Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Mitsu Hadeishi (mitsu@well.com) says it extremely well. Well, it is possible that Shakyamuni was a bit more of a politician than we might give him credit for---ultimately, he DID open up the teachings to women, but his initial reluctance could have been a sort of way to get people to accept it a little more gracefully than they might if he just sort of went against local cultural custom and just mandated it, so to speak. It's at least the kind of tricky gambit I could imagine someone like that would pull off---just the sort of reverse psychology my father always likes to pull, at least, so I kind of feel that it could have been a contributing factor to his stance then. Of course, the other view is simply that Shakyamuni, like all of us, still had to wrestle with certain issues of his own cultural conditioning, and was not entirely free of them (as are none of us, by necessity). I think people like Mother Theresa are very important to the world, but in a way the kind of compassion which she showed was in some sense the easiest to recognize, and despite all the hardships which she encountered, it was still in some sense an easy and straightforward sort of compassion. She once said that when she came to America she felt that the problem of dealing with people's suffering here was far more difficult, because in India she could simply give people food when they were hungry, or clothes when they were cold, but here, people already have enough food and clothing and need something else, their problems are much more complex. You know, in a way, an amoeba doesn't need Buddhism; we need Buddhism because we're so complex that our own power and ability create problems which are in some ways, ironically, much worse than the problems that creatures with much less intellect (or no intellect at all) suffer. Though we don't have to worry nearly as much about the problems they suffer, we're very good at creating our own, we build them up from the depths. I think the real challenge for us as we evolve is to do so in such a way that we maintain a connection with that original root at all times, even as we gain intellect and ability and so forth. You know? So, while I laud Mother Theresa and her work, I also laud the people who try to make our complex and varied civilization even at the more affluent levels, more livable, sane, sustainable, etc.