OPENING WINDOWS FOR REBIRTH

 Let go the person you used to be, says writer Lama Surya Das. In fact, "Letting Go The Persons You Used To Be" is the title of his book  which advises that if we want to change and move on, we have to do away with attachments that impede our way out of the miserable life we have been living. These attachments include beliefs, people, places, possessions like books, even the house we have been living for a number of years. It is these attachments that cause our pain and sorrows, he said.

Ilokano writing icon Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (in blue)
in a meeting with an Ilokano writing group at the Mandarin restaurant in San Fernando City, La Union.


EDSA AS BAGGAGE OF MEMORIES

EDSA I was not our metamorphosis.
Filipinos bungled it all after the fall of Ferdinand Marcos by putting into power Cory Aquino who merely sat on her asses in Malacanang and spent precious presidential time plotting  revenge against the dictator she believed caused the assassination of her husband.
Benigno Aqiuino, Jr., bless his soul, was only a loquacious politician who wanted to replace Marcos. He joined forces with the former caudillo of the Communist Party of the Philippines, that ordered the bombing of the miting de avance of the Liberal Party in Plaza Miranda. Aquino bartered our claims to Sabah to the then Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir in exchange for the latter's support in toppling Marcos.

Cory and the presidents who came after her including his son Aquino 111 entrenched the powerful oligarchy that catapulted her into power and the mistaken notion that her husband was a hero.

Or has EDSA entered into the realm of myth? What happened to the heroes? Or were they heroes?