iamom | Nice morsel from Thay Hanh

I wouldn't have expected anything less of this peaceful warrior:

To preserve peace, our hearts must be at peace with the world, with our brothers and our sisters. When we try to overcome evil with evil, we are not working for peace. If you say, "Saddam Hussein is evil. We have to prevent him from continuing to be evil," and if you then use the same means he has been using, you are exactly like him. Trying to overcome evil with evil is not the way to make peace.

--Thich Nhat Hanh
From the book,"Love In Action," published by Parallax Press.

The middle way is the hardest way, to be sure. Taking what you think is a strong moral stand may be anything but, in the final analysis. I've always found Bush's rhetoric about evil and the Axis of Evil to be extremely troublesome. He has never demonstrated to me that he has the moral wherewithal to be the judge of who is and isn't evil. There's a hell of a lot of other people in the world who would find him to be the most evil person around, I'm sure.

I've heard it said that Bush is a good Christian, but I wonder about that. His actions don't bely a humbling of himself before God; instead, they reflect a feeling on his part that he's acting on God's behalf, which is egotistical and misdirected.