Monday, January 19, 2009

Dr. King and meditative principles


A key component of what he is talking about here is the mind poison of delusion - that is, not being able to see things as they really are:

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
...
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.
...
Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was both a complex and a complicated man. He was not a saint - at least not in the way most people use that word. But he was a powerful leader and an extraordinary visionary and I am convinced that the very soul of this nation was rescued because of him.

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