China has been warning world leaders and politicians against meeting the Dalai Lama, saying it would be perceived as a ‘major offence’!
I smile every time I hear this: I’d seen the Dalai Lama many years ago; a man whose very personality exuded such peace and tranquility, one came away feeling blessed and sanctified. I’d not seen any Tibetan army around him, no soldiers with machine guns, not seen any sign of bullet proof vest. Everything around him was about calm and quiet, and then I had watched videos of the Chinese army; marching in brutal formation to scare the living daylights of the viewer. Faces impassive, trying to feign harshness, cruelty and glazed warlike look, jaws jutting in defiance, mouths curled in surly grimace. Ready to take down any foe who stood in their way.
Yet, scared of the strong arm of peace!
The world has seen such ‘peace’ muscle in many: Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Jesus, and others who changed the world not with guns but with words and a smile. Not killing bullets, but tender compassion. Not temper and angry rhetoric but gentle, soothing utterance.
And always, yes always, it’s the strong arm of peace that’s won in the end!
The men of war, may come back victorious from a single battle, but are soon sent packing home. Churchill won the war, but four months later, lost an election. So, with others across the world.
We all, I’m sure know Aesop’s fable about the wind and the sun:
The wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveler coming down the road, and the Sun said: “I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger You begin.”
So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair. Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveler, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on and took it off!
“You see my friend,” said the sun to the angry wind, “Gentleness works!”
A few months ago, we saw Mr Windy Trump berating voters, and others elsewhere with his jibes and jeers and creating rifts and walls with the Islamic world. Today he’s joined the ‘has beens’ of the world. He’s gone!
Somewhere behind a cloud the sun shines, patient and waiting, hoping to envelop an edgy, oppressed world with peace and harmony!
I remember the Dalai Lama, and will watch one day as China crumbles under the strong arm of peace..!
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