A dear friend of mine asked me this question:  what is a monk/contemplative person to do in times as these?  A good question….and with some urgency.  Also a very difficult question; there’s a lot packed inside it.  Simple “black-and-white” type of answers would only lead us into deeper blindness.  In fact this is the type of question in life that tends to answer itself if given time and a sincere heart.  But I will chip in with a few comments and observations that might point in the right direction.

I am reminded of the time I was studying theology in Berkeley back about 1983, and I was a member of the Catholic peace group, Pax Christi.   It was the high time of the “Reagan Revolution” and he seemed to be pushing things toward a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union….a lot of people were scared that this was the case.  It was also the time when the movie “Gandhi” came out   Some were inspired and motivated by the movie to “imitate” Gandhi….a group of Catholic activists in the Oakland area decided to undertake a total fast until the U.S. stopped its nuclear arms production.  That was about 15 people who looked very sincere and determined to starve themselves to death if necessary.  We in Pax Christi were alarmed about what might happen because we knew damn well that the folks in Washington were not going to pay any attention to such a gesture.  A big meeting was called at GTU….about 100-200 people showed up….we were to discuss what our position as Christians should be toward all this.  Before the meeting some Pax Christi leaders urged me to consult Michael Nagler, with whom I had had several talks.  Nagler was a professor of  classics at Cal, founder of the Peace Studies Program at Cal, and most importantly a true disciple of Gandhi and very well-versed in Gandhi’s teaching.  I asked him what Gandhi’s perspective would be on what these peace activists were doing.  He was very direct: “A tragic mistake.”  His point was that Gandhi carefully chose his actions and sought limited attainable goals and most importantly the protest did not seek “victory” over the “other” but his change of heart, to win him over.  In other words, Gandhi’s protests were rooted in a deep, spiritual wisdom without losing sight of the nitty-gritty of everyday life.  And the key word in all this is “wisdom.”  We are not talking about political savvy, or ability to manipulate people towards ends that you think are good, or just venting frustration and anger.  This wisdom comes from a deep sophianic  vision of life, seeing into one’s own  heart and seeing the wholeness of existence.  This led to his fundamental principle of life: satyagraha, non-violence.  Concretely, this can lead to unexpected gestures….example:  early  on in India Gandhi mobilized a national strike against the British rule.  When things started getting out of hand and some violence erupted, he suspended the strike going against all the wishes and inclinations of all the other Indian leaders.  After all, they said, we have the Brits scared now, they will relent, we will win.  Gandhi’s reply:  we want not a “victory” over them but to win them over…..we may not be ready for independence.  When the Brits leave we want them to  leave as friends not as defeated enemies. He shut down the movement for years; here is AI’s summary of all that:

 The movement, launched in 1920, was intended to be a non-violent campaign against British rule. It involved Indians boycotting British goods and institutions and resigning from official titles and services.

The campaign gained immense momentum, uniting a broad spectrum of Indian society and spreading political consciousness even in historically inactive regions. 

The Chauri Chaura Incident (February 1922)

The violence: On February 4, 1922, a mob of protesters at Chauri Chaura village clashed with police. The police opened fire on the crowd, which then retaliated by attacking and burning the police station, killing 22 policemen.

• Gandhi’s response: Devastated by the violence, which violated his core principle of satyagraha (non-violent resistance), Gandhi immediately called off the national movement.
• Reaction to the decision: The sudden suspension shocked and angered many Congress Party leaders, including Jawaharlal Nehru, who believed the movement was at its peak. However, Gandhi insisted that the people were not adequately trained for non-violence.

Now none of the above is meant to devalue the act of protest, nor does it say that protest is problematic in itself.  As Ezra Pound put it, “A man with a sensitive nose living in a sewer is bound to say something.”  Whenever we encounter something seriously wrong, an injustice, an evil…within the civic body…it is a necessary act and a spiritual act to say NO.  But our “NO” has to be grounded in a great YES.  It has to be a No based in truth and in compassion for all creatures.  And this truth is never “political” in the sense of Left vs. Right, Conservative vs. Liberal, this party or that party.  It is political in the sense that we are all members of the “polis,” that community of obligations and freedoms and relationships that allow all of us to flourish in a deeply human way.  And this NO is never some formula or some fixed pattern for all; it can be embodied in some very different ways.  Note some examples:

1. Rosa Parks.  When Rosa Parks refused to comply with Jim Crow segregation rules on a bus….and so started a whole movement of non-violent NO to segregation…..

