Rohingya activist says it’s unfair to send refugees back to Myanmar as reflected on by Sensei Michael Jinpa
Early this morning, before fishing skiffs stirred the waters of Harborview Point, the bell at Clear Mind Sanctuary met the incoming tide. I watched the fog drift across the breakwater, which reminded me how precarious every form of shelter truly is. Soon after, news arrived from across the sea, carrying a Rohingya advocate’s plea against the forced return of refugees to Myanmar. Hearing that plea while looking out at our calm harbor brought a familiar, quiet ache. This Rohingya refugee crisis exposes human beings stripped of even the illusion of safety, cast adrift into hostility by systems measuring worth through paperwork and bloodlines.
In the Zen tradition, we often speak of refuge. When students take vows, they take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. However, true refuge offers no abstract sanctuary of stone walls or legal treaties. True refuge is the fundamental ground of belonging. It is the realization that every sentient being belongs to this earth’s living fabric simply by existing. When authorities deny citizenship to an entire group of people, drive them from their ancestral villages, and then threaten their return to the violence that scattered them, they violate the basic vow of shelter. Ultimately, this exposes a spiritual poverty at the heart of our global commons.
Facing the Rohingya Refugee Crisis with Compassion
Years spent serving as a hospice chaplain taught me that we cannot manage fear by decree. When someone experiences terror, you do not debate their geography or calculate whether their presence is politically convenient. Instead, you sit beside them. You steady your breathing. You offer an unwavering physical presence that signals they are seen and protected. For the Rohingya in crowded camps, life has been reduced to an endless holding pattern. It is an agonizing state of suspended existence where they must beg for even basic dignity. Demanding their return to an active fire without safety or rights is not policy. It is an evasion of shared human responsibility.
Zen practice calls us to face dukkha, the pervasive reality of suffering, without turning our gaze away. For those of us living in peaceful coastal enclaves, surrounded by galleries and tranquil gardens, it is tempting to treat distant tragedies as background noise. We read the dispatch, feel a passing wave of sorrow, and then return to our quiet routines. Yet the Buddha was explicit: compassion offers no private luxury or passive sentiment. Karuna, compassionate action, is the tremor of the tender heart that cannot rest while another is crushed. When we turn away from the vulnerability of the Rohingya, we reinforce the toxic delusion of separation that poisons our collective life.
Interdependence and True Sanctuary
The core of Buddhist ethics rests on the understanding of pratityasamutpada, or interdependent origination. No nation, no border, and no human destiny exists in isolation. The cruelty we inflict upon the stateless does not stay neatly contained behind distant razor wire. Instead, it degrades the moral atmosphere of the entire planet. When governments choose expulsion over sanctuary, they validate the dangerous myth that some lives are disposable. Therefore, every act of exclusion diminishes the safety of all. It teaches future generations that power trumps compassion and that convenience outweighs human life.
From the garden bench at the sanctuary, the harbor looks peaceful. However, peace that ignores another person’s terror is merely complacency. Our spiritual task in times of upheaval is to expand our circle of kinship until it leaves no one outside. We must lend our voices and our resolve to the demand that human rights and basic physical protection come before political convenience. Until the Rohingya are recognized, protected, and offered genuine peace, none of our harbors are truly safe. We must act now to address the Rohingya refugee crisis.
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