WORLD ISSUES

Peace


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The 5 Stages:
1 - Accumulation
2 - Preparation
3 - Insight
4 - Meditation
5 - Perfection

Tantra



DEVELOPING WORLD PEACE


There is an old Buddhist saying that, if you want to remove the roughness of the Earth, you can try to cover the Earth with leather, but it's a lot easier to cover your own feet with leather instead.

This means that the best way to create peace is to develop the peaceful qualities within yourself, instead of trying to manufacture peace in the outside world.

I was originally going to talk about developing Patience, but I soon realized that developing peace needs to start way before that. All of the qualities that we need to develop in order to be able to help others, which are the perfections that are part of the mahayana path of the Bodhisattva, are also the same qualities that we need to posess in order to create a peaceful world.

DEVELOPING EQUANIMITY:

Therefore, developing peace starts at the very beginning of the Bodhisattva path with the development of Equanimity. The following is a Buddhist exercise for developing that Equanimity.

First, we picture a loved one or someone we like on our left hand side. We picture someone we dislike or an adversary on our right hand side. In the centre, we imagine a stranger or someone who we are indifferent to.

Then we turn our attention to the person that we like. We allow our feelings of love and pleasure for this person to arise. Then we think about times when this person hurt our feelings or obstructed us. We think about times when we disagreed with this person. In all of these situations, our friend is more like an adversary. We also think that there are times when we are unaware of what this person is doing or thinking. There may be many things that we still do not know about this person. In all of these ways, this friend is still a stranger to us. We have also had friends in the past that we no longer associate with and so they are now strangers to us.

Now we turn our attention towards our adversary, or the person that we dislike. We allow our dislike and resentment to arise. At this point, we reflect on how, even though we dislike this person, there are people who like them, and who think they are good. They have spouses, friends, parents, brothers and sisters who all love them. This means that they can't be completely bad. Also, all beings appreciate love, generosity and kindness. We also think about how they are only our adversary in certain circumstances, and there are really only certain of their attributes that we dislike. Also, we are unaware of all of their attributes and are unaware of what they do outside of the situations that irritate us. This means that, in most ways, our adversary is still a stranger to us.

Finally, we turn our attention to the stranger. We think about how, at one point in the past, both our friends or our adversaries were strangers to us. This means that this person who is now a stranger to us, could become our adversary or could become our friend at some point in the future.

The result of this is that we realize that the designation of friend, adversary, or stranger is a temporary label based on a momentary situation that comes more from us than from the person themselves. It's like with a chair. I can like a certain chair, and someone else could dislike it, and another person doesn't care one way or the other, but the chair really hasn't done anything. It hasn't really changed from when I saw it and someone else saw it. We are the ones making those distinctions.

Also, all sentient beings want to obtain happiness and avoid suffering. All beings suffer from birth, old age, sickness, and death, from not getting what they want, and from getting what they don't want. All beings, even animals, desire and are attracted to knowledge and skillfulnesss, understanding and love, and peace and joy.

This means that friends can become adversaries, adversaries can become friends, and everyone starts out as strangers, are still strangers in some ways, or may become more strangers than friends later on. Realizing this helps us to feel more equally towards everyone and helps us to have a more open and flexible approach to our labelling of people in terms of like, dislike, and indifference.

DEVELOPING GRATITUDE:

Most of the things that we enjoy or the things that we use and need in our daily lives are available to us because of the work of people that we don't know. So it is strangers who provide us with the most benefits.

Most of the people involved in growing, transporting, processing, and selling our food and clothing are people that we don't know. The people who provide us with building materials for our homes, or with heat, power, and water are strangers. The people behind making our entertainment available to us do so mostly in the background, out of sight. The people who watch our borders and negotiate with other countries are also unknown to us.

Even the person that you dislike, or who is your adversary, may be a truck driver that transports food to the grocery store that you buy from in order to prepare your meals. There may be many ways that you benefit from the work of the people that you dislike. This is especially true in modern times where many of the things we own or use come from factories in other countries and require the work of people who live very far away.

Therefore we need to reflect on all the benefits that we receive, not just from our friends, but from all sorts of people, including our adversaries. The best way to repay these benefits and to express this gratitude is by helping anyone who comes into our circle of relationships.

COMPASSION:

At the same time as these people are benefitting us, they are also subject to suffering. At any point in their lives they can be suffering from physical pain and mental anguish. They may also suffer from a lack of necessities, from a lack of confidence, or a lack of understanding. They also suffer from not getting what they want and getting what they don't want. Thinking about this, we develop the desire to help them cope with their suffering as payment for all of the benefits that others provide to us.

GENEROSITY:

The combination of flexibility in our relationships by thinking about how we are very much the same and that our relationships are always changing, combined with gratitude for the benefits that we receive, plus sympathy for the suffering that we all endure, leads to a sense of openness and a desire to give. This is Generosity.

Everyone appreciates receiving gifts, gaining an object of their desire, or getting help when needed. Giving gifts can help smooth over hurt feelings, resolve misunderstandings, or address injustices. This goes a long way towards changing an adversarial relationship into something else.

MORALITY:

The main aspects of morality are not harming others and having respect for their sensitivities.

Recognizing that sentient beings are already suffering, it would be extra cruel to inflict suffering on top of what they are already going through. Often people who are angry are reacting as a result of their own suffering. It is similar to a wounded animal who lashes out even at those who are trying to help them. Often they need to be tranquilized before they can be helped. Also, if our elderly parent was suffering from dementia and started to abuse us, we would be more tolerant recognizing, firstly, all of the benefits we have received from them in the past, and, secondly, recognizing that the abuse is the result of their own illness. We need to take the same type of approach with anyone who is angry.

We need to get to the point where it is more important for us to not harm others than it is to get our desires satisfied. This means that we would rather forgoe satisfying our desires than kill anyone, or steal from them. We need to get to the point where respecting others relationships is more important than our own desires. It means that we will not cause disharmony in someone's relationships in order to get what we want. It means that we refuse to lie, insult, deceive, or demean someone else to meet our own needs.

Also, many angers and frustrations come from a sense of not being respected or not having the desires and needs, that we feel are important to us, respected or fulfilled. Other frustrations come from being overwhelmed by the obstacles to our desires. Sometimes these desires are not realistic or possible, but for us, we don't realize this or may have a difficult time recognizing it.

PATIENCE:

Working with someone else's frustrations from unrealistic or harmful desires requires a lot of patience. If we think about times when we have held tightly to harmful ideas, it should help us when working with others who are in the same position.

 
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