Human Kindness Foundation

a little good news                      Winter 1996

 The above quote may sound a little scary, but actually, doesn't it also provide some comfort? Don't you and I often feel just beaten all to hell by our constant struggles, by the unwanted situations or annoying people in our lives? We may feel bruised, defeated, exhausted - but then remember, "Is this what it feels like to be beaten and beaten until I am pure gold?" If we can take just the littlest bit of faith that way, maybe we can go on one more day. Faith is the key. But we so often misunderstand it by a mile. We create a so-called faith which is more like a letter to Santa Claus for everything we want, and then when we don't get it, we "lose our faith."

Sita and I, along with a few members of our staff, recently spent a day on death row in Raleigh, North Carolina. I gave a couple of talks and we were able to spend some time hanging out with the condemned men. One of them approached me to express his appreciation for our visit, and to share his glad tidings that Jesus has saved him. Now he knows that his next court appearance will go in his favor. He said Jesus will not allow him to be executed. He'll be sprung from prison; reunited with his family. Jesus won't let him down. The fellow beamed and said he has "complete faith."

An elderly woman recently wrote that she always had strong faith in God and was devoutly religious, but then she developed bladder cancer. Though she prayed, followed all the right regimens, and even traveled great distances to be blessed by holy sages, God did not fulfill her expectations. Her faith was shattered.

Does Jesus not love our condemned friend if the court upholds his execution? Is God betraying the prayers of the elderly woman if she dies of cancer?

Faith is a profound acceptance of life's Ultimate Goodness no matter what happens.

Jesus didn't come to get us off of death row or heal our cancer or patch up our worldly problems. He came to inspire the courage in us to live as He did - to love others and dedicate our lives to the common good. Faith in such a way of life is a very radical choice, because it is opposite to nearly everything we have been taught. It is extremely unpopular, too. He got killed for it. So did many of his apostles and disciples through the centuries.

But if we make that choice and stick to it, we will touch something so incomprehensibly perfect and loving and wonderful that it no longer matters so much whether we get our heads chopped off or spend the rest of our days behind bars. Once we touch that Love, the rest is small potatoes. Hard to believe, but true, I promise.

Saint Stephen touched that Love, and it was so fulfilling that even as an angry mob stoned him to death shouting "Blasphemer!!", all he could cry out was, "Father, please don't hold this against them." Imagine such Love!

Mahatma Gandhi touched that Love. As an assassin's bullet tore his life from him, his immediate response was, "Jai Ram!" ("Hail God!").

But it's a serious mistake to think that such outcomes are the point. They are not, and never have been, the point of faith. They are just demonstrations of the Power and Glory we're dealing with - not guarantees. The elderly monk in the story above was telling the truth: He really would have been just as calm and fearless if the general had indeed disemboweled him. His faith was not tied to a particular result. He knew it was small potatoes.

When Jesus left His disciples the final time and said, "Take courage and be of good cheer, for I am with you always," don't forget that He was speaking to a group of men who would be imprisoned, despised, hunted, executed. Jesus knew that, yet said, "Be of good cheer."

A friend of mine was once suffering from kidney stones. One night when he was in unbearable pain, he cried out to Jesus, "Jesus, take this pain, please," and was startled to hear in response, "But I just gave it to you."

God creates beans, fire, water, and a pot. God creates the principle that beans will taste better and be digested more easily when they're cooked. God creates the principle that water boils when heated with fire. Then it's up to us.

We have the power to abide or not abide by these principles of God's law, to use or not use them to make a good meal. We can choose to put the pot on our heads, eat raw beans and pour the water onto the ground. We can do all sorts of silly or ignorant things with the best of ingredients and the most wonderful natural laws.

Look around at the world. People say, "Why does God allow children to starve, why does God allow innocent people to be murdered, why does God allow so many wars?" But God has merely created all possibilities, including the ingredients necessary for a miserable world or a wonderful world. We have the free will to use the ingredients in a way which will bring more peace or more suffering. That's our choice, yours & mine, all the time.

We continue to choose anger over Love, fear over Love, national boundaries over Love, greed over Love, race over Love, self-protection over Love. God has given us Free Will so that we can make such choices. If we don't like the way the world is going, then we can begin to choose differently right now, today, right here, wherever we are. Waiting for everyone else to change first is a fool's game. Waiting for others to love us first, before we are willing to love them, is a fool's game.

The Buddha said that the biggest mistake we can make is to want to be loved. How much we are loved by others is often outside our power. But what is within our power is our choice to love others. On the cross, hated and mocked, Jesus chose to say, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." He loved them. He showed us the Way. He provided an example of following the Buddha's advice: Focus on your ability to love, not your demand to receive it.

