Buddhism and society

I've just finished reading The Heart of Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh. I think this book may have changed my life (in the short term at least), but I'll need to learn some more about Buddhism before I can say. In the meantime, I thought I would share a passage from the end of the book:

There is so much violence in our schools. Parents, teachers and students need to work together to transform the violence. Schools are not just places for transmitting technical know-how. They must also be places where children can learn to be happy, loving, and understanding, where teachers nourish their students with their won insights and happiness. We also need places in hospitals where family members, health are workers, patients, and others can sit, breathe and calm themselves. We need City Halls where responsible people can look deeply into local problems. We need Congress to be a place where our real problems are truly addressed. If you are an educator, a parent, a teacher, an architect, a health care worker, a politician, or a writer, please help us create the kind of institutions we need for our collective awakening.

Our legislators need to know how to calm themselves and communicate well. They need to know how to listen and look deeply and to use loving speech. If we elect unhappy people who don't have the capacity to make their own families happy, how can we expect them to make our city or our nation happy? Don't vote for someone just because he or she is handsome or has a lovely voice. We are entrusting the fate of our city, our nation, and our lives to such people. We have to act responsibly. We need to create communities of deep looking, deep sharing, and real harmony. We need to be able to make the best kinds of decisions together. We need peace, within and without.

 The book has given me some very tentative thoughts about the role of spiritual awakening in bringing about social change. Basically, what I'm getting from this book is a set of concrete values that I strongly agree with, and a series of practices that can be used very effectively to bring about change in your lifestyle and behavior very quickly. Me being me, the political implications of that (some of which Hanh gets into in those passages) get me pretty excited.

My thoughts are initial and rambling. For that reason, they're behind the cut.