Spiritual Teachers

"The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II — an orator and activist whom Dr. Cornel West has likened to Martin Luther King Jr. — recently spoke with PEOPLE about poverty, racism, President Donald Trump's administration amid the novel coronavirus pandemic and national unrest after George Floyd's death. Barber's conclusion? People need to rise up together and push for change. "The only way we make it through this — and we come out better — is if we find our way together, we lift up everybody," he says... Barber is a leading voice of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival and is preparing for two major events. On Tuesday, his book inspired by one of his most acclaimed sermons, We Are Called to Be a Movement, was published by Workman Publishing. And on June 20, Barber will guide the nation's first digital Mass Poor People’s Assembly & Moral March on Washington to, in his words, change the narrative about America's poor and interlocking issues like racial inequality, the lack of police accountability and voter suppression. More than 100 organizations will participate, along with national figures and celebrities including Al Gore, Danny Glover, Wanda Sykes, Debrah Messing and Jane Fonda."

"The Rev. Dr. William Barber , with thousands of collaborators, is making big strides for justice and equality through his organizing of "Moral Mondays" protests, which first started in North Carolina. The protests started as a response to the "mean-spirited quadruple attack" on the most vulnerable members of our society. In the tradition of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Rev. Barber is fighting against restrictions on voting and for improvements in labor laws."

"There is a sleeping giant in America. Poor and low-wealth folks now make up 30% of the electorate in every state and over 40% of the electorate in every state where the margin of victory for the presidency was less than 3%. If you could just get that many poor and low-wealth people to vote, they could fundamentally shift every election in the country."

"Then at last Avalokiteshvara arrived at the summit of Marpori, the 'Red Hill', in Lhasa. Gazing out, he perceived that the lake on Otang, the 'Plain of Milk', resembled the Hell of Ceaseless Torment. Myriad beings were undergoing the agonies of boiling, burning, hunger, thirst, yet they never perished, sending forth hideous cries of anguish all the while. When Avalokiteshvara saw this, tears sprang to his eyes. A teardrop from his right eye fell to the plain and became the reverend Bhrikuti, who declared: 'Child of your lineage! As you are striving for the sake of sentient beings in the Land of Snows, intercede in their suffering, and I shall be your companion in this endeavour!' Bhrikuti was then reabsorbed into Avalokiteshvara's right eye, and was reborn in a later life as the Nepalese princess Tritsun. A teardrop from his left eye fell upon the plain and became the reverend Tara. She also declared, 'Child of your lineage! As you are striving for the sake of sentient beings in the Land of Snows, intercede in their suffering, and I shall be your companion in this endeavor!' Tārā was then reabsorbed into Avalokiteshvara's left eye."

"Well, we are in a jam today. Trouble is real, and whether we like it or not, we are in this mess together as a nation. When this word of the Lord came to Isaiah, his people were also in a jam. Bad leadership, greed, and injustice and lies had led them into trouble, exile, and economic hardship. In that day, some tried to simply cover up the trouble with false religion and deceit. But God said to the prophet, “Sound the trumpet. Tell the nation of its sin. Tell them that just going through the motions of prayer will not get them out of this jam. I need them to repent of what got them here and turn in a new direction.” The prophet was saying what Jesus would say about nations caring for the least of these. The prophet was saying then what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in the 1930s to an America with one-third of the nation ”ill-housed, ill-clad, and ill-nourished,” besieged by the Great Depression and beset by bigotry and hatred."

"Please God, grant us wisdom, grant us courage, until the poor are lifted, the sick are healed, children are protected, and civil rights and human rights never neglected. Grant us wisdom for the facing of this hour until love and justice are never rejected. Grant us wisdom and courage for the facing of this hour until, together, we make sure there is racial justice and economic justice and living-wage justice and health care justice and ecological justice and disability justice and justice for homeless and justice for the poor and low-wealth and working poor and immigrant justice—until we study war no more and peace and justice are the way we live. This is the only path to domestic tranquility and healing. So God, grant us as a people; grant us as an entire nation, grant our new President; grant our new Vice President; grant every preacher; grant every politician; grant every person, Black and white, Latino, Native, Asian, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, people of faith, not of faith but with a moral conscience, every human being created by God, documented or undocumented; gay, straight or trans, young or old. And what a day it will be when our children’s children call us what you have called us to be: repairers of the breach. Amen."

