Buddhism to Order: Save Yourself, then Save the World…
Extinguish the fires inside, then extinguish the fires outside. Or, as I sometimes like to say it: save yourself, then save the world. And this is the basic difference between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism, and much the very reason why Mahayanist (Large Vehicle) Buddhists like to call Theravadins ‘Hinayanists’ (Small Vehicle) Buddhists, as if there were something ‘lesser’ about training your mind rather than wasting much time and energy trying to train the world top act better.
But I don’t see it that way. I just see it as dealing with first things first. If you are truly capable of training yourself to a high state of Buddhahood, then you have nothing to lose by turning your attentions to the problems of the world as a Bodhisattva for hire—cheap, haha. But most people will never reach that level of Enlightenment. And anyone who claims that they have attained that level is probably mistaken—by definition. A truly enlightened person, or Bodhisattva, would never make such claims, for fear of diminishing the others with their own paths.
That doesn’t mean that you should surrender all politics to the shenanigans of autocrats and scammers. Just don’t pretend that that’s the final destination for all mankind. The path never ends. Even when politics are at their smoothest and best, there are still probably thousands of sleights and injustices to rectify and make whole. To fight for what’s right is the hardest thing in the world, since fighting itself is so wrong. But when our survival is at stake, then that is what we must do sometimes.
It’s easy to bemoan my fate as having no choice but to be a citizen of the same country that Donald F. Trump presides over, even if not currently resident, but bemoan even more the fact that he seems to have hijacked my mental process, so that it seems that I am almost totally incapable of thinking about anything else, except how to get this over-stuffed individual out of my life and out of my mind and hopefully even out of my country so that one day I might go back there if circumstances so warrant it…
The Burmese came for me that night. I don’t know what I’d done wrong, but I wasn’t waiting around to find out, either. They did not look too happy, any of them, waving arms and guns, and shouting orders, and calling out rude names. So I split, left, took a hike, and quickly, out the back door and down dark alleys, hiding in shadows and avoiding all lights, for fear of being ‘outed’, me and my white skin, ripe for plucking, and easy to bruise and abuse…
streaming consciousness... 
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