Choose kindness, choose love and unselfishness, choose faith, choose humility, even on death row or in the hospital or out on the streets sleeping under a bridge. Very often our immediate environments or circumstances are not under our control, but our choice of Faith and Love always is. We will not be judged by what others did to us, but by how we responded. As a society, we will not be judged by how much crime there was, but by how we dealt with it. Look at the sad choices we're making!

From the eyes of the Spirit, it is never too late to turn it around. And once we do, all those very things we considered to be our worst failures turn out to have been the very building blocks of our compassion and humility.

I love the story of Simon Peter. He was the boldest, the bravest, the most macho of all Jesus' disciples. When Jesus asked all the apostles, "How do you see me?," Peter was the only one who had the guts to say, "I see you as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God." Peter was a no- nonsense kind of guy. But he wasn't humble. He hadn't failed enough yet. He thought he was tough.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus hinted that there would be some trouble. Peter's response: "Well, even if the others run away, I will never leave you, Lord; I will never betray you." Jesus said, "Oh, Peter, you're just like all the rest." Peter's reply: "No way, Lord. I will not betray you. I would give my life for you!" Jesus said, "Peter, before the cock crows tomorrow morning, you will deny three times that you ever even knew me."

No way. Not Peter. Tough guy. Righteous con. Not a coward. "Jesus is wrong this time. I'll prove it to him."

We all know how it turned out, but have you ever thought about why? And why would Jesus then make that very same coward the rock of His church for all time to come? He ran away. He lied. He chickened out. He betrayed Him. He failed miserably to be a decent human being. And that is precisely what made him ready to be the rock of the church. The one quality Peter lacked was humility. He thought he was better than all the rest, better than you and me. How then could he lead us to salvation?

So Peter's most miserable worldly failure led to his greatest spiritual success. His pride was humbled. That's what it took.

You and I have failed many times. We have let people down. We have been cowards, cheats, liars. We have hurt ourselves and others. If we allow our failures to open us up instead of shut us down, if we allow them to humble us instead of defeat us, then every lousy thing we have ever done can be turned into the very foundation of our devotion and compassion.

Do you "free-worlders" think you are better than a convict? Do you convicts think you are better than a snitch? Do you snitches think you are better than a baby-raper? Then you haven't failed enough yet. We are not better than anyone. That's the message. We have no right to look down on anyone, no matter what they have done.

Every human being contains the highest of the high and the lowest of the low. Peter had to find it out the hard way. I hope you and I don't. Peter must have been so ashamed and humiliated, he probably never wanted to show his face again. But he did. He came down from his lofty perch. He didn't quit or run away. He didn't try to forget all about it. He accepted his flawed nature, opened his heart and moved forward a quieter, gentler man who knew he indeed was "just like all the rest." He could then become the saint we are all destined to become.

So the question is, are you using your failures yet? Are you getting the spiritual point of your failures, and moving into a lifestyle devoted to faith and kindness and helping others? You and I deal with many people every day. Every one of those people hopes we are kind and humble and unselfish. They don't care where we learned it. They don't care whether it came easy or hard, or through failures or successes. If the building you are sitting in catches on fire, the people around you don't care where or how you developed courage; they just hope you've got it now so you can help them!

One thing you can begin taking for granted is that every person you meet who seems to have courage, dignity, compassion and humility, has experienced failure and weakness and shame. So don't be an egomaniac and feel like you're the only one, or you're a worse one than the next. Everybody's got that stuff. Our spiritual victory rests only on what we are willing to do with it.

Sita and Josh and I, along with all the members of our community, wish you every blessing during this Holy Season. We love you and are grateful to know you. May you take courage and be of good cheer. You are never alone or unloved, and there is a saint within you patiently yearning to be expressed more fully through your life.

With Love,

At one station the doors opened, and suddenly the afternoon quiet was shattered by a man bellowing violent, incomprehensible curses. The man staggered into our car. He wore laborer's clothing, and he was big, drunk, and dirty. Screaming, he swung at a woman holding a baby. The blow sent her spinning into the laps of an elderly couple. It was a miracle that the baby was unharmed.

"Aikido," my teacher said again and again, "is the art of reconciliation. Whoever has the mind to fight has broken his connection with the universe. If you try to dominate people, you are already defeated. We study how to resolve conflict, not how to start it."

This is it" I said to myself, getting to my feet. People are in danger and if I don't do something fast, they will probably get hurt.

I wheeled to my left; the drunk spun to his right. We both stared down at a little old Japanese. He must have been well into his seventies, this tiny gentleman, sitting there immaculate in his kimono. He took no notice of me, but beamed delightedly at the laborer, as though he had a most important, most welcome secret to share.