"Don't fear the word "poor," Barber says: If poor people voted in large numbers, that would change everything... What we found were three things: No. 1, don't go into these communities and say, you just need to vote. Say, we honor you, because we respect that some of them have not voted because they never heard anybody call their name.... We need to say the word "poor." If you look at the number of poor people — 52 million without a living wage, 140 million [overall] — you have to talk to them as human beings. Second of all, say to them, "I am not here to ask you to vote. I am here for you to join a movement that says there's something wrong with our policies that this many people can be left disinherited." Thirdly, I am asking you to believe that democracy is not just an idea, but democracy and justice are on the ballot."

"We’re telling people, vote by absentee ballot. In North Carolina, where we have 16 days of early voting, vote early. And if you vote on Election Day, then put your shield on, put your mask on, put your gloves on. Pack you a lunch. Get you a folding chair. Put some water in that lunch bag and vote. And if they want to come watch us vote, let them watch millions of people, because we’re not scared. We’re not giving away this democracy. Let them come and watch. And then stop saying Trump won the last time. He was elected by the Electoral College because of 80,000 votes."

"64 million poor and low-wealth people were eligible to vote in the last election. That’s nearly one-third of the electorate. Thirty-four million did not vote. And a study that we just recently did, called power unleashed — “Unleashing the Power of Poor and Low-Wealth Voters,” said that the number one reason that poor and low-wealth people did not vote — this actually was a tri-reason..."

"Not only will Pence and Trump not acknowledge racism when it comes to police violence, they are not even acknowledging the disparate racism in economics and in healthcare, and so forth and so on. So, on the one hand, while Pence and — while Biden and Harris may not be every, fully where the Poor People’s Campaign are, they are in the world of wanting to do more.... wanting to make sure that the people have what they need, as opposed to wanting to only secure the wealthy and the greedy."

"Tell me one state where there's been a debate about what they are going to do about poverty. Even in the presidential race it didn't happen. Every problem we face — poverty, lack of health care, lack of a living wage — is created by policy. They can be changed by policy, and poor and low-wealth people hold the power to put people in office that can make a difference."

"I come from a unique place. North Carolina was the scene of the crime of the worst voter suppression, after the case out of Alabama and when the Supreme Court gutted Section 5. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that it’s like putting away your umbrella — the Shelby case, it was — putting away your umbrella in a rainstorm. And in North Carolina, Amy, when it was done, the Republicans there said, “Now that the problem has — the headache has been removed, we can do what we want to.” And guess what. Everything Pence just said, we heard in 2013. And they tried to roll back every progressive way of voting. And they actually went to the books and looked at how did it benefit Black and Brown people and young people, and those were the rules they tried to roll back. And the court said it was surgical — surgical racism. And what I saw in North Carolina, what we defeated in North Carolina, what we filed suit against in North Carolina, is now what Trump and Pence are talking about doing on the national level: surgical racism with surgical precision."

"Senator Harris did a tremendous job in pointing out the economic injustice... we have to stop saying things were well before COVID. It’s almost as though we give that away to the Trump and Pence. The reality is, Wall Street was well. The reality is, those who got his tax cuts were well. The reality is, though, that before COVID, they were trying to overturn healthcare. Before COVID, they were blocking living wages. Before COVID, we were not addressing the issue of poor and low-wealth people. And we have to find a way to say that."

