Meditating for Peace

Q: I am frustrated with how our nation is exporting aggression and I don’t know what to do. I talk to my friends and colleagues, write our elected officials, vote, participate in the PTA, and volunteer at a local charity; but what can one person do to turn the tide?

It may be fatuous to think that one person can move the world, but there are those who seem to have done so. Buddhist wisdom consistently reminds us to recognize how interconnected and thus interdependent we all are in this small world, and that unconditional love and warmhearted compassion are greater than ignorance, prejudice, hatred, and even death.

Twenty-five hundred years ago the Buddha himself said, “Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world; by love alone is hatred appeased. This is an Eternal Law.” (The Dhammapada, Verse 5). Buddhism also reminds us of the fleeting, ephemeral nature of life, and that turning toward lasting values and deeper meaning can help instill a sense of perspective.

When feeling anger, we should not immediately rush to vengeful retaliation, which will only make us into the image of those who have attacked us, causing more pain. Enlightened Wisdom advocates restraint, reason, compassion, reflection, and understanding in the face of violence and aggression. But this should not be mistaken for mere passivity.

In "Buddha’s Advice on Healing the Community," Thankissaro Bhikkhu writes about the five basic strategies that people use to avoid accepting blame when they’ve caused harm. These strategies of avoidance are:

• deny responsibility
• deny harm was actually done
• deny the worth of the victim
• attack the accuser
• claim that he or she was acting in service of a higher cause.

It’s noteworthy that the early Buddhist teaching on moral responsibility serves to undercut all five with the following tenets:

• We are always responsible for our conscious choices.
• We should always put ourselves in the other person’s place.
• All beings are worthy of respect.
• We should regard those who point out our faults as if they were pointing out treasure.
• There are no higher purposes that excuse breaking the basic precepts of ethical behavior.

This country has been engaged in war for much of the past 60 years; wars rage in more than 42 countries; the deadly, yet amorphous "war on terrorism" drags on. If we agree with the Dalai Lama, that war is an outmoded means of resolving conflict in our increasingly complex, pluralistic, postmodern world, we must ask ourselves: What can replace it?

Gandhi coupled Hinduism's tenet of ahimsa (nonviolence) with satyagraha—the power of truth—practices and principles to live and to be that can help us solve pragmatic problems. To disarm the heart, practice empathy, and cultivate nonviolence, or ahimsa, in ourselves, it’s important to remember that violence and war don't stem from weapons or exist entirely outside ourselves.