How Do We Look After One Another?

Dharma evenings with Derek in Toronto: Dec. 14 and 15, 7:30 pm.

How do we bring Dharma into our activism?

How do we bring activism into our Dharma?

How do we look after one another?

Let’s get together for a couple of nights and explore these questions.

The evenings are free – all are welcome. No prior meditation experience necessary.

Please call to let us know you’re coming (Tracy – 416 534-5726)

 Or Gelek (bgelek[at]gmail.com)

“There is nothing to be done. Now go and do it.” – Gandhi

(in the meantime, some excerpts from last week’s fantastic interview with Arundhati Roy….)

http://www.truth-out.org/arundhati-roy-people-who-created-crisis-will-not-be-ones-come-solution/1322765555

Arundhati Roy: “The People Who Created the Crisis Will Not Be the Ones That Come Up With a Solution”

Wednesday 30 November 2011

by: Arun Gupta, The Guardian UK

Arundhati Roy: The fact that in New York and other places where (Occupy movement) people are being beaten and evicted suggests nervousness and confusion in the ruling establishment. I think the movement will, or at least should, become a protean movement of ideas, as well as action, where the element of surprise remains with the protesters. We need to preserve the element of an intellectual ambush and a physical manifestation that takes the government and the police by surprise. It has to keep re-imagining itself, because holding territory may not be something the movement will be allowed to do in a state as powerful and violent as the United States.
[.....]
Roy: We often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word “capitalism”, but once you’ve actually seen, let’s say, what’s happening in India and the United States – that this model of US economics packaged in a carton that says “democracy” is being forced on countries all over the world, militarily if necessary, has in the United States itself resulted in 400 of the richest people owning wealth equivalent [to that] of half of the population. Thousands are losing their jobs and homes, while corporations are being bailed out with billions of dollars.
[....]
There’s something terribly wrong. No individual and no corporation should be allowed to amass that kind of unlimited wealth, including bestselling writers like myself, who are showered with royalties. Money need not be our only reward. Corporations that are turning over these huge profits can own everything: the media, the universities, the mines, the weapons industry, insurance hospitals, drug companies, non-governmental organisations. They can buy judges, journalists, politicians, publishing houses, television stations, bookshops and even activists. This kind of monopoly, this cross-ownership of businesses, has to stop.

The whole privatisation of health and education, of natural resources and essential infrastructure – all of this is so twisted and so antithetical to anything that would place the interests of human beings or the environment at the center of what ought to be a government concern – should stop. The amassing of unfettered wealth of individuals and corporations should stop. The inheritance of rich people’s wealth by their children should stop. The expropriators should have their wealth expropriated and redistributed.  [.....]
The people who created the crisis in the first place will not be the ones that come up with a solution.

That is why we must pay close attention to those with another imagination: an imagination outside of capitalism, as well as communism. We will soon have to admit that those people, like the millions of indigenous people fighting to prevent the takeover of their lands and the destruction of their environment – the people who still know the secrets of sustainable living – are not relics of the past, but the guides to our future.

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