"We cannot return to normal. Addressing the depth of the crises that have been revealed in this pandemic means enacting , expanding social welfare programs, ensuring access to water and sanitation, cash assistance to poor and low income families, good jobs, s and an annual income and protecting our democracy. It means ensuring that our abundant s are used for the general welfare, instead of war, walls, and the wealthy."

"Before COVID-19, nearly 700 people died everyday because of poverty and inequality in this country. The frontlines of this pandemic will be the poor and dispossessed - those who do not have access to healthcare, housing, water, decent wages, stable work or - and those who are continuing to work in this crisis, meeting our health care and other needs."

"Key to these rollbacks: controlling the narrative about who is poor in America and the world. It is in the interest of the greedy and the powerful to perpetuate myths of deservedness—that they deserve their wealth and power because they are smarter and work harder, while the poor deserve to be poor because they are lazy and intellectually inferior. It’s also in their interest to perpetuate the myth that the poverty problem has largely been solved and so we needn’t worry about the rich getting richer—even while our real is full of gaping holes. This myth has been reinforced by our deeply flawed official measurements of poverty and economic hardship. The way the U.S. government counts who is poor and who is not, frankly, is a sixty-year-old mess that doesn’t tell us what we need to know. It’s an inflation-adjusted measure of the cost of a basket of food in 1955 relative to household income, adjusted for family size—and it’s still the way we today."

"It should not have taken a pandemic to raise these resources. In June 2019, we presented a Poor People’s Moral Budget to the House Budget Committee, showing that we can meet these needs for this entire country. If you had taken up this Moral Budget, we would have already moved towards infusing more than $1.2 trillion into the economy to invest in health care, good jobs, living wages, housing, water and sanitation services and more."

"If we cannot shift in this pandemic as a nation, and become more merciful and less greedy, and more just and less unjust, then God help us.... One germ, one little germ has shown that it can shut down this whole nation and the world. One little germ, united with itself, has shown what it can do. And if we can't see that in this moment, there's not a bomb that can blow it out, there's not a bullet that can shoot it out, there's not a stock market that can buy it out. None of that. The only way we make it through this — and we come out better — is if we find our way together, we lift up everybody."

"In one story of her saving a wood-gatherer from the jaws of a lion Taaraa appears as a woman clad in leaves. The form of Taaraa known as Khadiravani Taaraa [Green Tara] often wears lotus flowers in her hair instead of a jeweled diadem. In another story associating her with the wind, a warrior awakes to find himself surrounded by a thousand enemy soldiers. He calls on Taaraa and 'at the same instant at which he called her name the Noble Lady herself appeared before him, arriving from the skies. From underneath her feet whirlwinds carried the soldiers off into the ten directions', enabling the man to reach safety."

"Well, you know, when Pence talked last night, he told what my grandmother called a bold-faced lie. The first CARES Act, 83% of the money went to corporations and banks. It did not go to the people."

"The same forces demonizing immigrants are also attacking low-wage workers... The same politicians denying living wages are also suppressing the vote; the same people who want less of us to vote are also denying the evidence of the climate crisis and refusing to act now; the same people who are willing to destroy the Earth are willing to deny tens of millions of Americans access to health care.”"

"We're in a nation where 140 million people live in poverty, 43 percent of this nation... So when [the coronavirus disease] COVID-19 hit, America had all these wounds, these fissures. And pandemics, by their nature, exploit fissures and expand themselves through fissures. So it might hit the people in the fissures: the poor, the low wealth, black, brown, poor white communities, native communities, first nation communities. But it doesn't stay in the fissures. The pandemic might be in the fissures among the homeless for instance, in the fissures among poor black communities, but that same pandemic will make its way eventually to the White House and to the palace."

"This is not the time for trickle-down solutions. We know that when you lift from the bottom, everybody rises. There are concrete solutions to this immediate crisis and the longer term illnesses we have been battling for months, years and decades before. We will continue to organize and build power until you meet these demands. Many millions of us have been hurting for far too long. We will not be silent anymore."

"Why do we hear so much about crime rates and opioids and gun violence in America, but poverty kills more people than all of those things?"

