  And yet, I am a mere mortal, possibly eons away from Nirvana,  and to deny what I feel in the here and now would be just as bad as acknowledging those same human emotions.  All I can do at this point is raise my voice in prayer with tens of millions of others, remaining constantly hopeful that something will change, somewhere, in order to stop the Tibetan genocide.

Om mani padme hung.  I dedicate any merit that I have ever obtained to the end of suffering for all beings, especially those who have carried the weight of a lost Tibet on their shoulders for 50 years.

Clipped from my blog, http://www.dharmamonkey.com/wp

I can remember a sermon nearly 30 years ago at Oakdale Baptist Church in my home town of Rock Hill, S.C. In it, the minister, Rev. Raymond Thompson, talked about how the crucifixion of Christ affected the disciples. On that day, which is now observed as Good Friday, some of Jesus’ closest friends hid in fear. No doubt others were racked with confusion, angst, sadness and guilt.

The pain and grief caused by their teacher’s death was a life-defining moment, the pastor said all those years ago. For me as a boy, it seemed the entire planet wept with Christ’s disciples: the sky went dark, the ground shook, and Heaven sank to Earth. For those men, and indeed all of Jesus’ followers at the time, it must have seemed as if their world was coming to an end.

Some 2,000 years later, I imagine the loss of Tibet and the exile of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1959 must have been just as intense for the millions of people who spent a millennium living in relative peace and isolation. While it’s true that Tibet was not a model civilization in the modern context, it was probably as pure as a theocracy could be: every aspect of life revolved around faith; a deep belief in karma and Dharma drove every decision, from the rural farmer to the Potala establishment. Respect for every form of life was at the core of the society (even the lowly earthworm was shown the same respect one would for his or her mother).

The situation today in Tibet and its environs challenges Tibetans and Tibetan Buddhists to closely examine their beliefs, for Buddha’s first teaching spelled out a universal truth that attachment to the status quo – be it a nation, a leader, a temple or anything else temporal – is the sole reason we suffer. Still, it must be incredibly difficult to reconcile the loss of one’s country and the resulting ethnic and cultural genocide with something as ironically simple as the Second Noble Truth (the origin of suffering is attachment to transient things and the ignorance thereof).

It’s almost absurd in my mind to even try to think of the Tibetan issue from the perspective of the Second Noble Truth. I feel anger at what the Chinese have done, and disgust at how most of the world, including my own country, has stood by while atrocities like Rwanda, Darfur, the Congo, East Turkestan/ Xīnjiāng, Inner Mongolia and Tibet have unfold before our eyes. But, and it’s an important but, I know enough to honestly recognize afflictive emotions like anger and disgust do nothing to improve the world around me, and if anything, only serve as spiritual roadblocks.

So where does that leave me? If anything, the lesson of Good Friday and Easter, especially from the disciples’ perspective, is that nothing is ever as it seems (how’s that for understatement, especially for those who have studied the Two Truths in Buddhism?). The spirit and practices of the Tibetan people, including Vajrayana Buddhism, will live on for as long as they are supposed to.

And for my part, well, I guess I know exactly what I need to do.

Clipped from my blog, http://www.dharmamonkey.com/wp