Thoughts for Peace

"Path to Peace -- Love and Understanding"

The Buddhist respect for other beliefs has always deeply impressed me. The Buddhist path is more of a way of life than a blind faith in doctrine. Buddhists believe meditation or prayer without action is spiritually empty.

The gentleness of Buddhism is also a comfort to me as I look around the world and see the arrogance of religious fanatics, who preach subservience rather than love and compassion. Religion, or certainly a distorted version of it, has become a frightening tool for many tyrants to torture, silence and control people.

True spirituality is about lifting people from suffering, not beating them down. It is also looking at the world in the most loving terms and even accepting that sadness and tragedy can awaken some of our finest qualities as human beings.

How can we possibly understand the suffering of others if we just glide through life and never experience struggle ourselves?

If we embrace the humanity of others, we truly begin to understand our place in the vast global community. Martin Luther King Jr. once said if we think of the world as a house we share, then we will do all we can to keep our home a peaceful, safe and welcoming place.

Some of our most inspiring spiritual leaders live by this remarkable credo.

The Dalai Lama immediately comes to mind. Even though India's spiritual leader was driven from his homeland by the Chinese -- he used his persecution to lift the hearts of the world.

Exiled from his own homeland, the Dalai Lama could have easily looked upon his suffering as an excuse to hate, seek revenge and stew in bitterness. Instead, he welcomed his persecution as a "defining moment" -- his spiritual challenge to light the way for world peace. And it also became his opportunity to leave his sheltered life in Tibet, and instead, make friends with the people of the world.

The Dalai Lama lost his homeland, but he took this opportunity to inspire the Western world with his peaceful, loving ways. During a time in our history when the ferocious pace of technology has made us feel estranged from our spiritual natures, leaders like the Dalai Lama remind us to listen to our hearts and accept our challenge to make peace, not war.

So much of what we do as Westerners is not about contemplation, but our quick, knee-jerk reactions, to uncomfortable situations. We have forgotten how to listen to one another because it is easier to talk over our "enemy" than really listen. If we stopped and processed, we might actually have to understand the other side.

We Westerners barely know our next-door-neighbors. Sometimes we listen to more TV than our own children. We live in a strange isolation in which we start to believe we are the only members of this global village. How are we expected to understand others if we don't even know our own children, our own spouses, our own neighbors?

Is it possible that our compassion has been buried in the coldness of our technologically-isolated times? Often we become isolated and arrogant; we don't see the true possibilities for peace. How can we possibly cultivate an atmosphere of mutual respect if we are not willing to learn from other faiths and cultures?

Ironically, we talk about our diverse melting pot culture, but at the most basic levels, we really don't understand one another. Today, more than ever, we need to humbly acknowledge one culture, one religion, one nation, cannot possibly provide all the answers.

Buddhist monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh feels the only path to peace is in mindfulness, the Buddhist practice of listening with deep compassion. "No single tradition monopolizes the truth," Hanh asserts in "Living Buddha, Living Christ," his perspective on the common values of Buddhism and Christianity "We must glean the best values of all traditions and work together to remove the tensions between traditions in order to give peace a chance."

At an even deeper level, perhaps we need to reconsider the power of faith. I'm not talking about a blind faith that reduces women, breeds arrogance, and provides a weapon for hate-mongers to hold people down. I'm talking about a faith that rests in the goodness of humanity, not in the drone of dogma.

It is easy in these angry times to blame all of the world's instability on religious extremists. But let's remember Christians first exploited the term "Holy Wars" when they fought the bloody Crusades. Under the supposedly benign name, Moral Majority, right-wing Christians from the Western world promote a hideous campaign of hatred and bigotry.

Doctrine that gets in the way of establishing a more loving planet is really the problem.

Most of the Scriptures have remarkable similarities, if we can simply see beyond the dogma. The Koran delivers a fierce mandate for social justice. The Christian Gospel commands us to love all people, not just the people who share our religious views. The Jewish Torah promotes equality and respect. And Buddhism promotes peaceful practices all faiths can share.

We need to find the common threads in the vastly complex global community. Our faith in a more peaceful and just world remains our best hope for a planet that will not self-destruct. I'm not sure how we regain our faith and trust and stop looking over our shoulders for terrorists. All I know is if we stop hoping for a kinder planet, we have truly lost our humanity.

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Department of Communication and Creative Arts

Purdue University Calumet
Hammond, Indiana
46323-2094, USA

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"Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process,
gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers,
quietly building new structures."
-- John F. Kennedy

"Imagine all the people living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us,
and the world will be as one."
-- John Lennon