Obama, Dharmic Leadership and the Mandate of Heaven

It is absolutely amazing to watch the reaction of the world and more specifically of the citizens of the United States to President Obama and his decisions. In less than a year, he has literally gone from being a savior-like figure to a villain or in some circles the anti-christ. Considering the extraordinary times we are in, how can we possibly know what is really happening? Is he really a decent guy trying to do his best with the biggest mess every handed to a US president? Or is he really a pawn of the New World Order? How can we really tell?

Fortunately, history may have some answers for us. In many traditions, especially those from East Asia and Central Asia, there was a concept of a relationship between leaders and the world around them that revealed to people if their leader was truly serving the people. This concept has lots of names. In China, it was the Mandate of Heaven. In India, it was called Dharmic Leadership. In ancient Europe, it was the Divine Right of Kings. The basic idea was that if a leader was truly serving the people, then the land would be fruitful, the weather benign, time would be peaceful and prosperous.

If the leader or leaders of the people were corrupt or dishonest or brutal, this would literally disturb the forces of heaven. The heavenly forces (however they were conceived in different cultures) would show their displeasure by sending disturbing weather, causing earthquakes, creating famine, pestilence and plague.

In my opinion, during the years of the Bush administration it was pretty clear that heaven was showing some pretty serious displeasure with the leadership being displayed. We had more hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, and weird weather than I could ever remember. We also had huge food price spikes due to weird weather and ultimately we had the biggest crash in wealth we have ever seen. Now, I know that all of these events could also be considered to have been caused by other factors (i.e, Global Warming), but that doesn't mean that heaven or heavenly forces weren't also involved.

So, how do we apply this to the current administration? Well, considering they haven't even been in power for a full year yet, it is clear that they are still experience some of the karmic messes of the previous administration. Essentially, if Obama really is a Dharmic Leader trying to lead us in a peaceful way for the benefit of everyone, then Heaven will start to smile on this country. We will have mild weather that produces abundant crops, prosperity will return (but hopefully in a way that is actually more sustainable and local), there will be less turmoil both internationally and domestically. I guess the answer is that time will tell. I imagine after two years, we will really have a sense of whether or not this guy is part of the NWO cooking up genetically modified swine flu, is truly a peacemaker savior, or is simply something more like how he present himself: someone trying to do the right thing under really trying circumstances.

On a side note, I will say that in the Pacific Northwest, we have had record fruit crop numbers and record numbers of returning salmon this year. We've also had one of the driest and warmest summers on record. During the Bush years, we had all sorts of crazy weather including some of the worst flooding and worst winter storms many people had ever seen (We set three different 100-year flood records during the last few years of Bush's presidency, as well as having years where we had both record low temps in the winter and record hight temps in the summer).
I still think it is too early to tell, but there has been a truly bumper crop around here in more ways than one.