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If We Wish for Peace
Benito Carral
Translated from Spanish
by Pedro L Vera
If wish for peace, we should know what we
mean by this. Well, going to the root of the problem I think
we will agree that peace is the absence of war, and that war,
is a relationship of enmity.
Enmity, or hatred, is one of the three unwholesome
roots described by the Buddha (the other two being greed and
ignorance) and he taught us that the way to end hatred is
loving kindness (metta). When we wish for peace, we
desire relationships based on loving-kindness.
Now, what does metta mean? Metta is the unselfish
desire to bring well-being and happiness and it bears a close
relationship with karuna, compassion, the desire to
alleviate suffering.
If we wish for peace, it is fundamental to transform
hatred, greed and ignorance and to cultivate loving-kindness
and compassion.
If someone insults us, for example, we could
think that such a person is our enemy. However, people are
never our enemies! A healthy individual never insults, only
sick people do so. When we see someone insult others, we see
someone who is suffering, someone who is living under the
tyranny of ignorance. When we begin to see things in this
manner, compassion, not hatred, is the natural response. Compassion
leads us to become interested in the suffering of others and
to seek a solution.
Up to now we have been talking about the individual
dimension of peace, but a human being is also a social being,
and we should also take into account the social factors that
lead to war, to enmity.
Nowadays we live in an individualistic
and consumerist society. The media and prevailing values obey,
mostly, free-market forces. This way of thinking tells us
that the more things we have (greed), the happier we will
be, and often predisposes us to struggle against one another
vying for power (hatred). However, things do not truly behave
this way (ignorance), and this ideology, instead of bringing
us well-being, deepens our feeling of chronic dissatisfaction,
favors social exploitation and destruction of our environment.
What can we do faced with this situation? First,
increase our awareness. For example, if we don't know that
the shoes we want are being manufactured by people under semi-slavery
conditions; we won't know that in purchasing such shoes we
become accomplices in the exploitation. Being aware, the natural
response will be to practice responsible consumption and to
be mindful of the conditions of less fortunate people. Our
being aware also applies to the personal level, since if we
don't know our motivations, it is possible that the hatred
inside us will go unnoticed.
Can we do anything else? Of course we can. Another
important task in building peace consists of transforming
social institutions and the values of the free market into
a culture that favors loving-kindness and compassion.
On the one hand, we can help individuals, unions,
corporations and governments take account of the situation.
We need the media, journalists, writers, artists, teachers,
policy makers, etc., to pledge themselves to peace and to
help quicken the ongoing change in consciousness. On the other
hand, we could help build and participate in alternative models,
such as fair trade associations, cooperatives, ethical businesses,
education centers or any others that might occur to us.
Finally, I would like to point out that even
though individual effort is very important, we should find
ways to collaborate with other people who are also working
towards peace. Working in a team our individual visions will
become richer and will attain a sharpness that we would not
have found otherwise. Collective action, when born out of
consensus, is also more powerful than individual action. We
should turn ourselves into skilled collaborators and make
the most out of the power of the collective loving kindness,
of the collective compassion, and of the collective wisdom.
This is one of the roads to peace.
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