Zen in the Age of Anxiety by Tim Burkett & Wanda Isle

Author:Tim Burkett & Wanda Isle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2018-06-04T16:00:00+00:00

What happened to the charismatic Soviet leader at that moment? Why did something as humble and earthy as a Native American peace pipe throw him off his game? I wonder if he lay awake that night, as Zen master Gutei did, saying to himself, “You stupid fellow, you stupid fellow.”

The political careers of President Gorbachev and President Havel had many parallels. Like Havel, Gorbachev served as his country’s last General Secretary of the Communist Party and then as the first elected president of the Soviet Union after a major restructuring. Other world leaders described both men as warm, personable, and charismatic. But Havel had something Gorbachev lacked: the kind of authentic flexibility and earthy composure that arises from natural humility. He had been steeping in the humus his entire life.

I am the kind of person who would not be in the least surprised if, in the very middle of my Presidency, I were to be summoned and led off to stand trial before some shadowy tribunal, or taken straight to a quarry….Nor would I be surprised if I were to suddenly hear the reveille and wake up in my prison cell, and then, with great bemusement, proceed to tell my fellow prisoners everything that had happened to me in the past six months….The lower I am, the more proper my place seems; and the higher I am, the stronger my suspicion that there has been some mistake.

—VÁCLAV HAVEL

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