MOLI VIEW™

Worldly ambition always has a cruel advantage over spiritual goodness. Just look at pictures coming out of Myanmar (formerly Burma) of Buddhist monks tortured and killed by the ruling military junta. The Generals have cracked down on a protest that began in August and has inspired the country's nearly half a million monks to take to the streets, calling for the junta to step down.

There is no doubt who has the moral high ground. In protest of a brutal regime that has killed at least nine protesters so far this week, and some 3,000 citizens during the nation's last push for democracy in 1988, the monks have turned their begging bowls upside down, i.e., rejected alms from the military and their families. This is a particularly potent gesture because, in this profoundly Buddhist country, the military regime's authority rests in large part on its caring for the monks, who in turn grant their benefactors a kind of spiritual credit or "merit."

"Begging," in Buddhist terms, grants a gift to the giver who is otherwise more concerned with getting and spending than with truth, beauty, and kindness.
Those of us watching from far away can support the monks and other Burmese democracy-seekers by boycotting Chevron gas and Burmese rubies, goading our representatives to action, and turning out for a march and prayer vigil planned in San Francisco and elsewhere for October 5.
We can also further the monk's good works, whether or not we share their Buddhist faith, by reciting — or more importantly, by living by — the Metta Sutra, the Buddhist scripture on Loving-Kindness that has been the protest's rallying chant. (This translation comes from a somewhat bizarre video of an English-language teaching on the Metta Sutra.):

This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness and who knows the path of peace.
Let them be abled and upright, straightforward and gentle in speech, humble and not conceited, contented and easily satisfied. Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways, peaceful and calm and wise and skillful, not proud and demanding in nature, let them not do the slightest thing that the wise would later reprove.
Wishing in gladness and safety, may all beings be at ease. Whatever living beings there may be, whether they are weak or strong, omitting none, the great or the mighty, medium, short, or small, the seen and unseen, those living near and far away, those born and to be born, may all beings be at ease.
Let none deceive another or despise any being in any state.
Let none, through anger or ill will, wish harm upon another. Even as a mother protects with her life, her child, her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings, radiating kindness over the entire world, spreading upwards through the skies and downwards to the depths, outward and unbounded.
Freed from hatred and ill will, whether standing or walking, seated or lying down, free from drowsiness, one should sustain this recollection. This is said to be the sublime abiding. By not holding to fixed views, the pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision, being free of all sense desires, is not born again into this world.
— Metta Sutra (Buddhist Scripture on Loving-Kindness)

Celeste Fraser Delgado is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Worthy Causes.

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