Thursday, July 29, 2010

Live and Death of a Bodhissatva

 Yesterday we lost a prominent peace activist, Art Gish (obituary here).  Tom and I saw him and his wife Peggy speak a year or two ago.  They were unforgettable.  An article by Art describing the event above, where he is standing down a tank in Hebron, gives a good idea of the courage in the face of death these two people have lived by.

The Gishes were on the Christian Peacemakers' team, yet something Peggy said at that talk struck me as perfectly Buddhist - in fact, as a Bodhissatva talking.  I asked her how she managed to find the courage to walk children to school past a phalanx of boy soldiers armed with automatic rifles.  She replied, "Every morning I pray to be animated by love.  The day doesn't go so well when I forget."


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