Alan Clements has lived a life of social activist and dharma teacher.
As activists, we sometimes get a bit preoccupied with the news of the day, with
this or that fact or issue. At least for many people, stepping back,
taking a deep breath, and considering spiritualism behind social activism is a
good thing. On this score, Alan Clements has much insight.
He was on KPFK's
Innervision show with Michael
Benner on November 14th, and I thought I'd toss up an MP3 file of the
show. They talked quite a bit about his experience with activists in Burma
and Yugoslavia, and about the ideas he fleshed out in his new book, Instinct
For Freedom: Finding Liberation Through Living. He took inspiration for the first part of the title from Noam Chomsky.
The show runs for about an
hour and the first three minutes are a musical introduction. The MP3 file is about 10 megabytes.
Enjoy!
- Click
here to download the file
- Click
here to start the streaming version
I forgot to mention that he talks about his experiences with the Burmese pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was recently from nearly 20 months of house arrest imposed by the Burma military dictatorship. He notes she uses the weapon of love, rare in the 21st century indeed.
The peace and social justice movement in the United States doesn't have quite the richness of the 1960s civil rights movement when it comes to spiritual rooting. It's there, of course, but in my humble opinion, it's not as prevalent as an organizing force.
Thinking about this stuff -- the bigger picture -- is worthwhile.
Have a nice weekend,
Sara