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The racist within

There is a racist in all our hearts
And it has to come out and face reality
That's the ultimate reality tv - the people around us.

But no-one should be abandoned: we all have prejudices,
and great good can come from the worst person turning around.
Because they take with them their distorted environment,
and it gets to see it too.

Fitting that it happens to India from it's old decaying invader, when the Buddha himself tried so hard to make a change in the barriers between different castes in Brahmanic society, castes which continue to this day to affect society there. This means there is lots of Buddhist teaching to choose from when looking at this. I'm, I guess, now just a Nichiren Buddhist, so to name a few from my adopted tradition: dependent origination, the oneness of life and the environment, but mostly the possibility that all people being living beings intrinsically have Buddhahood within them, and no-one should be excluded, no matter what they believe, from the possibility of realising the positive nature they have. That seed may be there, but this is always going to be a struggle for individuals and societies alike. The moment you have a way of getting people to dialogue freely and resolve these things, you have a something which can become corrupt if institutionalised. It has to always be a struggle.

Still, that's all I want to say about this shit.

Comments

Hopeful Indian said…
Definitely true that there's an evil streak which we must learn to conquer. On the lighter side, thought u'd enjoy this one "being brown is being racist!" :)
http://content.msn.co.in/Contribute/Others/UCStory724.htm

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