Thank you to the wise, honorable and compassionate John Lewis:
Last edited Sat Feb 13, 2016, 03:59 PM - Edit history (1)
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
I was disappointed in John Lewis’ statement about Bernie Sanders’ civil rights involvement and expressed my feelings about it here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1280&pid=117091
I think it would be the right thing for Rep Lewis to "clarify" his remarks.
He could walk it back gracefully stating his intention was not to disparage and that although he did not meet Sen. Sanders in the 60s, he is aware of his activities during that era and his continuous commitment to civil rights.
And here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1211618
I agree. It's makes me sad.
I've had that feeling of deep sadness and disappointment when some one I respect or love discounted my contribution or sincerity to something important to me. I wonder if Bernie feels wounded by these sorts of attacks on his work - attacks that try to discount what I believe is truly part of his soul. Does he take time to console himself over the pain it must cause or is that something that has to wait?
The civil rights movement was rooted in the three greatest treasures Lao Tzu describes: simplicity, patience, and compassion. Simply demonstrating their compassion for themselves and one another, and patiently suffering through the way things were, the millions of people who fought for civil rights across the country brought this message of Lao Tzu to the world, opening their eyes and their hearts to the truth and to their own compassion.
Today’s mainstream-media driven politics is reactionary. And more often than not the reactionary nature of our discourse is amplified by social media’s immediacy. The simple fact that politics requires access to information, the patience to absorb that information, understand it and formulate opinions, is antithetical to the immediate and reactionary nature of our current systems of communication. Our politics also drives some to deliberately obfuscate the message with a constant barrage of the marginally tangential and the completely irrelevant, complicating our ability to process the truly important. A genuinely meaningful politics requires the practice of Lao Tzu’s three treasures.
I believe John Lewis is a moral man - truly a minister of morality - whose life’s work is rooted in simplicity, patience, and compassion. Because of this it became clear to him quickly that his comments wounded not only his political rival, but countless other soldiers of the civil rights movement. He did much more than simply walk back his comments; he provided a message of compassion intended to heal these wounds; wounds that were due as much to the absence of simplicity, patience, and compassion from our politics as to John Lewis’ comments themselves.
I am often as guilty as the next person of reacting too quickly when I am angered or upset, or in an attempt to fire off some clever snark. I encourage us all to have the patience, understanding and compassion to practice a genuinely meaningful politics.
Thank you John Lewis, and a hat tip to H2O Man for the borrowed idea of organizing an OP around a quote that expresses the central theme.
= new reply since forum marked as read
your posts always teach me something