"War is a crime against the poor civilians of Iran, Iraq, and the whole Middle East region, who pay for U.S. wars with the destruction of their lives, their health, their homes and their country’s environment. It’s a crime against the poor of the U.S. as well who pay with their tax dollars going to the Pentagon instead of to jobs, health care and a green new deal."

"Republicans have racialized poverty, and Democrats have run from poverty. And we’re forcing them to deal with the reality. We are very political, but we’re not partisan... There is not some separation between Jesus and justice; to be Christian is to be concerned with what’s going on in the world... All the victories we enjoy today—voting rights, Social Security, minimum wage—100 years ago were seen as virtually impossible...Everything we won, people had to start winning in the midst of opposition that looked like it was overwhelming. I believe that’s the moment we’re in right now."

"Don't you come talking to me about Jesus, unless you're standing with the poor. If we don't address this issue of poverty... we will never energize the 100 million Americans who stayed home in 2016. If you mobilize 2 to 10% of the poor around an agenda, you can fundamentally shift every election in this country... it's better to die having fought for justice than to live and stay on the sidelines and to watch injustice have it's way without a challenge."

"Our military budgets continue to rise, now grabbing more than fifty-three cents of every discretionary federal dollar to pay for wars abroad and pushing our ability to pay for health care for all, for a Green New Deal, for jobs and education, and infrastructure, further and further away. The wars that those military budgets fund continue to escalate. They don’t make us safer, and they’ve led to the deaths of thousands of poor people in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and beyond, as well as the displacement of millions of refugees, the destruction of water sources, and the contamination of the environments of whole countries. The only ones who benefit are the millionaire CEOs of military companies, who are getting richer every year on the more than $350 billion—half the military budget—that goes directly to their corporations. In the meantime 23,000 low-ranking troops earn so little that they and their families qualify for food stamps."

"Her widespread popularity confirms her ability to cater to the varying needs of her devotees. But, one might object, similar observations could be made about a number of Indo-Tibetan Bodhisattva forms. What distinguishes Taaraa is her explicit rejection of the exclusive dichotomy between 'male' and 'female', and this must be allowed for in any attempt to appreciate Taaraa's full significance."

"The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, yet millions of American families have had to set up crowdfunding sites to try to raise money for their loved ones’ medical bills. Millions more can buy unleaded gasoline for their car, but they can’t get unleaded water in their homes. Almost half of America's workers—whether in Appalachia or Alabama, California or Carolina—work for less than a . And as school buildings in poor communities crumble for lack of investment, America’s billionaires are paying a lower tax rate than the poorest half of households. This moral crisis is coming to a head as the coronavirus pandemic lays bare America’s deep injustices. While the virus itself does not discriminate, it is the poor and disenfranchised who will experience the most suffering and death. They’re the ones who are least likely to have health care or paid , and the most likely to lose work hours. And though children appear less vulnerable to the virus than adults, America’s nearly forty million poor and low-income children are at serious risk of losing access to food, shelter, education, and housing in the economic fallout from the pandemic. The underlying disease, in other words, is poverty, which was killing nearly 700 of us every day in the world’s wealthiest country, long before anyone had heard of COVID-19. The moral crisis of poverty amid vast wealth is inseparable from the injustice of systemic racism, ecological devastation, and our militarized war economy. It is only a minority rule sustained by voter suppression and gerrymandering that subverts the will of the people. To redeem the soul of America—and survive a pandemic—we must have a moral fusion movement that cuts across race, gender, class, and cultural divides."

"With its broad sweep, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us into an unprecedented national emergency. This emergency, however, results from a deeper and much longer term crisis — that of poverty and inequality, and of a society that ignores the needs of 140 million people who are poor or a $400 emergency away from being poor."

"The United States has always been a nation at odds with its professed aspirations of equality and justice for all—from the genocide of original inhabitants to slavery to military aggression abroad. But there have been periods in our history when courageous social movements have made significant advances. We must learn from those who’ve gone before us as we strive to build a movement that can tackle today’s injustices—and help all of us survive."

