Rev. Danny Fisher

Here’s a neat story about a Buddhist chaplain/teacher’s peacework in Providence, RI:

Monks in saffron robes, Sikhs, Hindus and Jewish and Christian clergy along with scores of others drawn by thoughts of peace held a silent and meditative walk past fluttering flags and through the gardens of the South Side Community Land Trust yesterday in what is becoming an annual tradition.

The silent walk, led by Joanne Friday, who is a Dharma teacher and the Buddhist chaplain at the University of Rhode Island, was part of a two-hour program of flag making, face painting, and drumming organized by the Peace Flag Project and the American Friends Service Committee to help celebrate the United Nations International Day of Peace.

Although the day has been celebrated on most years on Sept. 21, one of the Rhode Island co-organizers, Virginia Fox, said the celebration here was pushed back two days this year to accommodate the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur.

“If you were ever in Tibet, you’d notice that the Buddhists hang flags everywhere, each with prayers on them for peace, kindness, compassion and generosity,” she explained. “They believe that their wishes and prayers are carried around the world on the wind.”

Fox said that she and Jane Maguire, working independently, came to the idea that in Rhode Island it would be nice to encourage people to put their own wishes, hopes and dreams on flags with the idea that these ideas can also travel the world.

The resulting Peace Flag Day project drew only 40 people when they held the first one at the Quaker Meeting House three years ago, but 120 came the following year at Providence’s Market Square Park, and 160 last year.

“Everything big starts small,” she said. “Our idea is to have an event that will allow people to hold peace, embody peace, and to be about peace and see what happens. I like to say this in an event that can be a start of a ripple that goes out so more and more people think about peace and how they live with each other …

“When they talk about peace, most people talk about finding their own personal inner peace, or they’ll talk about world peace. This is about the middle part where I believe people can have an effect.

“How we live and how we treat people every day. It means fair pay for a day’s work. It means being kind to the people in our family and in the world. It’s about what ordinary people can do.”

Friday, the Buddhist teacher, said that Gandhi once remarked that “we need to be the change we want to see in the world.”

“That’s what we are trying to do here. We’re trying to make as many people as possible come together, walk together and be peaceful. The thing that causes us to be at war is our sense of separation from each other.”

Rabbi Alan Flam, Jewish chaplain at Brown University and head of the Rhode Island Board of Rabbis, appeared to agree, saying that peace is not the absence of war, but a building of relationships with people with whom one has been estranged.

“One of the things that I talked about on Yom Kippur,” he said, “is falling into despair. Anyone who does activist work knows how easy it is to become frustrated and even despairing, given how complicated and broken this is.”

Here’s what’s happening in Myanmar right now, courtesy of the Associated Press:

As many as 100,000 protesters led by a phalanx of barefoot monks marched Monday in the most powerful show of strength yet from a movement that has grown in a week from faltering demonstrations to one rivaling the failed 1988 pro-democracy uprising.

[...]

Marching for more than five hours and over at least 12 miles, a last hard-core group of more than 1,000 maroon-robed Buddhist monks and 400 sympathizers finished by walking up to an intersection where police blocked access to the street where democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is under house arrest.

Making no effort to push past, the marchers chanted a Buddhist prayer with the words “May there be peace,” and then dispersed. About 500 onlookers cheered the act of defiance, as 100 riot police with helmets and shield stared stonily ahead.

Some participants said there were several hundred thousand marchers in their ranks, but an international aid agency official with employees monitoring the crowd estimated said the size was well over 50,000 and approaching 100,000.

In addition, the monks protesting received support from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet:

I extend my support and solidarity with the recent peaceful movement for democracy in Burma.

I fully support their call for freedom and democracy and take this opportunity to appeal to freedom-loving people all over the world to support such non-violent movements.

[...]

As a Buddist monk, I am appealing to the members of the military regime who believe in Buddhism to act in accordance with the sacred dharma in the spirit of compassion and non-violence.

I pray for the success of this peaceful movement and the early release of fellow Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

In spite of all this good news, however, the A.P. reports that the junta–which is currently stronger than it has ever been–has given the monks a foreboding ultimatum.

Hours after the protest ended peacefully, Myanmar’s military government broadcast an ominous warning, telling senior Buddhist clerics that unless they restrained their juniors, the government would take action on its own against those it said were instigated by the regime’s domestic and foreign enemies.

[...]

In the broadcast, [Brig. Gen. Thura Myint Maung, who is the religious affairs minister] said the protesting monks represented just 2 percent of the country’s total, but were instigated to cause trouble by the opposition National League for Democracy party, the 88 Generation Students activist group, and agitators from the West, including foreign media.

But the statement explicitly linked the protesting monks to groups the government had long treated as enemies, subject to arbitrary detention.

The military’s continued restraint seems somewhat likely, though, given a number of signifcant factors.

The usually iron-fisted junta has so far kept minimal security at the latest wave of protests, and diplomats and analysts said Myanmar’s military rulers were showing the unexpected restraint because of pressure from the country’s key trading partner and diplomatic ally, China. The government is also aware that any abuse of the monks could rouse widespread anger in this devout, predominantly Buddhist nation.

[...]

A Southeast Asian diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity as a matter of protocol, said the regime is under pressure from China to avoid a crackdown just as its larger neighbor has pressured it to speed up other democratic changes.

“Everyone knows that China is the major supporter of the junta so if government takes any action it will affect the image of China,” the diplomat told The Associated Press.

China, which is counting on Myanmar’s vast oil and gas reserves to help fuel its booming economy, earlier this year blocked a U.N. Security Council criticizing Myanmar’s rights record, saying it was not the right forum.

But at the same time, it has employed quiet diplomacy and subtle public pressure on the regime, urging it to move toward inclusive democracy.

“China is very eager to have a peaceful Burma in order to complete roads and railroads, to develop mines and finish assimilating the country under its economic control,” said Josef Silverstein, a political scientist and author of several books on Myanmar.