Today I was checking out the asian sculpture at the wonderful Ring of Fire Imports in Berkeley, and it reminded me that I once had a brush with what may be a bodhisattva. A few years ago I moved to a new place. Moving is especially difficult for me: I was working sporadically as a temp, I had no savings, I had no family and few friends in the area, and I don’t drive. After making some elaborate arrangements for exchange of services, I put together a group of friends who were supposed to help me move. Since helping someone move is one of the top ten most onerous duties of friendship, everyone who had agreed to help found an excuse to back out. Since someone else was supposed to be moving into my old place that week, I had no idea what to do.

Then a miracle happened. Another temp that I barely knew, heard me calling my friends and begging for help – and out of nowhere, he volunteered to help me. He had a car, and he spent a day doing a lot of heavy lifting and making multiple trips. I asked him what motivated him to help a stranger this way when all my supposed friends had ducked out of it. He explained that he was a Buddhist, and his religious beliefs guided him to act selflessly and reach out to anyone who needed his help.

After I met this person, I read a bit about Buddhism, and one of the things I learned is that the role of the Bodhisattva is to help other people reach enlightenment. The person who helped me move certainly played that role for me. To this day when I’m faced with a difficult ethical question, I ask myself what this guy would do. He’s the person who represents what it means to Do the Right Thing in my mind.

I’m bringing up this story because this is one model for building a dignitarian society. Rankism often results from people putting their own convenience before anything else and excluding the people who most need their help. The Bodhisattva seeks out those who need help and embraces the inconvenient as an opportunity for selflessness. Look for the potential Bodhisattvas around you and recognize that they are the leaders in creating a dignitarian way of life.

Recently the U.S. has been facing significant challenges to one of the fundamental principles of our Constitution, the separation of church and state. As pundits and litigators rattle swords over beachhead issues like prayer in schools and Intelligent Design, it’s edifying to consider the logical outcome of theocracy. Afghanistan has provided a timely demonstration in the form of a Christian convert that faced the death penalty for apostasy from Islam. While the Afghan court system cheated the question by tossing the case on a technicality, Muslim religious leaders prayed for the death penalty and threatened to whip up the anger of the people to tear the man who dared to turn away from their god “to pieces”.

Because Afghanistan is a theocracy, their government may not be able to adhere to their agreement to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They can’t let all converts off on a technicality. Perhaps they will try a variation of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – though Afghan policymakers should take a hard look at how well that’s working for the U.S. armed forces first. Or should the U.S. offer amnesty for all?.

Given the collapse of the Human Rights Commission and the failure of the U.S. to incorporate Universal Declaration into its domestic legal system (not to mention our willingness to resort to torture), there may be no genuine defenders of freedom of conscience left. It may be only a matter of years before we see people on trial for their religion in the U.S., complete with lynchings, witch burnings, and crucifixions. It’s time to call on the U.S. government to restore the principle of separation of church and state in our own country, and lead by example in order to promote the wisdom of freedom of conscience throughout the world.