Originally Posted by
Emmet
I live in a remote, rural, agrarian, mountain village of about 350 people. We're 98% White, 97% native-born, and have the highest church attendance of any county in a state already known for it's religiosity (but only Christian religiosity; there isn't a mosque, temple, or gurdwara within a hundred miles). The last church service I attended with my mother, the sermon was explicitly and casually White supremacist, with the easy candidness that comes from preaching to the choir. One of our best friends here often laments how local church services are really nothing more than weekly political rallies, drawing more upon material from Right-wing radio and TV news than the Bible. When Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina was shot up in a domestic terror attack in 2015, Confederate flags sprouted like a plethora of noxious weeds all across the landscape, and the weekly paper started printing overtly racist screeds and fanciful revisionist fact-free odes to the Confederacy. We don't exactly celebrate tolerance and diversity here, and that's regularly emphasized by belligerent White men carrying sidearms into the hardware store or coffee shop on a daily basis (I can well imagine what they're carrying behind the seats of their pickup trucks). Less overt are the rumors of the Ku Klux Klan, which have active cells in nearby, larger towns. Within living memory these were called "sundown towns", where African-Americans were threatened with death if they were caught within city limits after dark.
How I remain tolerant is a bit of a koan, which I'm still wrestling with...imperfectly, with very limited results. I have a deep-seated tendency to arrogance and have real difficulty tolerating fools gladly, and a strong aversion to what Martin Luther King referred to as the greatest danger in the world; "willful ignorance and conscientious stupidity". However, in my head there isn't some contrived false equivalency; fellow hippies with their crystals and auras are qualitatively different from people who want to deport (or worse) anyone who looks, thinks, or acts differently than they do. The former makes me irritated; the latter, outraged (FAIR DISCLOSURE STATEMENT: my beloved is a first-generation immigrant from a Muslim country; my brother was Gay; my nephew just registered for the Draft). "Tolerance" should not be stretched so thin as to rationalize away our responsibility as Mahayana in the face of violence, bigotry, and discrimination. I do not believe that some esoteric notion of passively sitting for some theoretical benefit of all beings in any way fully and completely fulfills my bodhisattva vows to liberate all beings when those around me are being brutalized. I recall Dogen somewhere in Shobogenzo saying something to the effect not to thoughtlessly promote conflict, but acceding when you're in the right is nothing more than cowardice. Some things are innocuous silliness, and some things create real, grievous harm to living beings. Some things are simply not to be tolerated.
I also realize that I am rather foolish and demonstrably prone to becoming entangled in delusions of my own. Not everything that springs to my mind arises from clarity and wisdom; much of it arises from fears, insecurities, and prejudices, which in the moment can seem much more cacophonous, compelling, and certain (ANOTHER FAIR DISCLOSURE STATEMENT: I've been diagnosed with, among other things, dementia. No warranties or claims to serviceability expressed or implied). I also need reminding that no one is truly evil; they are led astray by delusion. Whoever I feel to be in opposition to is in reality whole and complete, imbued with compassion and wisdom; they've tragically lost sight of this under layer upon layer of greed, anger, and ignorance.
As for speaking out mindfully as a Buddhist, my first reaction is not to let my first reaction come out of my mouth (it usually contains an expletive, and perhaps an ad hominem). As clearly and calmly as possible, trying not to indulge my proclivity to be arrogant and insulting, I state unequivocally that I do not believe in racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, climate change is a hoax by the Chinese, the U.S. is threatened by a country with a defense budget the size of Singapore's that hasn't attacked anyone since 1798, etc., etc., etc. Other people read my occasional letters to the editor, others see the big rainbow flag with the peace sign in the front yard. I probably don't convince anyone of my way of thinking, but at least people who hold such noxious beliefs no longer engage me in offensive conversation. As for silence, as Bonhoffer said, "silence in the face of evil is itself evil." On the other hand, it has been suggested kindly by 2 well-meaning folk on 2 separate occasions that I might want to be a bit more circumspect; wouldn't want our home to mysteriously catch fire.
As for things getting worse, worse relative to what? All things are empty; they have no fixed self, but are constantly in flux as the transient causes and conditions which gave rise to and sustain them wax and wane. Therefore all things are impermanent. This includes empires, notions like democracy, species (including homo sapiens), and planets like the Earth and stars like the Sun and people like you and I. You are neither the first nor the only one to experience this; we are subject to old age, sickness and death; everything that we love and cherish will be taken from us, just as it was from our ancestors; just ask your great grandfather, or the Sumerians, or the Neanderthal. This is not a bug, it's a feature; it is the way of all things. You might as well feel attachment and grasp and cling to a wave in the ocean; it will rise and fall regardless.