War and Peace in the World
“Let us take the risks of peace upon our lives, not impose the risks of war upon the world.” Quaker Proverb
If you read yesterday’s post, you may have gotten the impression that I think the appropriate response to terroristic violence and tyranny is simply to see ourselves in the people committing the atrocities, and that in some way we can just pray it all away. Although understandable to get that impression, it actually isn’t accurate.
Yesterday’s post was about internal state, not about action. Peaceful action, in my opinion, has little to do with how forceful or how tranquil the action itself is. Rather, the relevant inquiry is into the perspective from which the action arises. Even an action of great force can come from a calmness of mind. When there is a true embrace of our shared humanity, I believe that even quite fierce or outwardly violent actions have the potential to move us toward peace. Internal state is where peace starts, but it's only through actions arising from an internal state of peace that we can bring the peace we have cultivated inside ourselves to the world around us.
But on a wide scale humans have fallen into quite a different pattern. Our actions, large and small, aggressive and docile, are much more often fueled by a state of blameful separation. The problem is that whether these actions succeed or fail in the short run, when we step back, we can start to notice that actions to defeat the beast of violence that are taken with this blameful intention are in vain. The beast just keeps getting stronger; it just keeps reappearing and morphing into more ruthless forms.
When Gandhi said “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” this wasn’t just a line of idealistic poetry. He was stating an observation about how certain kinds of actions work in the world. When we aggress in the hope for vengeance, in a belief that elimination and punishment will heal our wounds and make us safe, we become blind.
To me, the most heartbreaking example of this blindness is the widespread support and apathy around the use of killer drones. Look at how we mourn the unjust and untimely death of one treasured young person in our own nation, and yet, we give so little notice to the hundreds, possibly into the thousands, of children and adults whose innocent lives have been lost in our remote control warfare. Our eyes and our hearts have been closed by fear.
Fear that is lying to us. Yesterday, I wrote about how we resist understanding what offends us because we’re afraid that understanding would be like condoning or empowering those offensive things. So instead, we quite often choose to hate that which offends us. We choose the course of doing whatever it takes to eliminate that which offends us. And in this course of action, we miss seeing an obvious pattern at work.
The opposite of our conditioned instincts is true. It is our resistance to understand, and the resulting hatred and loss of integrity that IS condoning and empowering the violent behavior that offends us. We're sending a clear message about what we think of as an empowered voice of opposition, and it is only a matter of time until someone speaks back to us in the same language.
“Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.” Gandhi
Entertain the possibility that this isn’t merely a lofty metaphor, but a statement of actual truth. Gandhi’s movement to free India shows how this principle can actually work to break the chain of violence and injustice. Gandhi was so unique in his approach to opposition. He never lost faith in the British; he firmly held that if they really knew what they were doing and saw it clearly, they would leave India. And as we all learned, he was right, and in my humble opinion, this faith in his enemy was one of the most unique and powerful waves of change the world has ever seen.
#peaceday #september21
“Let us take the risks of peace upon our lives, not impose the risks of war upon the world.” Quaker Proverb
If you read yesterday’s post, you may have gotten the impression that I think the appropriate response to terroristic violence and tyranny is simply to see ourselves in the people committing the atrocities, and that in some way we can just pray it all away. Although understandable to get that impression, it actually isn’t accurate.
Yesterday’s post was about internal state, not about action. Peaceful action, in my opinion, has little to do with how forceful or how tranquil the action itself is. Rather, the relevant inquiry is into the perspective from which the action arises. Even an action of great force can come from a calmness of mind. When there is a true embrace of our shared humanity, I believe that even quite fierce or outwardly violent actions have the potential to move us toward peace. Internal state is where peace starts, but it's only through actions arising from an internal state of peace that we can bring the peace we have cultivated inside ourselves to the world around us.
But on a wide scale humans have fallen into quite a different pattern. Our actions, large and small, aggressive and docile, are much more often fueled by a state of blameful separation. The problem is that whether these actions succeed or fail in the short run, when we step back, we can start to notice that actions to defeat the beast of violence that are taken with this blameful intention are in vain. The beast just keeps getting stronger; it just keeps reappearing and morphing into more ruthless forms.
When Gandhi said “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind,” this wasn’t just a line of idealistic poetry. He was stating an observation about how certain kinds of actions work in the world. When we aggress in the hope for vengeance, in a belief that elimination and punishment will heal our wounds and make us safe, we become blind.
To me, the most heartbreaking example of this blindness is the widespread support and apathy around the use of killer drones. Look at how we mourn the unjust and untimely death of one treasured young person in our own nation, and yet, we give so little notice to the hundreds, possibly into the thousands, of children and adults whose innocent lives have been lost in our remote control warfare. Our eyes and our hearts have been closed by fear.
Fear that is lying to us. Yesterday, I wrote about how we resist understanding what offends us because we’re afraid that understanding would be like condoning or empowering those offensive things. So instead, we quite often choose to hate that which offends us. We choose the course of doing whatever it takes to eliminate that which offends us. And in this course of action, we miss seeing an obvious pattern at work.
The opposite of our conditioned instincts is true. It is our resistance to understand, and the resulting hatred and loss of integrity that IS condoning and empowering the violent behavior that offends us. We're sending a clear message about what we think of as an empowered voice of opposition, and it is only a matter of time until someone speaks back to us in the same language.
“Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.” Gandhi
Entertain the possibility that this isn’t merely a lofty metaphor, but a statement of actual truth. Gandhi’s movement to free India shows how this principle can actually work to break the chain of violence and injustice. Gandhi was so unique in his approach to opposition. He never lost faith in the British; he firmly held that if they really knew what they were doing and saw it clearly, they would leave India. And as we all learned, he was right, and in my humble opinion, this faith in his enemy was one of the most unique and powerful waves of change the world has ever seen.
#peaceday #september21
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