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Peaceful Mind, Mindful of Peace
Michel Clasquin
What is peace? Is it simply the absence of
war and conflict? If that is the case, then promoting peace
is easy. All we have to do is prevent the conditions that
lead to war. Sure, that is still a lot of work, but it is
not difficult. A lot of the peacemaking efforts that we can
see around the world are based on this idea. If we can prevent
war from happening, then what is left must be peace. Even
if the people living in that "peace" are starving
and riddled with preventable diseases, even if they live in
constant fear for their lives from government agents and common
criminals, well, at least their government has not declared
war on anyone.
Or is peace something in its own right? Is it
perhaps something that can be developed without reference
to its polar opposite? Is peace purely a situation that refers
to a relationship, a state of affairs between you and me,
or is it also something within ourselves, a specific state
of mind that will naturally lead to peace in our relationships?
The Dhammapada tells us, right in its
opening chapter, that hatred does not stop because of more
hatred. Instead, hatred only stops when it is displaced by
love. By analogy, we can therefore say that there can never
be a "war to end all wars". War only breeds further
war, even if it is a more subtle kind. Only when it is replaced
by peace does war fade out of the picture. Peace, therefore,
is not the opposite of war. It is a different set of factors
that negates war. Think of it this way: water is not the opposite
of fire, but can extinguish it. Fire is not the opposite of
water, but can evaporate it. Water and fire affect each other
in so many ways, but each exists, for now, as a temporary
bundle of factors with its own reality. You can define fire
without mentioning water; you can describe water without referring
to fire.
So, if you and I are at peace, we cannot be at
war. Now the question arises, can I be at peace with you if
I am in a state of war within? Oh, I can pretend that I am,
but that is just changing the open war into a covert one,
a Cold War between you and me. Only if both of us are at peace
within our own minds can we be at peace with one another.
If even the slightest bit of inner war remains within one
of us, there will be war. Not necessarily the violent war
of blows and bullets, but at the very least, the war of innuendo,
of sarcasm, of wittiness at other people's expense, of thinking
highly of ourselves compared to the other. Yes, it is an improvement
over physical violence, but it is not yet peace.
What is this inner war that leads to the outer
war? In Buddhist terms, it is a contradiction between the
way things are and the way we want them to be. Everything
is impermanent: I want them to last forever just as they are
now. Everything is impersonal and insubstantial: I really
want my "soul" to be real and substantial. All is
unsatisfactory: Never mind that, let's have some fun!
We really want things to be different than they
are, and we are disappointed time and time again. And those
"things" include you and even me. I want you to
be different. I want myself to be different. And the universe,
which cares absolutely nothing at all about my wishes, just
keeps on going as it was going to anyway. Never mind that,
though. If things don't go the way I want them to, I will
simply refuse to see them. In psychology, this is called Cognitive
Dissonance. The genius of the Buddha was to see just how deep
this refusal to see what is right there in front of us goes,
just how much it colours every thought we have. We are at
war with the way things really are, at war with reality itself.
Small wonder, then, that I am at war with you!
But suppose I could, somehow, learn to see reality
as it is. Suppose I could stop wishing that things were fundamentally
different. Then at least I would be at peace. And I might
show you how to do the same. Then there would be peace between
us.
No doubt you see where this is leading to. True
peace is only possible between two perfectly enlightened beings.
Peace is the natural habitat of Buddhas. The rest of us are
at war.
Perfectly enlightened beings tend to be a little
thin on the ground at the moment. This is, after all, the
Kali Yuga. So, where does that leave us, the imperfectly unenlightened
beings?
Taking one step at a time, that's where it leaves
us. Breathing in, breathing out. Putting one foot in front
of the other. When sitting, just sit; when eating, just eat;
when writing article for CDI, just write the damn article.
There is a little peace in that, a small, temporary armistice.
string the little pieces of peace together, and somewhere
in the far future they will outnumber the moments of war.
And permanent, everlasting, universal peace? Put such thoughts
from your mind. Take the next step. Breathe in, breathe out…
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