The Philippines have been rocked anew by graft and corruption issues, the latest being the Pork Barrel Scandal, wherein the people’s taxes end up in ghost deliveries and projects.

So what else is new? Ever since we can remember, the issue of graft and corruption has been with us, only that it gets sophisticated and mind boggling as time goes by. In the meantime, a lot of people go hungry and meaningful projects go unfunded, which the wastage could have mitigated. Is this culture a result of the conflict between needs and wants? But where do needs and wants originate? The ego, that’s where.

In the ism of duality, we have plus and minus, night and day, good and evil. Yet, if you think about it, there is no evil. The evil is just another term for the ego–or the acting up, the emanations and the posturings of the ego.

We are a Catholic nation; almost all Filipinos pray and go to church, but sad to say, the church teachings of goodness and piety are never applied. Is it because once we step out of the church we become oblivious and deaf? Is it because we go back to our egotistical self?

Or do we even know that human life is the most precious thing in the universe and that helping another human being is our primary purpose in life? If we do, then engaging in graft and corruption is anathema, because it doesn’t preserve life; it doesn’t help our fellow human being. You see, public service is supposed to be egalitarian–well, NOT so with our current crop of “servants.” So where’s the rub? We go to church, we pray–yet we are amoral.

A real bloodletting is out of the question. Bloodletting feeds on itself and everybody is a victim. We submit that Filipinos must know their true self in order to control the ego. And how do we do that, you ask?

We submit that we engage in faith integration. By faith integration, we mean that aside from our Catholic practice, we also engage in meditation, which is nothing short of going into the void and subsequently deep into your core (self) the way Jesus Christ and Sakyamuni Buddha did. That’s how we slay the dragons of selfishness and want.

That way we won’t have leaders and public servants no different from demigods with feet of clay.