2. An authentic sannyasi sitting in a Himalayan forest intoxicated with the Divine Presence……

3. Wendell Berry, poet, writer, farmer.  Berry was an excellent writer, but he lived a quiet life “off the beaten path.”  When the Vietnam war was raging he issued this statement:

“We have become blind to the alternatives to violence. This involves us in a sort of official madness, in which, while following what seems to be a perfect logic of self-defense and deterrence, we commit one absurdity after another: We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to ‘win the hearts and minds of the people’ by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the ‘truth’ of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations. … I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war.”

And then he went back to his small farm……

4. Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk, writer……

A beautiful, beautiful person, who had a long history of “protesting from the heart.”  About his teaching and his approach, I could not say it better than this short article:

https://www.stillwatermpc.org/dharma-topics/protesting-from-the-heart/

And I recall that remarkable silent march in LA  in 2005:

“On October 9, 2005 the Associated Press reported, “There was no cheering, no chanting and no sign waving. The march organized by Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh brought together 3,000 people to enjoy an unusual state in this city – silence. Activist mom Cindy Sheehan, who garnered national attention this summer with her anti-war vigil outside President Bush’s Crawford ranch, was among those who attended the event at MacArthur Park west of downtown Los Angeles. She and Hanh embraced before the march began, but Hanh was not shy about expressing his view of Sheehan’s tactics. ‘I don’t think shouting angrily at government can help us end the war,’ he said. ‘When we are able to change our own thinking, the government will have to change.’ Hanh later told the audience: ‘We don’t think shouting in anger can help. If you make people angry and fearful, then you cannot reduce violence and fear. When you speak to people, you should speak to them in a language they can understand. By doing that, we can turn our enemies into our friends.'”

And there are so many other beautiful examples…..

My friend also introduced a very troubling issue….he laments that only about 150 people turned out for a protest against the actions of President Trump….and this  in a deeply “Blue” area.  I am not going to speculate about this particular situation, but I want to step back and take a look at the bigger picture and this looks very bleak.  (And also where are all the “protesters” of what is happening in Gaza this past year even though we as a country are deeply, deeply implicated?)

First of all, we are a democracy and “the people” have spoken.  Donald Trump was the people’s choice,  It doesn’t mean that you and I have to like this or passively accept it, but we do have to ask ourselves “why and how” did this happen?  To understand that we really need to see that President Trump, no matter how toxic his policies are and how harmful his actions are, is actually only the symptom of our deep problem as a culture, as a society, as an economy, as a nation, and which was manifest in our history long ago for those  with eyes to see it.  Chris Hedges has written to a certain extent about all this for the past few years, catching a glimpse of “the problem” as it were; but he has been especially acute in pointing out how both political parties, the Republicans AND the Democrats have had a big hand through our history  in bringing us to where we are now, spiraling downward and deeper into our own incoherence…..just like ancient Rome…..we can neither stand what ails us, nor its cure….elections provide few real choices….choosing the lesser of two evils decade after decade after decade eviscerates political vision for real change and citizens are left with propaganda, lies, empty slogans like “hope and change,”….”make America great again,” etc.  Our politicians, all of them, are too often like magicians….seemingly doing something with one hand while doing something different with the other.  They are certainly not like that Desert Father (or Gandhi) who said, “I am the same outside as I am inside.”  You are not going to have collective transparency until you have a little bit of that.

I am not going to go into all that here.  Suffice it to say that all we can do is say our NO in the best way we can, grounded in truth and in compassion for all creatures.  Speaking of which, we have trashed our natural world, our home, for centuries now; and ameliorations in recent decades have been a pittance, more like a gesture to fool ourselves that no radical change is needed.  Well, now the mask is off, and it’s “drill, baby, drill,” etc.   I will let Wendell Berry have the  last say on all this:

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”

When Mother Nature says NO……

Meanwhile I will follow Berry’s advice from one of his poems:  “go, practice resurrection.”  And so I will try to learn how to sincerely say to Donald Trump, “Namaste.”