peter mumme

Seems to me that we make our lives way more difficult and anxious than they need be - or are meant to be

 

I would like to assist in our finding the re-sources that might offer ‘better’ social systems (of education, governance, business, media, arts, law) - where ‘better’ equates with fulfilling, contentment, happiness, caring, responsibility and joyful living  ..  these qualities becoming able to be acknowledged as being at least as important as the relatively simple 'economic' and material considerations made when (supposedly?) dealing with the well-being of people and country

 

I definitely cannot claim to hold (anything like) the capability to be able to achieve this !

But, hopefully, in having developed some small degree of clarity - thru’ long experience within australian arts, busyness, social, indigenous and Buddhist philosophy/practice .. yes, I would like to assist the developing of just such a process  

 

As illustration (of why we could well benefit from such re-imagining), may I offer images of two australian governance systems - one of our current federal parliament business and the other of the ‘old gondwana’ Indigenous meeting held at Uluru earlier this year ? 

 

The first shows the trappings of self-conscious men, delivering arbitrary statements to microphones and cameras, isolated in manufactured environments of concrete and flags, noisy but emptied of life, remote

and

the Uluru conference shows ceremonial dances, open space, trees, blue sky, red earth, old men sitting in wheelchairs .. peoples engaged, listening, attentive, sharing .. the conference resolving to offer to all peoples a ‘welcome to come share with us’

 

So a question: do we, in the first view, even know what this ‘share’ means ?

 

There is, in fact, a ceremonial process of ‘coming to share’ that has existed in traditional culture here for 1000s of years ..  

 

‘When indigenous and non-indigenous people sit down and talk to each other in an agreed place, and with a spirit of mutual respect and negotiation, the knowledge they produce is new, fresh and true. 

This knowledge is different from what either of the two (or more) contributing parties began with.’

 

A multiplicity of individual contributions would be invited; a new knowledge will lie beyond that of any one contributor; it need be ‘shared’ before it can exist’

(M Christie SAIKS, CDU)

 

We do not generally do this in mainstream life - or its governments !

We tend to impose ‘answers’ onto ‘problems’, but what are problems - other than things/situations we do not recognise as having been caused, at least in part, by our own (previous) actions ?

 

Can we learn from our age-old traditional social mediation wisdom experience ?

Can we develop broader ‘relationship’ (interdependent) views of people and country ?

Are we able to seek wisdom - from wisdom sources - on ethics, altruism, intuition, inspiration, love-kindness, joy .. the non-physical qualities that make us human .. but are ignored simply because they are not ‘static’ objects that may be simply measured and so quantified

See as illustration, the ideas coming from the office of HH Dalai Lama 

 

So .. to combine head and heart, theory and practice .. open-hearted and open-minded .. a process of bringing informed perspectives into situations of genuine ‘sharing’ 

 

It would help if this process is ‘visible’; is seen to be acting with ‘official’ sanction or imprimatur, actively and altruistically - for the benefit of all peoples and country .. is our australian governance system able to undertake such a process ?

 

Can we begin ‘looking in’ to our ‘official’ selves to find (reveal) what ‘open-heart’ and ‘open-mind’ might look like ?

​

October 2017