The big man followed, as if on a string. He planted his feet belligerently in front of the old gentleman, and roared above the clacking wheels, "Why the hell should I talk to you?" The drunk now had his back to me. If his elbow dropped so much as a millimeter, I'd drop him in his socks.

As he struggled to follow the old man's conversation, the drunk's face began to soften. His fists slowly unclenched. "Yeah," he said, "I love persimmons too..." His voice trailed off.

"Yes," said the old man, smiling, "and I'm sure you have a wonderful wife."

Now it was my turn. Standing there in my well-scrubbed youthful innocence, my make-this-world-safe-for-democracy righteousness, I suddenly felt dirtier than he was.

I turned my head for one last look. The laborer was sprawled on the seat, his head in the old man's lap. The old man was softly stroking the filthy, matted hair.

Love, Hurting Bad, M

You did a terrible, terrible thing. You know that. You can't take it back. You know that, too. You'll be experiencing the consequences of it for the rest of your life - whether you get out of prison or not. You know that, too. So you already know all the things that look hopeless and painful and make you consider suicide.

You notice, I didn't say "ends," I said "changes," because ending the pain is merely one more example of selfish thinking. That's what prompted the murder in the first place - incredible selfishness. You will not find your way out of this by selfishness. You will find meaning, purpose & strength only by changing that lifelong pattern of selfishness, which will take a lot of practice and constant vigilance.

And we'll try to help you. We try to dedicate our lives to kindness and a lot of practice -meditation, prayer, healthy diet, etc. - because we have felt this Great Love and Mercy and we know that it's really all that counts.

How do you start? - no drugs, no booze, no scamming, no porno magazines, no lies; it means really becoming like a monk in that cell. Study my books, put them into practice. Meditate. Develop self-discipline and true kindness. See yourself as a humble student beginning a well-worn path to salvation. Whether you know it or not, you will have the invisible help and blessings of all the saints and sages right there where you are. You will have guidance when you need it.

GOOD WORKS

Donny's story is known by many people around the world. Arrested for a nonviolent Quaker antiwar protest outside the White House when he was 22, he chose to spend a few days in jail rather than pay a $10 fine which he thought was wrong. He was a young man of strong principles. To "teach him a lesson," the warden placed him in the meanest cellblock in the joint, where Donny was savagely raped by more than fifty inmates over a two-day period. Dazed, traumatized, bleeding, he threw himself off the tier to escape further abuse. His body and mind were broken in ways few of us could ever imagine. That was 1971.

Donny never did really recover, yet he did an incredible job of trying to prevent that sort of thing from happening to others. He founded an organization called Stop Prison Rape, testified before numerous senate committees, gave scores of interviews and wrote passionately to bring this problem out of the national closet to force us to deal with the horrors which nearly every young, small offender in this country must worry about. Donny was a true spiritual warrior. Deeply injured himself, he still crawled back out to the front lines and kept fighting the good fight for the sake of others until the day he died. May he be richly blessed!

Frankie Parker, on the other hand, "deserved what he got," according to most people. He was a killer. No good. Dead man walking. The fact that, like many murderers throughout religious history, Frankie let the old self die and a new, transformed one be born, does not seem to be of much importance these days. Saul of Tarsus killed women and children, he was a much worse guy than Frankie, and he became St. Paul. But few people these days want to believe a human being can change so radically.

Frankie didn't especially believe it himself. But it happened. He was tossed a book on Buddhism once, basically as a joke, and it changed his life forever. Over a period of years, he became serious. He studied. He prayed. He meditated. He opened his heart to the suffering of all beings. He dedicated his mind and heart to compassion.

Frankie was fine about being executed. He had made his peace. It isn't Frankie I feel bad for, it's the rest of us - a society which doesn't know what else to do with people like Frankie; a society which continues to express a message to its children that it's all right to kill people who kill people. I can't understand the logic of that myself, so how can our children?

By the time he died, Frankie Parker was ordained as a Buddhist monk by my friend, Rev. Kobutsu Malone. Kobutsu spent that final day with Frankie and witnessed his execution. Kobutsu watched the state of Arkansas intentionally murder a humble man, a follower of the one classic spiritual path of love and compassion. He may have been a man with a terrible history, but many of the great ones also had terrible histories. Whatever happened in the past, the truth in the present moment was that the state killed a man whose final message was one of forgiveness, goodwill, and nonviolence. Can we afford to lose one that way? Can we be so fussy as to insist that our good guys have only good deeds in their past? If that's the case, go ahead and scratch out nearly all of Jesus' original apostles. They were a rough crowd. And scratch you and me; we have some pretty shameful deeds in our past, too.