Rev. Danny Fisher

Photo by Soe Than Win for the AFP.

Today’s quote is from Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s democratically-elected Prime Minister, Nobel Peace laureate, and socially-engaged Buddhist icon who has spent fifteen of the last twenty-two years under house arrest. (She was released from her latest house arrest late last year.) Earlier this year, she was named one of Time Magazine‘s “100 Most Influential People” for 2011. This is it — from her recent Reith Lecture:

There is certainly a danger that the acceptance of spiritual freedom as a satisfactory substitute for all other freedoms could lead to passivity and resignation. But an inner sense of freedom can reinforce a practical drive for the more fundamental freedoms in the form of human rights and rule of law. Buddhism teaches that the ultimate liberation is liberation from all desire. It could be argued, therefore, that the teachings of the Buddha are inimical to movements that are based on the desire for freedom in the form of human rights and political reform. However, when the Buddhist monks of Burma went on a Metta – that is loving kindness – march in 2007, they were protesting against the sudden steep rise in the price of fuel that had led to a devastating rise in food prices. They were using the spiritual authority to move for the basic right of the people to affordable food.

The belief in spiritual freedom does not have to mean an indifference to the practical need for the basic rights and freedoms that are generally seen as necessary that human beings may live like human beings.