Diary 1963 - Murshid Sam's Living Stream

Diaries 1963-2b. The other project is that I have been appointed as a research writer for the “Encyclopedia ofBuddhism.” The “experts” here are ex-European professors, beatniks and one self-appointed famousdialectical ex-communist linguist-poet. They form an iron wall.One may study Judaism and Christianity by going to churches. But in the case of Buddhismone goes to the “experts” for years I tried in vain to get an article published on “The Faith of Vietnam.”Rejected all over. Then I went to the Orient, got top-level greetings all over—and I mean toplevelgreetings. Even one of the spiritual leaders of the Vietnamese showered me with such love andcompassion it is hard to convey it.But no, I was not an “expert.” Reports all rejected. Now the masses of Vietnam, being Buddhists,are in revolt. We are wasting millions of dollars and even GI lives supporting dialectical anti-Communist (so-called) governments and tyrannies. Wilson’s Fourteen Points are moribund exemptingin speeches. The United States Government loses face and now considers face-loss as honorableif it only stems the communists.The Nations of Africa are excluding both the communist and anti-Communist “imperialists.” Ihave worked for years on two principles:a. Promote American-Americanism (Transcendentalism, Pragmatism, Neo-Realism, Scienceand the new Integrative Movements thereof—these are making much headway.b. Learn the folk-ways and religion of the unaligned countries and try to be their friends.c. The same tenor covers other fields. I have just been asked to go to Pakistan to engage in someenormous pieces of research larger than the above. I cannot do it. If there is any loss of life in Indonesia,of the so-called “Peace Corps,” it is due to the strange policies we now have—we train thesepeople in languages, anti-communist dialectics (anti-Communist must be dialectical); and knowlittle of our own previous history and nothing of the historical back-grounds of the lands visited inAsia. I know what I am speaking about. If a single American is mobbed in Indonesia I may go so faras to send you a Photostat of a letter from a VIP.I have cross-trailed actual communists many times and know of their whole plan to underminethe “Peace Corps”—direct experience, but all unusual. You can’t reach unwilling governmental officials.We lost Tibet, Annam, Laos, North Korea, etc., rather than to listen to some of my confreres,all but one Californian, too.FaithfullySamuel L. Lewis