Is Bush the Anti-Buddha?

By Allan Hunt Badiner

When George W. Bush mouths the word "compassion" chills dart up my spine. Anyone paying attention can easily see how the actions of the Bush regime reflect a distinct lack of empathy and understanding. This is an administration bent on blatant paybacks to friends and contributors at everyone else's expense.

Its single truth: What is good for extractive profits is good for the country. Trees and caribou don't contribute cash so Bush's environmental policy opens majestic old growth forests for commercial logging and protected wilderness areas for domestic oil exploration. His foreign policy confuses justice with punishment, disagreement with treachery, and cultural differences with evil. He willingly risks escalating and perpetuating a continuous cycle of global violence.


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How does a student of the Dharma deal with the rising temptation to wish ill will on the perpetrators of such shocking and detestable undertakings? To the specter of four more years of Bush, what is an appropriate Buddhist response?

While it's important to recognize the full scope of the damage generated by this President and his cronies, and understandable to feel bitter, the Dharma clearly counsels us against hating our enemies. As Buddhists, we can assume that Bush-hating doesn't help anyone. Buddhist philosophy is centered on non-duality, the unity of all things, so we must concede that we ourselves are not separate from the corruption and unprincipled behavior of those who represent us. It is in fact an old political axiom that people get the government they deserve.


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Mindful that the real source of American power does not come from its superior war machine but from its constitution, its leadership in the global community, its democracy and its history of respect for human rights, George Bush has seriously weakened America. For this he deserves no praise, only reproach. But my practice has helped me prevent any grim imaginings in his regard. When I'm stricken with unskillful thoughts about the President, I immediately focus on the words of the Buddha: "Hatred can never put an end to hatred, love alone can. This is the unalterable law."

Now my visualizations are of bearing witness to a panoply of devas and gods, the Boddhisatva Avalokitesvara, and countless rows of Buddha's and Bodhisattvas throughout space and time sitting in the clouds and celebrating Bush's retirement from the Oval Office and his safe return to Crawford, Texas.



http://www.buddhistnews.tv/current/bush-180504.php

to pray for he/she/it you can be free of the resentment. I can't quite bring myself to pray for Bush yet, but it may come to that soon if I can't let go of this anger against him

http://www.aa.org/bigbookonline/en_theylostnearlyall14.pdf (goto page 9)

..I've come to the conclusion that everybody does the best with what he or she has, even Bush. Look at the family he's from, his class, the skewed view of the world he's had dinned into his nearly empty head from birth. This is the best he can do, folks, and he's doing it.

Of course it's as wrongheaded as any human being can possibly get, and he's doing a lot of damage to us, to this country, and to the rest of the world.

However, hating the man simply isn't the answer. Recognizing that he isn't equipped to be where he is and then doing our best to remove him is the answer. I want him GONE. To repair the damage done to this country and its position in the world, I would prefer to see him charged, tried and convicted. But mostly, I just want him GONE.

After he's gone, I don't really give a hoot what he does. I'm not personally invested in his destruction. I do continue to keep working to educate folks as to what is wrong with his class's skewed priorities and destructively backwards economics, and merely focusing on one man is detrimental to that process.

that is the only thing keeping me hanging on to some sanity.