=kit133.txt

KIT 133 - I HAVE A DREAM

(Dec. 2001)

MARTIN LUTHER KING:
"We cannot walk alone. As we walk, we must make the pledge that we
shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. This is our hope.... With
this faith we will be able to hew out the mountain of despair.
With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray
together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand
up for freedom together.... This will be the day when all God's
children will be able to sing with a new meaning "My country, 'tis
of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing. Land where my
fathers died...."  When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring
from every village, from every state, and every city, we will be
able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men
and white men, Jews and Gentiles, [may I add Jews and Arabs?],
[ the preceeding bracketed remark is by PVK ]
[Footnote (sa) kit133_2 ]
Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in
the words of the old Negro spiritual: "Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" "

[ This is, of course, the peroration from King's 1963 March on
Washington, organized by Bayard Rustin, then head of the War
Resisters' League.  I was there. (sa) ]

I had a dream. My hopes suffered a tragic setback - maybe yours
have, too. Our hearts have been devastated: people killing each
other, blowing themselves up, revenge, torture, leaving a trail of
misery, of despair, the hordes of displaced refugees, contempt for
human dignity.

Yet I still have a dream - a dream of peace. Is it likewise with
you? Do you still hold that dream? Is it ok to dream wishful
thinking? They call it ineffective, utopic.

Utopia was the dream of Thomas More (the title of his book
published in 1516). He named it an imaginary island that might
serve as a model for human communities governed by an ideally
perfect social and political system. It reflects earlier idyllic
political models, for example Plato's Republic. 

[Footnote (sa) kit133_3 ]

It reflects earlier idyllic
political models, for example Plato's Republic. 
[Footnote (sa) kit133_3 ]

Also J. S. Bach described his music as a model for a human
commonwealth: "each theme enjoying a range of freedom but each
limiting its freedom in the interest of the whole." He added:
"such is the harmony governing the motion of the stars."   

Perchance dreams do come true. We call it a miracle because it
defies logic. But in mathematics, one chance in a million or even
in a billion is still not illogical - just not very probable, but
for the heroes, not to be dismissed.

"There is a time in life when a passion is awakened in the soul,
which gives the soul a longing for the Unattainable." 
HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN (THE UNITY OF RELIGIOUS IDEALS)

It is never in your pocket, but it lures you ever forward into
breaking new ground - opening new horizons. This is the stuff with
which the spirit of heroes is made. It challenges one to defy
those albeit reasonable words: 'unpractical,' 'not feasible,' 'it
doesn't work,' 'it cannot possibly work.' The answer is, 'What if
it could? What if my assessment is wrong? What if what is judged
impossible is possible? What if my belief, and your belief, and
that of umpteen people makes what seems impossible possible?'
Belief is an unaccountable force. However it can also operate as
misconstrued and misleading obscurantism. Hence Hazrat Inayat
Khan's injunction:

"Shatter your ideal on the rock of truth."
(HIK, Gayan/Boulas, #938 -- but the Omega 1978 edition (3rd
printing, 2001 ) has it plural -- "Shatter your ideals on the rock
of truth." )

"As a soul evolves from stage to stage, it must break the former
belief in order to establish the later, and this breaking of the
belief is called by Sufis Tark, which means abandonment."
(HIK, I presume)

"He who fights his nature for his ideal is a saint; he who
subjects his ideal to his realization of truth is the master."
(HIK) (Gayan)

"The ideal is a stepping stone towards that attainment which is
called liberation." 
(HIK) (Religious  Gathekas)

One needs to distinguish between belief and faith. Belief is based
upon a holy scripture or the injunction of a believer, sometimes
factual evidence; whereas faith is a kind of gut feeling, not
based on evidence, a sense that everything makes sense ultimately
and that there is splendor behind the existential, awry universe.
This conviction overrides the proof of the contrary. It belongs to
a higher knowledge. It is what Hazrat Inayat Khan calls "the
reason behind reason."

Blind idealism can lead to the kind of intolerance that begets
violence, persecution, cruelty, even torture (as evidenced in the
Spanish inquisition), and in our day and age in the 11th of
September massacre. The wager is to give priority to the minimum
ethical decency, over one's impulse to pursue one's belief at the
cost of human suffering. In the hierarchy of ideals, Hazrat Inayat
Khan calls the paramount value: the truth.

