I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Imagine what the world would be like if we all adopted this simple moral code and embraced Ms. Rachel’s statement about children (and adults) everywhere, the essence of global citizenship. (See the graphic below.) No more overlapping ideologies like colonialism, fundamentalism, nationalism, racism, tribalism, and Zionism, all of which are essentially death cults with in- and out-groups, a sense of superiority among the chosen ones, and demonization and dehumanization of “the other.” Imagine what the world would be like if we rejected brutality and violence in favor of caring, concern, and compassion?

This includes US colleagues who still “stand with Israel” and have nothing to say about that country’s genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. They are complicit in their silence. There are even some who have the sheer audacity to refer to themselves as “thought leaders” in the face of Israel’s monstrous war crimes and crimes against humanity, including one who messaged me on LinkedIn to say, “I regret your need for me to stand with your position- or delete myself.” My response: “It’s simple, Marty. My position is that I’m against genocide and ethnic cleansing. I’m against the expansionist Greater Israel project. What’s your position?,” I asked rhetorically.

This also includes their fellow Zionists, the evangelical Christian loonies who are giddy with excitement about the murder and mayhem in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East because it signifies the Second Coming of Jesus. Yes, the same Jesus who preached compassion, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

These people are walking, talking bundles of contradiction, afflicted with a terminal case of cognitive dissonance, textbook examples of hypocrisy, defined as “the practice of claiming to have moral standards of beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform.” They have no integrity, described as “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.”

They have yet to “hit the void, a place where everything exists yet nothing feels real, where the truth doesn’t set you free, it breaks you open. We are told that awakening brings bliss, but trust me, it doesn’t. It is the beginning of a psychological death, the death of who you thought you were, the collapse of everything that once gave your life meaning,” in the words of Ansar Yawar. 

Live To Love is a very Buddhist concept and prescription. The spiritual movement that bears this name was founded by His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa (Jigmet Pema Wangchen), a Buddhist teacher from the Himalayas, in 2007. It’s a global humanitarian initiative rooted in Buddhist values, focusing on education, gender equality, environmental protection, healthcare, and relief aid. Live To Love is all-encompassing, including our fellow human beings and every element and entity in the natural world.

Live to love is the only way forward.

Peace, MAA

Postscript: Scroll down for two versions of a song with the same title. My favorite is #1.

Version 1

Version 2