[Buddha-l] A friendly Quaker-Buddhist debate

[JKirkpatrick]

Steve, thanks for the comparisons and link to the anti-war
website.
Joanna 


More and more Buddhists are identifying with Quaker meetings as a
way to find like-minded individuals in their communities. It's a
natural match. As a descendant of Swiss Mennonites, it's not
always easy to integrate the past with the present, unless you
really like buttons, buggies, horses and dressing in black. But
at least we're not being tortured, imprisoned or sent to the
Venetian galleys (or the modern equivalent) as my ancestors were.
Sure, we live in a country Addicted to War
(http://www.addictedtowar.com/), but at least I'm not forced to
participate along with the right wing adherents of the Religion
of Blood and Flesh - whose symbol is a man being tortured to
death.

Steve

Tabloids, bellowing raw delight
Hail the return of the Teutonic Knights
Inbred for purity
and spoiling for a fight,

Another little puppet of the New Right

See-through dollars and mystery plays
Varied detritus of Aquarian Age
Shutters on storefronts
and shutters in the mind -

We kill ourselves to keep ourselves safe from crime:
That's the gospel of bondage...

We're so afraid of disorder
we make it into a god
We can only placate with state security laws Whose church
consists of secret courts and wiretaps and shocks Whose priests
hold smoking guns, and whose sign is the double cross But God
must be on the side of the side that's right And not the right
that justifies itself in terms of might - Least of all a bunch of
neo-nazis running hooded through the night Which may be why He's
so consipicuously out of sight Of the gospel of bondage...

You read the Bible in your special ways
You're fond of quoting certain things it says - Mouth full of
righteousness and wrath from above...

But when do we hear about forgiveness and love?

Sometimes you can hear the Spirit
whispering to you,
But if God stays silent,
what else can you do
Except listen to the silence? 
if you ever did you'd surely see
That God won't be reduced
to an ideology
Such as the gospel of bondage... 

Gospel Of Bondage --
22 February 1987. Toronto, Canada.
Bruce Cockburn
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