Daily Lesson from Life 26 August 2008

I crashed at 9pm 26 August 2008 night without writing the blog! A sign of slackening? A sign of ill-discipline? The daily blog is one of my must do and it is alarming that I missed it. No excuse. So, here I am catching up today.


"SKorea Buddhists discontented

They are protesting against President Lee Myung-bak's alleged pro-Christian bias. -Wed, Aug 27, 2008 AFP

SEOUL, KOREA - Tens of thousands of South Korean Buddhists rallied on Wednesday in central Seoul in protest at alleged pro-Christian bias by the government of President Lee Myung Bak.

A crowd estimated by police at 55,000, including thousands of grey-robed monks, packed City Hall Plaza for the rare protest which began with the beating of a giant drum.
Organisers said Buddhist temples across the country rang bronze bells simultaneously.

'Buddhists united to stop religious bias,' read one banner."

This is a strange phenomenon as my understanding of Buddhism is to find peace with oneself and be cutoff from worldly distractions and desires. So, this protesting against a President's bias of pro-Christian is not really Buddhist's behavior!

I am venturing in dangerous area as religion is very sensitive and emotional in nature. When one is engrossed in it, rationality get threw out the door!

The lessons for me are:

1. as leader, any type of leader, you have to be clear about what you represent and be rational! Be truth to your belief. Exhibit behavior that echo or reflect what you believed in. Hopefully what you believed in is based on ethical ground where the principle should be: none violating some other human being's basic right;

2. as leader you have to take great responsibility to share with your followers and people that getting emotional after certain things are not the appropriate way to solve issues and disagreement with others. While an emotionally charged person sometimes can performed heroic or super-human acts, it normally does not yield the results that rational approach to solving problems yield;

3. leader need to be able to stay above the fray when all around you lost their rational thinking. If the leader is also lost or confused, the people will stay to take things into their own hands. Things may spin out of control and even beyond the leader's ability to rein them in.

As an observer of the Buddhist faith, I believe there is no need to express any emotion on this supposed pro-Christian bias by a President. One always get persecuted for one's belief, if that is really what is happening.