"It is important to keep in mind that, because Buddha nature encompasses all, Tara can and does appear in all aspects, depending on what best suits the needs of sentient beings. If a woman feels discouraged about gender, then Tara can appear as a woman to help serve as a role model—even Shakyamuni Buddha can appear in the female aspect in order to best encourage practitioners. In the same sense, Tara can appear as a man, for the same sort of reasons... Is Tara empowering to women? Sure, but more so, she’s empowering for anyone... Showering her rain without bias, whoever has the seed will become nourished and grow."

"Decades after Depression-era reforms, Wall Street fought successfully to deregulate the , paving the way for the 2008 financial crash that caused millions to lose their homes and livelihoods. And the ultra-rich and big corporations have also managed to dominate our campaign finance system, making it easier for them to buy off politicians who commit to rigging the rules against the poor and the environment, and to suppress voting rights, making it harder for the poor to fight back."

"# To know the emptiness of objects is to know emptiness free of appearance and free of coverings. That is the Middle Way from which the "subsequent" or conventional has been purged."

"# "Middle way" is defined [by professors of Nirakara] in terms of a self-awareness that is not nil; it appears as blue, etc. objects, but characteristics do not arise in it."

"# To professors of Mayopamadvaya, "freedom from the four extremes" is [to know that] the characteristics are false, and [in reality] clear light. The following system had evidence for its beliefs."

"It doesn’t say rest on your laurels, but to keep on pushing. In this work, sometimes you get heavy criticism. People do say ugly things, ‘You just want money.’ I just want other people to have health care. You know, Jesus healed everybody and never charged a co-pay."

"# To professors of Sakara, "freedom from the four extremes" means understanding that the object of cognition exists in a momentary mode, empty of thought-constructions and lacking objectification."

"When faith and church becomes merely a place for privatized religion and privatized salvation and privatized relationship with the divine, it is actually counter to Scripture. Jesus said that nations would be judged for how we treat the poor, the sick, the stranger, the immigrants and the least of these."

"It was the Civil Rights Movement that said we don’t need to just pray for things to get better in America, we need to march in the street and challenge the injustices of society and declare that segregation was not only a political problem, but a moral problem."

"We forget that it was the religion of abolitionists that led them not to pray against slavery but to stand against slavery."

"Strange things happen to Nohad al-Shami. In 1993 her painting of St Charbel began oozing oil. Around the same time the long-dead saint appeared in her dreams. 'I have come to operate on you,' he said. And so he did, curing her of hemiplegia (paralysis of half of the body), she claims. At the mountain-top monastery of Annaya, in north-west Lebanon, a mass is said every month to mark the miracle and to pray for new ones."

"For the next 45 nights, a most unusual event occurred: According to many local townspeople, an extraordinarily bright light appeared above his tomb, lighting the night sky. Finally, after the mysterious light persisted, officials at the monastery petitioned the ecclesiastical authorities for permission to exhume Charbel's body. When the grave was opened four months after Charbel's death, his body was found to be incorrupt."

"The priest-monk lived and served in the monastery for 19 years, showing great devotion to the life of prayer, manual work, and contemplative silence. Charbel's superiors observed God's 'supernatural power' at work in his life, and he became known as a wonder-worker even among some Muslims. In 1875, he was granted permission to live as a solitary monk in a nearby hermitage dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul. Rigorous asceticism, and a profound union with God, continued to characterise the monk's life for the next 23 years."

"On Christmas Eve in 1898, Father Charbel died. His body was interred in the ground without a coffin and without embalming, according to the monk's custom, dressed in the full habit of the order."

"By your prayers you can bring down the rain of mercy."

"Pray to soften hardened hearts, to open darkened minds."

"Pray in your beds."

"Persevere in prayer without ceasing.. to understand and live according to his will, not to change it."