So now people are finally bringing the revolution to the streets. At New York’s Stock Exchange, we suddenly see hundreds of people, young and old, protesting greed, protesting banks and bankers, protesting the stock market, protesting something almost indefinable now in the air in America. It is despair, it is disgust, with our own government. [...]
The uprisings and revolts taking place throughout the Arab world are astonishing harbingers of a new world order emerging, not only in that part of the globe, but all over the planet. We have not yet seen the true face of this revolution. The old ways are no longer holding. Autocracy is on its way [...]
At a recent stop in Orlando, Michelle Bachmann, campaigning for President of the United States, was quoted as saying: “Washington, D.C., you’d think by now they’d get the message. An earthquake. A hurricane. Are you listening? The American people have done everything they can. Now it’s time for an act of God and we’re getting [...]
A week ago, Dennis Kucinich gave a speech in Seattle. It is about a new America, and the Dream of America. It is about the kind of America we all yearn for, and envision for our children. Draw your own conclusions. Here is the speech: Hello Seattle. On this day, in this place of great [...]
Hiroshima. August 6, 1945. The Bomb. The after effects of that first atomic bomb still linger on in the psyche of the world, especially in the United States. At the end of the War, a scenario was scripted and promoted by the U. S. government, which basically argued that the dropping of the atomic bomb [...]
The recent collision of interests between Democrats and Republicans over raising the debt ceiling masks a virulent and insidious intent behind all the posturing on the part of a growing cadre of Republicans. The talk is of revamping Social Security and Medicare on the one hand, and raising taxes on the other, and there seems [...]
Walt Whitman, the great bard of America, sang of simple men and women, and of a promise of America that went way beyond the economic dream that is now so associated with the American Dream. In “Democratic Vistas”, he wrote: “I hail with joy the oceanic, variegated, intense practical energy, the demand for facts, even [...]
What do Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, and the Buddha have to do with each other? The Buddha is the only force that can defeat the Bomb and the threat of nuclear annihilation. We are not speaking here of a superhuman being, or god, when we say the Buddha, but rather the power that each person inherently [...]
Democracy, and especially democracy in America, is a concept we usually take for granted. It means a vast variety of things: freedom, liberty, the right to vote, equal representation, freedom of religion, and so on. The world is now experiencing a vast upheaval throughout the Mideast and Arab countries; and for us here in the [...]
Who are we? Buddhism has always looked deeply into this question. In “The Buddha and the Dream of America”, author James Hilgendorf ‘s new book, our deepest identity is at the very core of the answer – an identity that looks beyond the more common ways we identify ourselves, by religion, by gender, by ethnicity, [...]