"It comes by rising above all that hinders one's faith in truth:
the abandoning of the worldly ideal, the abandonment of the
heavenly ideal, the abandoning of the divine ideal, and even the
abandoning of abandonment. This brings the seer to the shores of
the ultimate truth."
(HIK) (THE WAY OF ILLUMINATION; PRIVATE PAPERS)   

Surprising words that aver their pertinence in the present world
situation! Yes, as one becomes more aware, one's erstwhile ideal
concedes to one its inadequacy. Here is proof that one has
progressed. This is the dark-night of the mind of St. John of the
Cross. In politrics (a word of my uncle Murshid Musheraf Khan),
one easily confuses ideal with ideology: i.e. Nazi ideology,
Communist ideology, racist ideology. Ideology begets hatred with
its inevitable follow up of conflict, war, misery, poverty,
uprooted refugees, the disruption of the fruits of efforts of
dedicated people, civilizations built sometimes over aeons of
time....

The present world conflict is triggered off by a tug of war. On
one side, the ideology fostering material profit, profiteering
(sustained by ever more sophisticated technology) which has the
disadvantage of opening the door to ruthless, insensitive greed
(affluence while people are sleeping in the streets),
manipulation, perjury, ego-games, power-games, a degeneration in
standards (drugs and alcohol), in morals a pursuit of ugliness in
art (hard rock), slovenliness, facetiousness, vulgarity, crime, a
lack of self-respect, making its victims and even subsidiary
beneficiaries beholden to one. On the other side, we find a more
traditional ideology that upholds age-hallowed standards of
dignity, that criticizes what is considered a moral decadence, and
condemns depravity, sacrilege, snubbing of the sacredness of
religious transmissions, a contempt of strict religious
prescriptions - the profanation of the sacred.

Among those adhering to the latter contention, called
Fundamentalists (nowadays Islamists), some adopt extreme bigoted
inflexible attitudes called fanaticism and feel threatened by the
'established' holders of power, spoiling it for those loyal to the
prescriptions of their religion. Is there a way of reconciling
these seeming irreconciliables?

"Sufism teaches that spiritual progress and material progress are
concomitant and that there can be no genuine or lasting progress
until the spiritual quality is adopted. "
(HIK, I presume)  

When dominated and repressed by the holders of power, when
frustration reaches a point of uncontrollable emotion of
desperation, it can explode, culminating in horrendous,
preposterous, destructive acts as the inconceivable, uncondonable
11th of September outrage, triggering off a spiraling vicious
circle of retaliation, then retaliation of retaliation in
irreversible regress, while a dignified solution looms so
obviously at hand for those who see the counter-productiveness of
hot-headed retribution.

"The nations of today stand in the quest of their own national
benefit regardless of other nations. This has made the world a
battlefield of continual struggle where life has become nothing
but chaos."
(HIK, I preume)

Can you now hear the voice of despair at present? Can we measure
how great must be the degree of frustration and anger for young
men to offer their lives for freedom from oppression? Where there
is suffering, where there is misery, penury, if the oppressed feel
threatened that their grievances will not be heard or heeded, they
will resort to terrorism to exercise pressure for their cause.
Aggression is triggered off by fear, frustration, suffering. True,
it is counter-productive. This very aggressivity puts the wrench
in the wheels of conflict-resolution. The end does not justify the
means; violence proves in the end to defeat its purpose, playing
into the vicious circle of violence. There is here a
misconstruction that needs to be unmasked on both sides. The
communications breakdown is sparked by a lack of trust. Mutual
trust is gained painstakingly by the on-going experience of
working together, as Martin Luther King said. If one discounts
one's memory of history, one easily stumbles into a Catch 22. The
killings by the oppressed who feel maligned by a contempt of human
rights is considered as terrorism, whereas killing the new
terrorists by those comfortably and legally established who owe
their position of power by themselves having resorted initially to
terrorism is accepted as a legal act by dint of invoking the
righteousness of their anti-terrorist claim against the terror
that they themselves triggered off in the first place. There is no
doubt that the human factor here is the criterion: respect for
human dignity. 

Much as the counterproductive vicious circle of conflict in which
the world is engaged seems inevitable, it is difficult to realize
that the solution is right at hand. One has difficulty in seeing
how it could work. Resort to force is shortsighted; it will never
solve problems in the long run.

Christ says this clearly - it is peremptory. To St. Peter who
sought to protect him from Judas's betrayal:

"He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword."
(New Testament, Gospels.  

