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MLK
From here: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Interdependence: Buddhist Quote of the Day
"It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality . . . Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality. "
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
1967 Christmas Sermon on Peace
"It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied together into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality . . . Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on Earth until we recognize the basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality. "
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
1967 Christmas Sermon on Peace
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Today celebrates the life of one of America's most influential figures, Martin Luther King Jr. King is most known for his "I Have A Dream" speech, and for being a prominent civil rights leader, but he was much more than that. He was also a radical activist, pacifist and revolutionary.
The day he was assassinated, King was in Memphis, Tennessee, supporting a strike of African-American sanitation workers who were fighting against unequal wages and poor working conditions, as well as for union recognition. King wasn't just a champion for civil rights, he was also a champion for economic justice, freedom and peace, using his style of nonviolent direct action to fight against racism and the Vietnam War as much as for major economic reforms.
For me, King's revolutionary spirit is characterized by these words, which were given in a speech at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination: I'd always known that King was a revolutionary figure in American history, but hearing these words today for the first time, I finally realize just how revolutionary he was. In a world where people often assume that violence is the only effective means of change, King showed us just how powerful nonviolence can be in combating racial inequality and social injustice.
Before his untimely death, King was helping to organize the Poor People's Campaign, a national campaign designed to address the issues of economic justice and housing for the poor in the U.S. He was in the middle of crisscrossing the country, trying to mobilize what he called a "multiracial army of the poor" to march on Washington to demand an Economic Bill of Rights, when he took that fateful detour to help support the Memphis sanitation workers.
King was a brave man. He received numerous death threats, but he was willing to give his life for what he believed in—perhaps in part because he knew that his death wouldn't be in vain. As King said in a speech he gave the night before he was assassinated:
You know, MLK visited Gandhi's family. That's were he found confirmation and validation that his method of non-violence (a la ahimsa) was an appropriate one.
Personally, I am of the opinion that Buddhism influenced Chrsitianity (at least the good parts!) from the very beginning. See, the "sramanas" mentioned by Clement in Alexandria.