Buddhists are refugees. We take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. This means that we do not take refuge in belonging to a national group, gender group, or any other kind of social classification. We do live in the normal social world and so we abide by the common conventions of the places where we live so long as these are not inhumane or cruel to other sentient beings, but they are utilities, not the meaning of life. One cannot remake the world single-handed, but we are ever trying to create havens of peace, beauty and compassion. Consequently, we completely dissent from the currently increasing prevalence of hate rhetoric that is poisoning the world. When democratically elected leaders in the USA, Hungary, the Phillipines and elsewhere get elected on a platform of rhetoric that includes hatred of and discrimination toward large groups of human beings, we dissent. When "populists" in France, Netherlands, Austria and elsewhere seek to jump on the same band wagon, we feel dismay. It seems pathetic, but it is genuinely dangerous. We do not want to be part of that and we do not want it to become a norm. Were it to become so, it would not be the kind of common convention that we could simply fit in with.
When people are unhappy they often look for scapegoats. Perhaps, for some people, there is a a short term pleasure to be had from hurting another more vulnerable group, but doing so does nothing to alleviate the real causes of the unhappiness and breeds much more trouble for the longer term.
We pray for better.
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