I’ll admit that the heat, the strange city, and the excitement of the high energy, coming not only from the NKT, but from the anticipation of His Holiness’ visits to the different venues, made the days rather blurry. I’m not sure what day, or at which venue, much of what we did took place. I was always trying to stay one jump ahead of the NKT. Sometimes I was successful, and sometimes not, although I think our presence—mine and Rita’s--was a source of irritation to the demonstrators. “Bless their bony little hearts,” as my grandmother used to say. I think that deep down I took a certain amount of pleasure at irritating them, on the one hand, and on the other hand, there was a niggling bit of guilt at what I was doing. I felt sad for them, and I really didn’t want to cause them grief, but I did it anyway. In hindsight, I took comfort from His Holiness’ talk at Princeton today. It was beautiful and inspiring, and one of the many things I took from that talk was the fact that it is possible to care about others, but that it isn’t necessary to condone what they are doing. HHDL talked about “pushing back” (not using those exact words) when something is being done that appears harmful to others. My perception of what the demonstrators are doing is harming others, but they perceive it quite differently, as part of their altruistic motivation. Still, I have a strong conviction that they are not only harming others, but that they are harming themselves, as well. As His Holiness said this morning, paraphrased, take the broad view—see the big picture. So, the saga continues. I’ll post more specifics later.
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:08:53 +0000