The highest level of koans in Rinzai practice is the Ten Precepts. Today we are going to do Pride combined with the delusion of privilege, as manifested in Ultra-MAGAism. “Do not be proud of yourself and devalue others.” But don’t think, “I give thanks that I am not as other people, even as these stupid, vicious MAGA cultists.” Yes, that’s Jesus teaching.
Start with Confession. The Christian version, in that same teaching, is
God be merciful to me, a sinner.
We say
All the evil committed by me is born of greed, hatred, and delusion, which have no beginning. All the evil is committed by my body, mouth, and mind. I now confess everything wholeheartedly.
Attachment is a universal ill. All of Buddhism is compassion for that koan.
Kyojukaimon, Giving and Receiving the Teaching of the Precepts
Do not be proud of yourself and devalue others.
Every Buddha and every Ancestor realizes that he is the same as the limitless sky and as great as the universe: when they realize their true body, there is nothing within or without; when they realize their true body, they are nowhere upon the earth.
We start, as usual, with no-self. Thus there is nothing to be proud about.
Disciple: What is the difference between the unawakened and the awakened man [sic, but that was then].
Master: The unawakened see a difference, but the awakened do not.
The most deluded among us similarly have no self, or alternatively, manifest the Buddha Nature. Therefore we can be kind and respectful toward them while recognizing their problems with their own karma, even if they deny that karma applies to them.
How do you respect, let’s say, your crazy uncle? You can’t break his shell. But you can invite him to investigate cause and effect, and to break his shell from the inside. Or better yet, to recognize that his goose is not confined in a bottle, but is entirely out. The simplest and most direct approach is to ask, at every rant,
Oh? How would that work?
To those who want to deport everyone in the US without proper papers, we can ask this, knowing that it would destroy our agriculture, construction industry, and more. That is, it would comprehensively wreck the US economy.
On abortion and contraception, how do the vicious policies in a number of states work? They galvanize women and the men who love them to overturn those policies, and vote their authors out.
How about the rest of Project 2025?
As the leader of the Center for Renewing America, Project 2025 contributor Russell Vought has spearheaded an effort to instill precepts of Christian nationalism into government and public life should Trump win a second term. In a 2021 opinion piece, Vought wrote Christian nationalism "recognizes America as a Christian nation" but makes "a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society."
Project 2025 advises a future Republican President to go further than merely nullifying President Joe Biden's executive orders on climate change.[36] It proposes abandoning strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change.
I don’t have room to review the rest of this nonsense here. You can, if you are so inclined, read as much of the Project 2025 document, Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, as you can stand. For some, the Wikipedia summary will be sufficient. Or you can just take its authors at their word that they mean to destroy everything that we value and they fear, and inquire, again,
How would that work?
It is vital to understand that these people are not stupid. They know what they want, starting with privilege and the right to devalue the rest of us, and they know how they got that when various of these opinions were majority views.
Well, no more. How would all of that work? It wouldn’t, it doesn’t, and it won’t.
Similarly, our side wants to do the best we can for everybody, particularly including those who can’t stand that. When they complain about us eevul Soshulists, we can stand fast on that. For Jews and Christians there is
21 If your enemies are hungry, give them food to eat. If they are thirsty, give them water to drink.22 You will heap burning coals of shame on their heads, and the LORD will reward you.
Proverbs 25
Ah, karma!