Leadership Qualities for Reconciliation

Press Clip Source: 'Active Spirituality, Spiritual Activism' Blog
Written By: Tsukina
Date: May 15, 2014
Read Original Article: Here

This was submitted as a class discussion item for my theology class Hell and Back: Evil and Redemption.  I chose HH the Dalai Lama and Derek Oakley as my leaders.   

What are the qualities of healing, restoration, new life, and confronting evil in its varied forms? Read two leaders and respond with a thorough assessment of the qualities of leadership that are necessary for confronting evil today. Answer this question: What are the qualities of leadership exhibited in each of these leaders, which are absolutely necessary for our understanding of reconciliation in the world today?

Dalai Lama‘s acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace prize.  After years of fighting for the liberation of Tibet, the Dalai Lama’s spiritual leadership must be understood as inseparable from his understanding of political justice and human well-being.  Read the acceptance speech here.

Derek Oakley is an unarmed civilian peacekeeper for Nonviolent Peaceforce in South Sudan.  The work of the Nonviolent Peaceforce relies on building relationships of mutual trust and understanding with all parties, including dialogue with the armed actors to help them behave in ways that will reduce violence and protect civilians. Last month, Derek and his colleagues witnessed an armed incursion into a refugee camp, and prevented the killing of 5 women and 9 children by interposing their bodies between them and the gunmen.  Read his account of the event here: http://nonviolentpeaceforce.org/np-news/2014-06-26-17-22-52/418-diary-from-the-field-by-derek-oakley

 

“In order to further the reconstruction of the world the only thing possible and the only thing necessary, before trying to serve humanity, is to learn the art of being, the art of life, for oneself and in order to be an example for others.”
–Hazrat Inayat Khan, Sufi Mysticism, “The Problem of the Day”

Comparing Derek Oakley and HH The Dalai Lama one can see that the most important quality of leadership is not a quality at all, but simply presence.  The Dalai Lama references a good heart and a sense of universal responsibility.  Oakley references spacious holding and solidarity.  As we awaken to our membership in the family of humanity, our place in the web of life, we experience a reverence for the life that is within each being.  This presence is Presence, a recognition of the I AM in me, in you, in all sentient life.   Leadership is a quality of Being, and all other forms of leadership will prove to be false coinage.

Oakley tells what helped him survive his encounter with gunmen who killed 58 others in the camp that day – “At times like the one I am describing, when so little was under our control, we are left with the most fundamental resource – our presence.”  I am struck by this sentence, because we think so much of leadership is about what we do.  Leadership is skilled use of our being.  The qualities of our presence offer more than any word.  Deeds of assistance done without authentic presence leave something lacking – like the coin dropped in the panhandler’s cup without eye contact, without acknowledging their humanity.

The Dalai Lama speaks of “a good heart and a sense of universal responsibility” as necessary human traits, currently under development.  What makes a good heart?  Compassion, love, human understanding, an openness to other systems of thought, scientific, religious or otherwise.  How do we awaken a sense of universal responsibility? Through our willingness to recognize ourselves as members of one human family, if we awaken any sense of responsibility at all.  When one recognizes one’s own health depends on the health of the other organs in the body, does one take responsibility?  Millions of obese Americans might give us pause to wonder.  It is clear that prescriptive morality does not necessarily succeed in changing behaviors.  Clearly this is evident in the struggle continuing to begin “positive and decisive action on the pressing global concern with the environment,” 25 years after this speech.

How, then, to inspire change?  Oakley speaks “I remain resolute in my belief in and commitment to the possibility for making space for people to think and feel beyond hatred and violence…”  Here is the second key.  First it is necessary develop a good heart, a positive presence, to raise bodhicitta (the mind of enlightenment).  Next one must learn to hold space for the Other – more compassion, but also, a kind of dogged persistence.  Oakley speaks of the need “to keep it together enough in these extreme conditions,” what sometimes we call “grit” in soldier movies, a strength of heart and a willingness to accept groundlessness, that complete lack of security that is life in the moment.

Oakley speaks of solidarity, that quality that makes soldiers rescue their comrades at great risk to their lives, and one that makes it so hard to leave their tribe and return to civilian life.  It is one of the qualities most lacking in liberal white America, often seen as a mark of progressive thought.  The Dalai Lama calls us to recognize ourselves as members of one human family, but he has also reported that he has found so many Americans have emotional difficulties with their mothers, that has proven wise to adapt the age-old practice of seeing everyone as your mother to seeing everyone as your best friend.  How, then, are we to raise the thought of unity, the realization of the one life?  The Sufi prays daily “Raise us above the distinctions and differences which divide humanity.”  It is by elevating thought and feeling above the material plane to the level where the reality reveals that what we thought were billiard balls of individual molecules are in fact interpenetrating fields of energy.  Having once experienced oneself as a node on the web of life, one cannot but feel, as the Dalai Lama does, “my concern extends to all members of the human family and, indeed, to all sentient beings who suffer.”  The Buddhist awareness of interbeing, can be expressed in theological terms as does Inayat Khan: “The solution to the problem of the day is the awakening of the consciousness of humanity to the divinity of man.”

Still I feel the question arise How to awaken? How does one DO this? The question is a matter of being, and of life beyond mind in such a way that no answer to the How question can satisfy the logical mind.  I am reminded of Oakley’s statement:  “Our presence in the POC that day was not a planned response to a perceived threat. It all happened too fast and was not something that anyone had predicted. Rather, it is a reflection of our everyday approach.”  It is an attitude, a presence, a habit of being, and all the esoteric paths are the experiments in how to develop presence through experiencing Presence.