The Desire to Change the World

In reading and discussing the last section in Chapter 5 last Sunday we got into a discussion on how you change the world and other people.  This is a critical question in Buddhism, as what is the point of attaining insight into ourselves and how to live if it can't be shared in a meaningful way.  It is especially a problem in the Mahayana tradition as your motivation for enlightenment is for the purpose of helping others.

Making this question current and relevant is the display of violence this past week involving the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and others in Arizona.  How can our study, meditation and the rest prevent such tragedies from occurring?  How do we share the truth of compassion and interdependence of life with those who, not only have not realized it, but act in a contrary violent way?  Shantideva also asked this question hundreds of years ago in ancient India and gives us an answer that is not totally satisfactory but has a ring of truth to it.

Harmful beings are everywhere like space itself.
Impossible it is that all should be suppressed,
But let this angry mind alone be overthrown,
And it is though all foes have been subdued.

To cover all the earth with sheets of leather-
Where could such amounts of skin be found?
But with the leather soles of just my shoes
It is as though I cover all the earth!

And thus the outer course of things
I myself cannot restrain.
But let me just restrain my mind,
And what is left to be restrained?

Through working on ourselves in an honest and true way and living as an example of someone who has transcended negative emotions (or at least is working to do so) is the best way to change the world.  We are interconnected and we do influence others and the world everyday.  For Americans this approach may seem slow and ineffective.  But look at your own life for a moment and what has made you change or inspired new ways of thinking in you?  Change is never successfully imposed from the outside.  Instead meaningful change grows from the inside out because people are inspired by an experience or another person to look at the world and act in a different way.

In spite of our best intentions, we cannot force the world to change even if it is for the better.  Shantideva points out that we just don't have the power to do that.  We must inspire change and prove it is possible by doing it, and in this way we will change the world...even if it not as fast and as dramatic as the world needs or as we would like.