[ But Hillel said it first, they saw:  "He saw a skull floating in
the river and siad, 'As you killed others, so were you killed ...
' -- Pirke Avot" ) (sa)]

Indeed, of what use would it have been if St. Peter had attacked
Judas?                  
                  
[ Footnote kit133_1 (sa) ]


Yet one needs to take precautions to protect innocent people by
taking appropriate measures so that the 11th of September outrage
could not be repeated. PIR O MURSHID INAYAT KHAN advocates:

"Avoid the harm done by the enemy by taking precautions, facing it
with strength."
(HIK)

He warns, however, that the strength of intervention should be
resorted to

"...only if one is sure that kindness and forgiveness will have no
power whatever over the hard heart of the enemy, but on the other
hand will make it worse."
(HIK)

Could one forgive the terrorists who committed such a monstrous
crime on September 11th? Innocent people as hostages in hi-jacked
planes turned into live bombs - innocent people fleeing the flames
by jumping out the windows to their death! We can never forget
this. Could one forgive Hitler or Stalin, and many, many heartless
brutal beings? Could anyone have converted Hitler or Stalin by
non-violence? By forgiving them? They would have scoffed at our
naivety! Of course one cannot force one's forgiveness upon a
person who does not recognize that he is guilty.

If we had not countered Nazism with strength, we in Europe would
be living under a ruthless dictatorship with the ensuing damage to
the values of our civilizations achieved at the cost of so much
dedication, sacrifice and ingenuity.

Christ intervened with violence in the temple against the
profanation of the sacred.

Yet the secret of breaking the pattern of the vicious circle of
retribution and escalating retaliation is to bravely and
trustingly opt for the reverse: kindness, forgiveness, but
together with authority. One needs to take precautions to ensure,
to prevent, that outrages to decent behavior do not reoccur,
causing further victims 

"only if one is sure that kindness and forgiveness will have no
power whatever over the hard heart of the enemy, but on the other
hand will make it worse."
(HIK)

On the other hand, in some cases the way of kindness will disarm
the opponent if we listen to their grievance and take heed of them
as GANDHI said:  

"The objective should not be to punish the opponent or to inflict
injury upon him. We must make him feel that in us he has a friend.
It is a means to secure the cooperation of the opponent consistent
with truth and justice."(GHANDI)

And from GHAFFAR, sometimes called the Afghan "Frontier Ghandi:"

"If one is really committed to non-violence one has to deliver
one's self into the hands of one's enemy and try to convert
him."(GHAFFAR)

Forgiveness is difficult and obstructed by those who fail to
believe in a peaceful solution. It requires implicit trust that
this solution can prove effective.

HAZRAT INAYAT KHAN:
"Forgive the enemy and forget his enmity if he truly wishes it.
And take the first step in establishing friendship instead of
holding in one's mind the pain of the past."

This is my dream, my faith, the policy I have arrived at dealing
with my frustrations, my ultimate trust in the basic need of
humans for peace and harmony which is disrupted when grievances
are not dealt with and hatred and violence are aroused; the belief
that there is a way of understanding, of kindness and mutual
trust, of respect for human dignity and love. Do you believe this
too? I believe that if one overcomes that psychological layer of
resentment, one will uncover that core of the goodness that lies
in wait in the depth of the human soul, which Hazrat Inayat Khan
calls the divinity in the human being.

My faith is that with shared endeavor we can make what seems
impossible possible. I hear that many kindred spirits think this
way. Together we can build a force of peace in a disrupted and
wounded world. It starts in our personal lives and snowballs in
society at large at a global scale. Forgiveness starts by getting
into the consciousness, the conscience of the 'other' (the 'other
oneself'), where one sees his or her grievances, resentment, and
struggle for self-esteem. Forgiveness is sparked by understanding,
by withholding one's condemning. One hopes that one's love and
forgiveness will diffuse the resentment of those whom one has
offended, and who have offended one. I realize that it is
difficult if one has been abused. How far can one go?  One needs
to trust that eventually, in the long run, our trust in shared
forgiveness will spread far and wide to build a beautiful world of
beautiful people.

This is to wish you
A Happy Christmastide
And Blessed New Year.

