BUDDHIST IDEAS FOR ATTAINING WORLD PEACE
Ron Epstein
(Lectures for the Global Peace Studies Program, San Francisco State University,
November 7 & 9, 1988)
INTRODUCTION
Buddhism teaches that whether we have global peace or global war is up to us
at every moment. The situation is not hopeless and out of our hands. If we don't
do anything, who will? Peace or war is our decision. The fundamental goal of
Buddhism is peace, not only peace in this world but peace in all worlds. The
Buddha taught that the first step on the path to peace is understanding the
causality of peace. When we understand what causes peace, we know where to direct
our efforts. No matter how vigorously we stir a boiling pot of soup on a fire,
the soup will not cool. When we remove the pot from the fire, it will cool on
its own, and our stirring will hasten the process. Stirring causes the soup
to cool, but only if we first remove the soup from the fire. In other words,
we can take many actions in our quest for peace that may be helpful. But if
we do not first address the fundamental issues, all other actions will come
to naught.
The Buddha taught that peaceful minds lead to peaceful speech and peaceful actions.
If the minds of living beings are at peace, the world will be at peace. Who
has a mind at peace, you say? The overwhelming majority of us live in the midst
of mental maelstroms that subside only for brief and treasured moments. We could
probably count on the fingers of both hands the number of those rare, holy persons
whose minds are truly, permanently at peace. If we wait for all beings in the
world to become sages, what chance is there of a peaceful world for us? Even
if our minds are not completely peaceful, is there any possibility of reducing
the levels of violence in the world and of successfully abating the winds of
war?
To answer these questions, let us look first at the Buddha's vision of the world,
including the causality of its operations. Then, in that context, we can trace
the causes of war. When the causes are identified, the Buddha's suggestions
for dealing with them and eliminating them can be discussed. Finally, having
developed a Buddhist theoretical framework for understanding the nature of the
problem and its solution, we can try to apply the basic principles in searching
for concrete applications that we can actually put into practice in our own
daily lives.
SOME ASPECTS OF THE BUDDHIST WORLD-VIEW
The Buddha taught that all forms of life partake of the same fundamental spiritual
source, which he called the enlightened nature or the Buddha-nature. He did
not admit to any essential division in the spiritual condition of human beings
and other forms of life. In fact, according to Buddhist teachings, after death
a human being is reborn, perhaps again as a human being or possibly in the animal
realms or in other realms. Likewise, animals can, in certain circumstances,
be reborn as human beings. All sentient beings are seen as passing through the
unending cycle of the wheel of rebirth. They are born, they grow old, become
sick, and die. They are reborn, grow old, get sick and die, over and over and
over again.
KARMA: THE NETWORK OF CAUSE AND EFFECT
What determines how you are reborn is karma. Whether you obtain a human body,
whether male or female, or that of an animal or some other life-form is karma.
Whether you have a body that is healthy or sickly, whether you are intelligent
or stupid, whether your family is rich or poor, whether your parents are compassionate
or hard-hearted--all that is karma. Karma is a Sanskrit word that is derived
from the semantic root meaning 'to do'. It refers to activity--mental, verbal,
and physical--as governed by complex patterns of cause and effect. There are
two basic kinds of karma--individual and shared.
Individual karma is not limited to a single lifetime. What you did in your past
lives determines your situation in your present life. If you did good deeds
in past lives, the result will be an auspicious rebirth. If your actions in
past lives were predominantly bad, your situation in the present will be inauspicious.
If in this life you act more like an animal than a human being, your next rebirth
will be as an animal.
Shared karma refers to our net of inter-relationship with other people, non-human
beings, and our environment. A certain category of beings live in a certain
location and tend to perceive their environment in much the same way, because
that particular shared situation is the fruition of their former actions.
The doctrine of karma is not deterministic. Rather it is a doctrine of radical
personal responsibility. Although your present situation in every moment is
determined by your past actions, your action in the present moment, in the present
circumstances, can be totally unconditioned and, therefore, totally free. It
is true that you may mindlessly react according to the strengths of your various
habit-patterns, but that need not be the case. The potential for you to act
mindfully and freely is always there. It is up to you to realize that you have
the choice and to make it. This realization is the beginning of true spiritual
growth.
The Buddha taught that the fundamental cause of all suffering is ignorance.
The basic ignorance is our failure to understand that the self, which is at
the center of all of our lives, which determines the way in which we see the
world, which directs our actions for our own ease and benefit, is an illusion.
