According to the teaching of the Buddha, in true love there is no place for pride. One of the biggest seeds of pride is our inability to listen. In the book “True Love”, Thich Nhat Hanh has this to say about the importance of deep listening:

"In everyday life, deep listening, attentive listening is a meditation. If you wish to maintain calm and living compassion within you, then deep listening will be possible
…
Through meditation, we can cultivate awareness and we can cultivate compassion, and that way we will be able to sit there and listen to the other. The other suffers as long as he is in need of someone to listen to him; and you – you are the person who can do it. "

This has many implications in our private relationships. However, as I’m writing this, I’m also listening to a political commentary on TV so I find it hard to ignore the public implications of this lesson. Pride manifests in our relationships as well as our public political polarization.

I’ve made several shifts in my political views. I am a conservative, turned Libertarian, and turned progressive. The truth is that I have been blessed by the conservative political shift in our federal government over my adult life. I’ve reaped financial rewards due to the massive defense budget (I started my IT career working for a government subcontractor). I’ve been blessed by lower tax rates, federal deficits, generous incentives for my businesses, manipulated interest rates, and billions in borrowed federal funds used to stimulate the economy during my career. I’ll never be drafted to fight in any of our nations selfish global police efforts and it seems that my government won’t even ask me to pick up the tab. I’ll be dead long before our horrible enviornmental policies will have a serious effect on my life and my faith is the accepted norm so it is very unlikely that my religious practice will ever be compromised. So why shouldn’t I continue to support the status quo? Why shouldn’t I want to keep things going in the same direction?

I’ve decided to accept the message of Jesus and that means I can’t place my own well being as my top priority. Followers of Jesus can’t ignore the fact that the status quo is setup to make certain people successful and many others are excluded from the opportunities. I have to listen to others and I have to give their concerns a higher priority than my own. More importantly I have to be political and that means I have to support the public implementation of Jesus' values. That isn’t an easy thing to do. Our political process tends to encourage us to support the policies that help our own case. I don't think true followers of Jesus can continue making those choices. Followers of Jesus have to think about the future, think about the “least of these” and listen to the people that rarely get a chance to speak. Faith starts with humility and humility demands listening. Thich Nhat Hanh was right, there is no place for pride in love. I think every person of faith must ask themselves the tough question - Who benefits the most from my own political positions? If the answer is myself, then I wonder if that is a position of faith or a position of convenience.