Buddhas, Saints, Obama, And Animals

From Yahoo News--

Obama has called for unconditional direct talks with the leaders of so-called rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea, assuming that groundwork laid by lower-level officials indicated that the top-level talks would be fruitful.

McCain has ridiculed the suggestion as naive.

Now we should know that Obama makes far more sense than McCain, but I'll bet that Obama would agree that we need even more than what he has proposed.

And what is that need? It's in the picture above. The 16th century Hindu saint Sri Chaitanya has a tradition similar to St. Francis of Assisi. Here is the Bengali sadhu dancing with the animals in the Jharikanda Forest, a large tract of wild land in north central India that in his day, must have been really wild.

That's right, I wrote "dancing with the animals." After all, when there is a forest fire they all run together, don't they? Similarly, when there is a means to relief from that fire, they run in that direction, don't they? Running to shelter from great danger is the same thing, right? But when they reached their destination, there was nothing to do but dance.

The shelter of the association with a saint is the key to getting great relief from the forest fire of material existence. Buddha compared this world to a fire because of the repeated round of birth and death.

So when we discover a path out of it, the guru has arrived before us. Then we can learn something.

The Sikhs call their temples Gurdwars, which means the guru's door (to God). But let's remember what George Harrison said.

"You don't need a churchhouse, you don't need a temple." I don't think he is saying that churches and temples aren't or couldn't be very wonderful things. I think he's just saying that where there's a will there's a way, the body is the natural temple of the Lord, etc.

Which brings us back to Sri Chaitanya. From my understanding of this particular Hindu cult, Sri Chaitanya and the animals and plants-due to his association-were experiencing the spiritual state of their bodies as temples of the Lord.

Only when people move in this direction can Obama's plans succeed fully--what to speak of his aspirations. That's because he is asking people to be good.

There has to be a spiritual revolution, which is what John Lennon was saying with "you better free your mind instead."

And I think Obama and the saints, Buddhas, etc. would agree.

So would the animals.