ongoing drama

Channeling the psychedelic left confluence of exotic spirituality with popular oppositional anarchist politics, Patti Smith at Glastonbury brings the Dalai Lama onstage for a birthday celebration and a speech about compassion, and then sings People have the Power to the crowd. This of course exposes the hopeless confusion of that particular radical strand that goes back to Patti's friend and mentor, Allen Ginsberg, and his kind, and is kept alive in Britain almost single-handedly by Russell Brand. One of Buddhism's central characteristics is its belief in Karma, that great underlying driving force of the cosmos, that moves everything according to its implicit law. Every single organism is driven by it, just part of the big ongoing drama of creation. That may emerge as left wing activity, but it may equally emerge as its opposite. The universe is indifferent. Not that the crowd are likely to have shared her political views if these figures are accurate, despite the efforts of the organisers and the festival's regular speechmakers.