{"id":61926,"date":"2017-01-18T16:59:44","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T15:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cetr.net\/?p=61926&lang=en"},"modified":"2017-01-18T16:59:44","modified_gmt":"2017-01-18T15:59:44","slug":"the-bodhisattva-path-in-the-trump-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/the-bodhisattva-path-in-the-trump-era\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bodhisattva Path in the Trump Era"},"content":{"rendered":"

A talk given at St. Paul\u2019s United Methodist Church (November 22, 2016)<\/span><\/strong>
\nTranscribed by Jeffrey Fuller and edited by David Loy<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s been two weeks today since the election, and many of us are still in a state of shock \u2014traumatized, disheartened if not depressed, anxious, angry, fearful and somewhat confused, wondering what\u2019s going to come next \u2014 \u00a0and wondering if there might be some silver lining to what\u2019s happening. My response today has two parts. First I\u2019d like to identify a very real silver lining, or at least the possibility of a silver lining, depending on how we respond to the situation. And then I\u2019d like to say a bit about what I think is the most important contribution of Buddhist teachings to this situation, which can help us understand and respond to it.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s begin with a Zen story that\u2019s been circulating on the Internet. A student asks the master, \u201cWhen times of great difficulty visit us, how should we meet them?\u201d And the answer is, \u201cWelcome.\u201d This path that we\u2019re on is not about avoiding difficulties. That doesn\u2019t mean passively accepting those difficulties when they present themselves, but it does mean engaging with them, not trying to avoid them. Another story is also quite relevant here: the student asks the master, \u201cWhat is the constant activity of all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas?\u201d In other words, what is it that awakened people are doing all the time \u2014 what is special about the way they live in the world moment by moment?\u201d And the answer from the master is, \u201cResponding appropriately.\u201d In one way that seems very simple, but in another way it\u2019s not, because in order to know how to respond appropriately, we have to understand the situation that we are in.<\/p>\n

Download the talk<\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A talk given at St. Paul\u2019s United Methodist Church (November 22, 2016)
\nTranscribed by Jeffrey Fuller and edited by David Loy —<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been two weeks today since the election, and many of us are still in a state of shock \u2014traumatized, disheartened if not depressed, anxious, angry, fearful and somewhat confused, wondering what\u2019s going to come next \u2014 and wondering if there might be some silver lining to what\u2019s happening. My response today has two parts. First I\u2019d like to identify a very real silver lining, or at least the possibility of a silver lining, depending on how we respond to the situation. And then I\u2019d like to say a bit about what I think is the most important contribution of Buddhist teachings to this situation, which can help us understand and respond to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61927,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,457,193,11,190],"tags":[],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-61926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-en","category-budhisme-en","category-changing-society","category-uncategorized","category-wisdom-in","entry","has-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61928,"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61926\/revisions\/61928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61926"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cetr.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_series?post=61926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}