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Talking Story 
by Polo

Ven. Master Fa Thai

When your own home is healthy and happy, others will come to you. It’s like being a good cook, a good teacher, or a good leader. If you are good, you never have to force your food, force your lessons, or force your directions, on others. Good cannot come from force.

From The Asian Reporter, V17, #3 (January 16, 2007), page 7.

It was another Sunday. An ordinary Portland Sunday morning. I prayed east, surrendering to Allah. I made me some rice porridge. I tuned our sleepy TV to NBC’s "Meet the Press." I met family at Compassionate Buddha’s Temple, inner Eastside, just off Hawthorne Boulevard.

You can do that, we can do aaall that, in America. These are reasons we come here — have always come here.

We are free to pray, to eat, to think, to feel, in as many ways as humans do, as humans can. So smart we are, we all can be.

My prayer was nice. My spice-milk-rice was steaming hot. Sunday morning’s "Meet the Press" featured Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (Senate Armed Services Committee) and Democratic Sen. Joe Biden (Senate Foreign Relations Committee). Also on, a panel of deeply educated and widely experienced senior network journalists. Everyone talked about what’s best for Iraq as we start a new year. A new plan.

At Miao-Fa Chan Temple, after Buddha Dharma sermon, after quiet meditation, a curious mix of Thai, Chinese, Indonesian, and American seekers were led in discussion by Ven. Master Fa Thai. We asked questions about what’s troubling us, about our struggling families, about our accelerated society and our wobbly world. Master Fa Thai answered from Lord Buddha’s Teachings in a careful blend of Thai, Chinese, and English.

Not only me, but a lot of us at Temple — to say nothing of a billion Muslims across four continents — have since the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq said little about our serious doubts. About the wisdom of crashing into another’s family fight. About how we know this ugliness surely will end. Asians saw Americans do it in our neighborhood only 35 years ago. We witnessed millions perishing in the streets, we watched millions flee their homes. Many of us ended up here. Portland.

On this January morning, chilled with arctic wind and Oregon rain, anyone turning east to pray, everyone tuning TV into Iraq’s sorrow, shuddered for Baghdadi moms asking God to keep furious gunmen from grabbing their kids on their way home from school. For wives needing their men not blown to pieces on their way home from work.

A new year is now starting and our President is promising a new American plan for that Arab nation now dependant on us for order. Mr. Bush has decided to surge U.S. troop levels, at least in and around the capital Baghdad. That is: send in another 21,500 soldiers. To stop the killing.

Not only me was troubled by these thoughts — having them disturb our quiet, hurt our hearts, when we came to Temple, Sunday before last, at midmorning.

"What now," someone asked Master Fa Thai after meditation. "What would Buddha teach about army troops making peace in the middle of so much anger?"

Ah’Chan Fa Thai thought for a slim second, a moment long enough for simple truth to slip through. "We have to be careful," he said, "when we go to someone else’s house. We have to be sure we are wanted there."

This made sense to most of us. "But even more so," Master Fa Thai said, "we must be sure our house is in order, first." Every parent nodded.

When your own home is healthy and happy, Master Fa Thai went on to say, then curious others will come to you. To ask you for what you know, for what you have. Envious others will want the same peace you enjoy. He said it’s like being a good cook, a good teacher, or a good leader. If you are good, you never have to force your food, force your lessons, force your directions, on others. Good cannot come from force.

According to Compassionate Buddha’s Teachings, Ah’Chan said, force will be met with more force. More guns get you even more guns. Ferocious insistence on anything will cause ferocious resistance to it. Cause and effect. Simple.

I know we at S.E. Hawthorne’s humble temple know next to nothing about contemporary geo-politics or complex military strategy. I know I try and fail, and try and fail to make healthy and happy my own untidy little world.

I also know, as sure as this broken heart, as certain as these twisted bones: that not so long ago, when times were really bad, our parents shouting at us boys that everything is fine, that we will not be afraid, that I will stop crying — did not make anything fine, could not quiet our terror, never stopped a single tear. Their anguish, is all we heard. And we were made more anxious.

Maybe the same is true today, as we start another awful year in another man’s house. Haplessly involved in his family fight. Maybe America armed and shrill about "liberty," about "security," does not make Iraqis more free, and will not deliver safely home those kids or their dads. Neither Iraqi or American ones. Maybe our violence is all they feel. And they will only make more.

On Sundays, on any American Sunday, we know so much. Our community elders are dignified by surviving the darkest times; our government’s leaders and our society’s observers are taught and trained at the best universities; our holy men and women are recipient of our precious planet’s wealth of wisdom. So much smarter we are, than stubbornly insisting on our rightness. So much more we can be. It’s why we came here. To America.