Surviving the Trump Administration: Ancient Advice for Real Change
The future you want will never arrive unless you extend it an invitation.
A forceful, specific invitation. Over and over again. No RSVP’s. No regrets. Every day, many times a day, send out your invitation.
I learned this, first hand, from Ama Adhe and Palden Gyatso, two Tibetans who spent a combined sixty years in Chinese labor camps and who without hesitation sat for lengthy interviews with me and my students in The TEXT Program based at the University of Arkansas.
The Tibetans have suffered, and are still suffering, catastrophic losses. They have seen their country seized by the Chinese army, witnessed family members killed without cause, undertaken an arduous and life-threatening journey into exile over the Himalayas, arrived in India, and begun to reconstruct their lives anew. Over 1.2 million Tibetans perished during the time of the Chinese occupation (1949–1959), and their struggle for a basic freedom, independence, or autonomy continues today unabated. Six million Tibetans remain in their country, and their basic human rights are daily violated by the Chinese government.
What can Americans learn from these extraordinary people?
Like many Tibetans, Palden Gyatso and Ama Adhe began their days with a simple statement that gave them the strength to survive the difficult conditions they confronted. Every morning, and throughout the day, they simply invited the future they desired into their lives with a few simple words: may all living beings, they said quietly to themselves, find freedom, happiness, and a pathway out of their suffering. And may I help them all, as best I can, in their journey to peace.
They repeated this simple mantra many times every day. As a result, it seeped into their personality, restructuring it so that whatever they did, from eating a meager bowl of cabbage soup in prison to organizing a protest in America, became supercharged with the larger intention to build community in co-operative ways.
May I help them all in their journey to peace. Both simple and profound.
Another version goes like this: let my slightest action or thought be dedicated to making the world a better place for everyone. Become increasingly aware, in other words, of why you are doing what you are doing. That alone can supply the work of a lifetime, but I figure it’s good work if we can get it now in America.
And we can. And we must.
I learned from the Tibetans that purpose and intention, extended over a lifetime, are the fuel of real change. But the fuel for change, the fundamental human energy needed to bring the future into focus, also comes from cultivating, day by day, a sense of community and an obligation to strengthen it.
Both of them, in fact, gave me and our students the same advice: when you work for the good of others, for the community, your energy is limitless. Work only for yourself, and you will exhaust yourself. You will lose your moral compass. This, I believe, is the fundamental physics of compassion, the thermodynamics of caring for others. Use this ancient wisdom to build a stronger, more equitable America, and change will arrive.
As Trump begins his four-year term in The White House, I revisited some of the interviews we conducted with the Tibetans.
I saw once again the essential quality that keeps them going. I saw, of course, their other-worldly endurance. But, most importantly, I witnessed this: a steadfast vision of their communal future that provides them an inexhaustible fuel. Fuel to further their cause, fuel to seize joy wherever they find it, fuel to remain fully human wherever they are and whatever they confront.
This is the lesson that all Americans can take to heart. Now more than ever.
Many of us are currently wondering about the future of America, even though we don’t face the harsh conditions we see now in Tibet.
But remember this: our freedom to resist and protest is still very much alive. The video below is relevant because it records the answers given by Tibetans from all walks of life to a similar question: “What are your hopes for the future of Tibet?”
The most important thing, in my opinion, that we can take from this video concerns the way that Tibetans distinguish between political work at the granular level—phone banks, petitions, protests, fund-raising, voting, letter-writing campaigns, lobbying, all of which the Tibetans do—and imaginative work at the visionary level. Each is essential to the health of the other.
But the message is clear. Envision, as specifically as you can, the country you wish to inhabit. And don’t question the actions, the granular work, however you define it, that arises freely and naturally from your own specific vision.
You might be surprised by what turns up. You might find yourself reading or rereading, in my case, Mary Oliver’s poems. Or gardening. Or starting a petition. Or running for office. Or organizing a music festival. Or building a good fence to make a good neighbor. No matter. Don’t question your response, don’t doubt your gut, don’t compromise your intuitive response to the community you imagine. Above all, don’t compromise your creativity.
The connections between our visionary imagination and our political health are often hidden, but they are powerful, and sometimes, because of their unorthodox power, even criticized for being self-indulgent. Pay these criticisms no mind. The English poet, William Blake, knew this, and it’s why he continually talked to the angels he saw sitting in his trees. And why he was, at times, a powerful irritant to the British government.
No wonder, then, I’m rereading William Blake too. Both Blake and Oliver, in their own ways, talked to angels. And I need now all the angels I can summon. I believe many Americans feel the same way.
Palden Gyatso and Ama Adhe knew the power of visionary aspiration. They wished only to work for the health and well being of all living creatures. No exceptions. And no pre-fab definitions of “work.” They listened to their better angels every day and followed their intuitions without question. They built strong communities.
The video below gathers together a great variety of Tibetans. If you have fifteen minutes, or even a few minutes, you might see how our visionary imagination and political action can work together dynamically, particularly if we allow ourselves to indulge the former and expand our understanding of the latter.
Good luck.
And pray for aces.
Maybe angels too.
