Under the Waning Moon

You have to wait much longer these nights before you can see the light in the sky. And there is less and less of the rich silver that showered upon us at the peak of the month, just a few days ago. It puts a person in mind of that wisest of ancient sayings, "All things must pass." Perseverance in hard times depends on this solid truth. So do moderation and justice when life grows lush. Ephemerality underlies morality.

One of the traits that seems to characterize all the worst dictators is a push for immortality in this world. To make this absurdity seem plausible requires grand achievements, and for the sake of grand achievements all sacrifice is acceptable, so long as it is not your own. The vision of cosmic destiny, so exalting, so precarious, needs protecting at all costs from the petty-minded or perverse people who refuse to share it, who seek to destroy it out of mere envy.

And they seem to be everywhere. Dictators, surrounded by the enemies they endlessly manufacture, grow rigid with fear, and rightly. The threat is everywhere, but what threatens is truth. This is the reason that truth-speakers cannot be borne, that dictators grow more and more insane. For once fantasy dies, failure is evident. The fact of mortality opens its black door. And at that door the ultimate accounting is made.

Name all the world leaders you read about in the newspaper who are following this path. It isn't very difficult to find them. Yet the pattern isn't limited to the egregious few: it's common to us all. "Current events" are merely ordinary egos writ large.

History shows us the same sad trajectory time and time again. It also shows us another -- but that, being less grandiose, is less visible. There is such a thing as following the laws of life. The process begins with accepting the reality of death, the limit of all human ambition. With the acceptance of limits comes flexibility, openness, ebb and flow, humility, generosity, wisdom. All fruits of the single moral act that in Islam is known as surrender. It is embracing our dying that bestows upon us the real possibilities of living.

You can bet the Burmese monks are aware of this. All of us will be stronger the more we are aware of it too.