Quaker Education and the Dalai Lama
Though the quality of the education offered at the William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia is probably the main reason parents work hard to send their kids there, the overlay of Quakerism and everything it stands for is important as well. This means gentle but firm introduction to a contemplative life, one full of respect for all others, and, above all, a thirst for peace and a refusal of violence.
As the Dalai Lama says (see below), most Americans are conditioned to look at war as glorious, but there isn’t an iota of that at Penn Charter. War isn’t celebrated; it’s regarded as barbaric, suited for people so primitive or deranged that they didn’t know how to use reason and peaceful alliances to resolve their differences. Fighting isn’t tolerated. You know that if the teacher standing in front of you had participated in a war, it normally meant that he was a paramedic or an ambulance driver. He may have been putting bodies back together, but he most certainly wasn’t blowing them to bits.
The U.S. military budget has grown out of control, as has our nation’s appetite for killing. This is why, in our own lives, we need to act as an irresistible force for peace.
Craig,
Hmmm,.. you do realize the only reason the Dalia Lama can live in a safe and comfortable exile, is because he, like the Quakers, are protected by the very US and Western military you so despise?
Thanks to sacrifice of countless US and Western service personnel you enjoy the safety of freely expressing your opinions.
Let the Delia Lama express opinion critical of the leadership of the Glorious Ever Peaceful Peoples Committee for the Tibet Autonomous Region, in his native Lhasa.
The result would be far less pleasant!
It’s very unfortunate that Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford and Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1782, wasn’t facing the Dalia Lama instead of those damn fellows around George Washington!
Had the Dalia Lama been advising Winston Churchill, I would today speaking German as my native tongue.
It’s a little as you would put it “redneck”, but it reminds me of the old bumper sticker:
” If you can read this, thank a teacher! If you can read this in English, thank a serviceman!”
“We all owe our lives thanks to the sacrifices of better men than us” (President Donald J Trump 1918 D-Day Speech, quoting General George Marshall ).