Your Holiness,
Sometime ago I stopped by the Tibetan center in Bloomington, Indiana and was offered a sticker: Everything Is Connected.
You've said the great movements of the last hundred years have failed to deliver the universal benefits they were supposed to, despite many wonderful ideas. But there's an idea that has been overlooked, and with your assistance it can and will bring understanding, and thus compassion and peace into the world immediately-nothing less than a spiritual revolution.
As it turns out, the American constitution contains a convention clause in Article V of its structural law. When governance begins to fail, or corruption becomes institutionalized and endangers our futures, it's a right of the people alive at the time to formally discuss and deliberate the situation. Before such a convention can be called the states must cast applications, and it's been discovered by research of the past decade that the states have applied in sufficient number-that the clause has been legally satisfied, and the convention call for this formal discussion amongst the living is currently mandated.
As you've said, people have an innate desire for freedom, and the human race can neither tolerate nor function properly under tyranny. The US Constitution and its convention clause is written with the aim of providing freedom for human beings when tyranny appears. You've said that you have long looked forward to the time when we could devise a political system, suited both to our traditions and to the demands of the modern world-a democracy that has nonviolence and peace at its roots. Your Holiness, that system exists, and it all starts with a convention here in the USA today.
You've said the Buddha saw life's very purpose is happiness, what the Hopi have voiced too; and that while ignorance binds us in endless frustration and suffering, wisdom is liberating-that modern democracy is based on the principle that all human beings are equal, that each of us has an equal right to life, liberty, and happiness. Your Holiness, the convention clause of the American constitution was the common sense written into law based on this principle; power corrupts, and holding a convention, in order to build consensus, places things back into balance.
If, as you've said, the truth is the best guarantor and authentic foundation of freedom and democracy, then we must not only recognize why the convention clause was placed into the American constitution, but that it's currently mandated according to the Judeo-Christian ethic of the rule of law.
You've said that each of us must learn to work not just for his or her own self, family or nation, but for the benefit of all humankind; that a sense of universal responsibility is the key to human survival; that it's the rightful foundation for world peace, equitable use of natural resources, and proper care of the Biosphere. If so Your Holiness, based on all we know to be true today-and that everything is connected-it's logical then that advocating for the Article V Convention is the most profound act of compassion a person can practice as it checks those forces which deceive, corrupt, and enslave. If you were to advocate for the Article V Convention such action by Your Holiness would usher in a peaceful reformation of freedom and justice over humanity's current tyranny.
I imagine that if you gathered a group of American celebrities who are Buddhist, that a plan of action could be devised to bring about a tipping-point majority of their fellow sovereign citizens calling for the Article V Convention, which would coax the call out of the US Congress. From there, in a natural progression of events, and in due time, a global revolution of freedom will ensue.
Sincerely,
John De Herrera
Co-founder FOAVC
