"As a country, we need to take little steps, maybe even tiny steps, but brave steps nonetheless, in the direction of greater wholeness and greater embodiment of mindfulness if we hope to heal the suffering of the world while contributing less to compounding it. We will need to recognize earlier, and act more resolutely to stem the potential harm that always ensues from the delusional grasping for power at the expense of love and wisdom, kindness and interconnectedness, whether within ourselves or within others. It is important that we not underestimate the power of the tiniest shifts in consciousness at a national level toward greater awareness and greater selflessness. As we have already made note of, the little is not so little. The ancient Chinese called it the taming power of the small. Gandhi knew that the smallest move or gesture, well-thought out and morally grounded, packed huge potential, like the inconceivable amounts of energy contained in the tiniest atom. Martin Luther King embodied this knowing, and mobilized tremendous power out of no power, out of moral persuasion, out of a long-downtrodden people's pride in themselves and the beauty of his language. And of course, the eight-hour workday, child labor laws, gender equality, and desegregation were all won through popular grassroots movements that started small, and that doggedly badgered and perturbed the system, often at huge sacrifice of many anonymous individuals, until it responded and shifted.

"The world is always changing. Nothing remains the same. When we align ourselves and our original mind and its innate goodness with the natural unfolding of change itself and the pregnancy of each moment with infinite possibility, gradually, little by little, the world responds. The fluid, dynamic, ever-changing lattice structure, or better, the fluxing net of interconnectedness, shifts slightly because of your realignment, your inward shift and the outward manifestations that stem from it. Whether we are politicians or simply citizens, practice can mean allowing ourselves tiny little tastes of presence and goodness; sampling such moments many times over, and so coming to know the taste of inward clarity and peace. We can build on our experience by staying in touch with the present moment and not losing our minds in the face of the challenges and opportunities we face.

"The life of the body politic is at least as complex as the life of the body, yet the former has not had the benefit of millions of years of sculpting and refining through evolution, and the sloughing off of solutions that didn't quite work. If the human species is in its infancy, governance and democracy are even more so. When asked what he thought of Western civilization, Gandhi replied: 'I think it would be a good idea.' As a species, we are a cosmic experiment in process. The universe could care less how it works out. But we might, if we care about anything larger than our own small-minded gain and transient comfort. And clearly, we do. That is the beauty of our species. We are not to be underestimated. But the only intelligence on the planet that could ever underestimate us is ourselves."