Weekly Words of Wisdom
chosen by Lama Surya Das
for Dzogchen Center

4 December 2000

From pp. 191-192, "Lives of Moral Leadership", 
the new book by one of my favorite authors, Robert Coles:

    "Moral leadership has to do with 'finding a way for oneself, pointing a
way for others," or so I once heard Dorothy Day say as she looked back at
what she tried to do in the 1930's-- 'We were building places,' she
amplified modestly, referring to a moral leadership that had to do the
establishment of places where the poor, the hungry, and the homeless might
receive food and shelter, the helping hands of others. But to find a way,
to point a way, to work with others, start actions, see them through to
completion, is to be the moral leader she was and others have been in
various ways.

     To be a certain kind of Moral leader, as Day was,... is often to see
what needs to be done or changed and then to exhort, to remind others of
what was, what needs to be or ought to be; to criticize what is, even
reprimand, reprove those who won't see it or acknowledge it, who uphold the
conventional, the established, at whatever cost to people in trouble. To be
a moral leader is to see and to provoke, to stir others, teach them,
persuade them, move them to reflection, inspire and inform them, dramatize
for them the particular issues, matters at stake in a given struggle,
emphasize for them (for oneself, too) those issues, those matters-- to
lecture, hector even, invoke (calling, for example, upon moral traditions,
beliefs, teachings), to evoke (give expression to those learned values,
pieties that have been passed by parents, teachers, and clergy to the
young). To be a moral leader is to reason, directly or indirectly, with
others, to expand their sense of the possible, the desirable, the
undesirable, and so at times to retrain others, warn them of dangers, even
as one is alerting them to possible gains, achievements; to uplift, to try
to help enable ideals, give them the life of a personal and social reality.
To be a moral leader is to tell, to announce and pronounce, to spell out
plans, programs, to engage with others so that what is proposed is taken to
heart and connects with the consciences of listeners, leaders, or viewers.
To be a moral leader is to will and to achieve various breakthroughs and
accomplishments.

      To be a moral leader is to call upon moral passion within oneself,
set it in motion among others, and do so resourcefully.... You have to be
determined yourself if you are going to ask others to stand up and to stand
up with you and to stand by you....We revere those whose moral energy
inspires us mightily, prompts thought, even moves us to statements and
actions; but we also constantly look to one another, to uphold for one
another various suppositions and ideals, to hand one along, morally as well
as psychologically... in circles of human moral connectedness growing,
touching, informing the lives of individuals and of the communities  to
which we belong."

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