The story goes that there was an old man called St. Nicholas, with
a 'long' white beard, trekking through the snow in Northern
reaches, whose joy was giving - giving presents to children so
that as they grow up they may themselves give presents to kindly,
giving people in the form of kindness and generosity (P.V. who
likes highfalutin words says magnanimity, Ya Rahman).
                                            
[ I think that parenthetic remarks is by PVK himself -- sa ]

That present is love. "We are tested in our love," says HAZRAT PIR
O MURSHID INAYAT KHAN. This can be very difficult not only if it
is a person who has harmed one, more so a person who has hurt
someone whom one loves. So we are tested in the utmost. It is the
message of Christ whose birth we celebrate at the solstice when
light begins to increase carrying a message of hope.

This is my wish for the New Year: Hope - faith in the power of
love.

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COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY (sa)


[ Footnote kit133_1 (sa) ]
[ It was my impression that 'Peter' was going to attack the
Romans.  Incidentally, as for Judas Iscariot, I hear that as
'Yehuda ish Kyria', "a Jew from the City" -- Jerusalem, I assume. 
So that his name was "blotted out", and only his epithet was
remembered, just as Elisha ben Abuya. who committed an
unmentionale betrayal -- "uprooted the young shoots" is how the
talmud puts it --  is most identified not by name, but only as
'the Other'.          


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TEXT:
It [ Moore's 'Utopia'] reflects earlier idyllic
political models, for example Plato's Republic. 
[Footnote (sa) kit133_3 ]

Oh, as we say in the USA, "tell Plato to take his Republic and
stick it where it will do the most good"  In Macedonia maybe; if
it wasn't for Alexander the Great, that faggot, we wouldn't have
to have had  Chanukah.  And we would still have the Alexandria
Library.  With the complete works of Heraklitus no doubt, which
I'd sell the Parthenon to get a copy of.  If I could find a
co_operative Notary Public, which is no problem in Athens if you
can ever cross the street.  

I mean, Plato is sexist, class_ist, elitist, and an economic
imperialist whose society rested on slavery.  I opt for Sparta. 
It is said that in Sparta that young men were so modest they
always walked with downturned gaze. 

------------------------------------------------------------------
[Footnote (sa) kit133_2 ]

It's ok by us, if there ain't "no strings attatched" (USA slang,
1800's or 1900's)
"But less us not talk falsely; the hour is getting late."
If you want to attatch a string to that offer of peace -- politial
self_determination for the Palestinian people, I suppose -- well,
I say, self_determination is an inalienable right of individuals,
not of collectives.  The latter tend to take it from the former.
Like, de_colonialization has not worked out all that well, except
maybe in India.
So we can all agree on peace in holy land -- 

which incidentally is the holy land of Israel -- the rest of your
are just hitch_hikers -- the religious rituals of Judaism, but not
those of Christianity nor of Islam, have an inherent connection
with the land of Israel, just as the Hopis in Hopiland -- 

-- we're arguing only over the minor administrative question of
the best personnel_pool from which to draw the CEO and
civil_servants.  

Personally I favor Switzerland, or if the Swiss are too picky to
do it, maybe the Danes; they have a nice social welfare system
even if they're not so good on hiking trails and recyling plastic
bottles. 

And if not the Danes, possibly the Dutch, except there's that
Amsterdam problem, they should only subcontract it to Disneyland
and all the hookers can bake cookies.  Or if not the Dutch, maybe
the Swedes, if they ever get a sense of humour -- the Dutch have
more of that than they can use, that's why they've been so weird
lately.

But if "none of the above" (USA slang 1950's) then I'd rather
stick with Israel.  

I mean, the PLO has not been quite exemplary in safeguarding civil
liberties, human rights, or even the public purse.  And you don't
see them lining up in Shafara'am to move to Gaza, or even apply
for statehood in it.

Again:  self_determination is an inherent, and hence inalienable,
right of individuals, but not of collectives, which, as Jefferson
and/or Madison put it, "derive their just authority from the
consent of the governed."  

And that assent is a continually dynamic and revocable assent, not
a "blank check" (USA slang) nor a "take the money and run" (USA
slang, 1900's) -- as Bushie and Sharon do with their scam_talk of
an 'electoral mandate'.

That's how the Germans eat lunch at Zenith Camp -- 'I waited in
line, so now I can take all I want'.                   

At New Buffalo we used to stand at the end of line, and glare at
our visitors -- daring them to fail to correctly divide the
remaining chili by the number of persons still in line.

That was in the good old days, "when men were men and women were
girls" (sa),

But I digress.

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sa, Campra, 2 Dec '05 -- Rosh Hodesh KisLev -- Dhu al-Qi'dah ,
maybe -- overcast morning here, might get more snow
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