Progress and the human heart

The Dalai Lama seems to understand the motivations driving much of the world's chaos, violence, and ideological clash and confusion, right now. It is so refreshing reading an important political figure talking so openly about compassion as a central virtue of humanity and a more realistic and constructive political outlook.

My Vision of a Compassionate Future

The current and quickly passing political period asserts that it is figures like Malcolm X and Osama Bin Laden, ideologues who flank their moderate brethren and impose or threaten their will with force, who drive progress in the world.

The Dalai Lama thinks it is leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King who understand more deeply the human condition and work out of compassion and ideas rather than with force and violence.

Something tells me the political and cultural warriors are full of shit and that there is more to the Dalai Lama's fruity, naive, sissy-boy - soft - compassion than the ideologues either understand or appreciate.

But they will appreciate it. Because their efforts will continue to falter and fail until they do.

And how refreshing to have one person with the courage and heart to say so out loud.

Love,
Ben