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One could think that tenderness is too soft for a hard world. Yet, a hard world trying to solve its problems, at-home and abroad, through hardness leads to more hardness. To create a unified togetherness, a sense of being-one in compassion, we return to the Heart, our Heart. All other attempts, at best, offer an apparent solution, but not, as taught in the words of Jesus and other sages, the 'turn-about' we need to create a new form of world communion, one of peace-together and mutual-goodwill.
The contemporary Tibetan Buddhist sage Dzigar Kongtrul speaks of this necessity of tenderness, called in Tibetan tsewa...
Without tsewa, every religion, every spiritual group, every attempt to reform government or address injustice or overcome terrorism or resolve conflicts will be meaningless. And if these groups and endeavors have anti-tsewa elements, such as if they are one-sided or full of deep-seated motives to promote certain groups at the expense of others, they will only add to the negativity and suffering of the world.
*Dzigar Kongtrul. Training in Tenderness: Buddhist Teachings on Tsewa, the Radical Openness of Heart That Can Change the World.
This can be simply put, hardened policies, programs, and persons cannot lead us to a communion of tender care for one another, our environment, Earth. This is as futile as winning against darkness by fighting darkness with darkness. Again, a wise saying of Jesus, "Those who live by the sword [violence], they die by the sword [violence]," in Matthew 26.52. And we cannot blame our politicians alone, for we each have this potential of tenderheartedness within us. This turn to tenderness has to happen within us, this cannot be gained through public policy. Grace, with its gracefulness, cannot be legislated into being, policyed into expression, merely programed into our everyday lives.
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