I have a reasonable amount of equanimity. Some of it is the result of my meditation practice. Some is the result of living a long time, most of it at Pelden Farm, of raising five children, of marrying well, and of coming from good stock. And so I’ve dealt with hail that flattened a wheat crop we were counting on to send our oldest to college. Sons with broken bones (and smashed up cars they’d promised they wouldn’t drag race anymore). Plagues of Japanese beetles so thick they made every fruit I picked, cooked, and preserved taste like . . . horse pee. Tipped over tractors, flying saw blades, scarlet fever, German measles. I even lived through a year of having five teenagers who all were in love at the same time. And I did it without raising my voice or my hand (though maybe not without the occasional eye rolling or head shaking).
Anyone with a lick of sense can see that getting angry isn’t Step One in the “How to Deal with Adversity” manual. But I have a weakness: an Achilles heel for injustice, particularly where Tibet is concerned (East Turkestan is in my sights now too). And every week, the Chinese government gives me new cause to defy Shantideva’s advice to “act like a piece of wood” and keep my mouth shut and my blood pressure low.
What’s a good Buddhist to do? Practice loving-kindness for President Hu.
President Hu Jintao; photo by Reuters
I imagined him sitting next to me, happy to be at Pelden Farm—clean air, organic food, altitude a mere 1000 feet above sea level. “What makes you tick?” I asked him.
He smiled a little wanly, probably a little worn out from dealing with the Uyghurs. “I’m just a man,” he said. “I want what everybody wants—to be happy.”
“But what makes you happy?”
“Seeing my country progress—knowing that every year, more of them can afford to eat meat every day or drive a Buick.”
“You’re not in it for the power—or the money?” I asked.
He waved the question away. “Those are corollary benefits.”
“What do you worry about most?”
He pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. “I’m responsible for the welfare of more than a billion people,” he said. “Four times as many people as live in your country. The only way to move a billion people forward yet keep them under control is to regulate their lives—how many children they can have, where they can work and live, what they can agree and disagree with—and to restrict their access to information about their own country’s past and present.”
“You didn’t answer my question: What do you worry about most?”
“In my dreams, I see China as a gigantic machine with thousands of parts, and I’m the foreman responsible for seeing that they all work together. ‘But some of them already ARE broken!’ I yell at my supervisor. ‘We’ve programmed this machine to run on progress, but now it wants to define what ‘progress’ means! We are running out of resources to feed it, and in our haste we are polluting the ones we have! It’s only a matter of time before the machine knows we are not controlling it!’” He sighed. “I wait for my supervisor to say something, and then I realize, there’s no one in the factory but me. . . .”
May you be happy, healthy, and safe, President Hu. . . .
Do I feel better about him as a result of trying to see the world through President Hu’s eyes? Yes and no. I would like to say that acknowledging that he’s human—not just an abstract head of state–with his own set of motivations, fears, and desires may help me to respond differently the next time he violates human rights. Perhaps(?) I will be able to say “I don’t like what you did, but I understand why you think you had to do it.”
But let’s face it, I really don’t have a clue as to what motivates President Hu—I merely projected my own hopes for him. But that in itself is an act of kindness, a first step in the right direction.
