Skip to main content

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

Popular posts from this blog

Poem for peace, from a pirate recording in a Cairo Museum.

My love With peace I have placed loving flowers at your feet With peace With peace I stopped the seas of blood for you Forget anger Forget pain Forget your weapons Forget your weapons and come Come and live with me my love Under a blanket of peace I want you to sing, beloved light of my eyes And your song will be for peace let the world hear, my beloved and say: Forget anger Forget pain Forget your weapons Forget your weapons and come And live in peace These I believe are the words of a widow at the tomb of her beloved. I got the words from this italian website . It was used in a seminal Italian anti-war song " Luglio Agosto Settembre Nero " by the band Area (although I guess they weren't called anti-war songs then) - whose vocalist Demetrio Stratos indirectly gives the name to this blog, and whose music is the inspiration for a lot of my mine. It's adapted in turn from a greek folk song, but no-one knows who wrote the original words, except that Stratos was probably...

My Interpretation so far of the Sutra of Innumerable Meanings

This Sutra, handed down by Ananda, the Buddha's companion, then found and translated to Chinese by Kumarijiva, is part 1 of a trilogy consisting of the Lotus Sutra, The Innumerable Meanings Sutra and the Meditation Sutra. It is studied and known among others, by Nichiren Schools of Buddhism, and it's his interpretation that I probably share most with: http://nichiren.info/OngiKuden/text/Muryogi.htm First of all, it is meant to be read by Bodhisattvas. Boddhisatvas are people who use what they learn to teach others about how to be Buddhas. When I think of Boddhisatvas, I think of people like Gandhi or Martin Luther King etc, people who fought beyond their own lives for the greater good or peace, perhaps even without knowing what the right way or right practice is. The Innumerable Meanings Sutra says these people will attain the supreme enlightenment that the Buddha attained, eventually, although the short term effect will be that everyone is a lot better off. Laws, people and so...

Big Cafe on Transport Sustainability

About a month ago, I went to the "Big Cafe for Transport" event that was happening just around the corner from my house at the brilliant new "Co-Exist" sustainability business centre . Coexist run as a CIC and are just about to launch with a plan to open up green community and event spaces, funded in turn by work and business spaces. I really hope that means a market in stokes croft! After I attended, I'd promised everyone I'd write up about it, and promptly left it as a nagging thing in the background as life took over. But now the official write up of the event has been published so I thought I should finish the abortive blog post I made that same night. A disclaimer : I'm allowed to make mistakes here, so if I've written anything wrong or stupid, please correct me! A big cafe costs 20 pounds to attend. It started really early on a Saturday morning (thus excluding the entire population of Stokes Croft), but it included a lunch (from Kukuva Cafe ac...