In today's Globe and Mail, Michael Valpy starts off his "Public Good" in a ridiculous manner, but it does contain this quote from Ursula Franklin that I liked...
Ursula Franklin: The system 'has never worked'
By MICHAEL VALPY
Saturday, January 19, 2002 – Page F6
"Just as there are universal laws of nature from which humanity cannot opt out, Franklin said, so there are universal laws of human affairs -- love, community, justice, peace, respect for each individual's worth...
They are not achieved, Franklin said, by putting resources into violence. They are achieved by realists such as Nelson Mandela, who, as she said, "fixed South Africa without bombing the smithereens out of people."
There are, as Mandela proved, things that work, she said. "Peace is not the absence of war but the absence of fear, which is the presence of justice.
"You can't use justice to promote it just for yourself, or promote peace just for yourself. It must be for all."
posted at 1:51 PM
from the introduction to
Karen Armstrong's Buddhapg. xxvii
But the Buddha is also a challenge because he is more radical than most of us. There is a creeping new orthodoxy in modern society that is sometimes called "positive thinking". At its worst this habit of optimism allows us to bury our heads in the sand, deny the ubiquity of pain in ourselves and others, and to immure ourselves in a state of deliberate heartlessness to ensure our emotional survival. The Buddha would have little time for this. In his view, the spiritual life cannot begin until people allow themselves to be invaided by the reality of suffering, realize how fully it permeates our whole experience and feel pain of all other beings, even those whom we do not feel congenial.
posted at 1:44 PM
