Shotoku Taishi by Kogan Zenji, Wikipedia Commons, public domain

It’s getting harder to distinguish politics from war. Participants in both talk about campaigns, battlegrounds, and victors. I imagine that those candidates who are complaining they lost because their national parties didn’t send money consider themselves collateral damage.

A week later hard feelings still overwhelm voters on both sides and some of us wonder if this election vitriol will ever end.

I intended to write a short blog in honor of Veteran’s Day using a quote from Shotoku Taishi, Japanese politician and Buddhist scholar who lived from 524 to 622. When I first read the quote I thought not only of war, but of the presidential campaign. However, Veteran’s Day came and went without my posting it. Yesterday, a friend who was feeling battered by Facebook post-election political commentary asked me to put it up.

“Let us cease from wrath and refrain from angry looks. Nor let us be resentful when others differ from us. For all men have hearts, and each heart has its own leanings. Their right is our wrong, and our right is their wrong. We are not unquestionably sages, nor are they unquestionably fools. Both of us are simply ordinary man. How can anyone lay down a rule by which to distinguish right from wrong? For we are all, one with another, wise and foolish, like a ring which has no end.”