The illusion of the self is the cause of all our suffering. We want to protect
our self from the dangers of the constant flux of life. We want to exempt our
self from change, when nothing in the world is exempt from change.
Life centered on self naturally tends toward the selfish. Selfishness poisons
us with desire and greed. When they are not fulfilled, we tend to become angry
and hateful. These basic emotional conditions cover the luminous depths of our
minds and cut us off from our own intuitive wisdom and compassion; our thoughts
and actions then emanate from deluded and superficial views.
THE CAUSES OF WAR
The causes of war are too numerous even to list, let alone discuss intelligently.
What we discuss here are what the Buddha considered the most fundamental, the
fire under the boiling pot of soup.
War is not something abstract. War is waged between one group of individuals
and another. The reasons for war are also not abstract. [We have not yet had
a war started and directed according to logical paradigms programmed into a
computer.] It is individuals who decide to wage war. Even if the war is global,
its beginning can be traced back to the decisions of individuals. And so before
we talk about global war, let us first talk about war on the level of the individual.
Wars begin because the people of one country, or at least their rulers, have
unfulfilled desires--they are greedy for benefits or wealth (i.e., economic
greed) or power, or they are angry or hateful. Either their desires have been
thwarted or their pride, their sense of self, has been offended. This can also
manifest as racial or national arrogance. They wrongly feel that the answer
to problems, which are essentially within their own minds, a matter of attitudes,
can be sought externally, through the use of force.
THE STORY OF THE WATER WAR
Four years after his [the Buddha's] attainment of enlightenment, a war took
place between the city-state of Kapilavastu and that of Kilivastu over the use
of water. Being told of this, [the Buddha] Sakyamuni hastened back to Kapilavastu
and stood between the two great armies about to start fighting. At the sight
of Sakyamuni, there was a great commotion among the warriors, who said, "Now
that we see the World-Honored One, we cannot shoot the arrows at our enemies,"
and they threw down their weapons. Summoning the chiefs of the two armies, he
asked them, "Why are you gathered here like this?" "To fight,"
was their reply. "For what cause do you fight?" he queried. "To
get water for irrigation." Then, asked Sakyamuni again, "How much
value do you think water has in comparison with the lives of men?" "The
value of water is very slight" was the reply. "Why do you destroy
lives which are valuable for valueless water?" he asked. Then, giving some
allegories, Sakyamuni taught them as follows: "Since people cause war through
misunderstanding, thereby harming and killing each other, they should try to
understand each other in the right manner." In other words, misunderstanding
will lead all people to a tragic end, and Sakyamuni exhorted them to pay attention
to this. Thus the armies of the two city-states were dissuaded from fighting
each other.
The doctrine of karma teaches that force and violence, even to the level of
killing, never solves anything. Killing generates fear and anger, which generates
more killing, more fear, and more anger, in a vicious cycle without end. If
you kill your enemy in this life, he is reborn, seeks revenge, and kills you
in the next life. When the people of one nation invade and kill or subjugate
the people of another nation, sooner or later the opportunity will present itself
for the people of the conquered nation to wreak their revenge upon the conquerors.
Has there ever been a war that has, in the long run, really resolved any problem
in a positive manner? In modern times the so-called 'war to end all wars' has
only led to progressively larger and more destructive wars.
The emotions of killing translate into more and more deaths as the weapons of
killing become more and more sophisticated. In prehistoric times, a caveman
could explode with anger, take up his club, and bludgeon a few people to death.
Nowadays, if, for example, the President of the United States loses his temper,
who can tell how many will lose their lives as the result of the employment
of our modern weaponry. And in the present we are on the brink of a global war
that threatens to extinguish permanently all life on the planet. When will that
happen? Perhaps when the collective selfishness of individuals to pursue their
own desires--greed for sex, wealth and power; the venting of frustrations through
anger, hatred and brutal self-assertion--overcomes the collective compassion
of individuals for others, overcomes their respect for the lives and aspirations
of others. Then the unseen collective pressure of mind on mind will tip the
precarious balance, causing the finger, controlled ostensibly by an individual
mind, to press the button that will bring about nuclear Armageddon. When the
individual minds of all living beings are weighted, if peaceful minds are more
predominant, the world will tend to be at peace; if violent minds are more predominant,
the world will tend to be at war.
BUDDHIST PRESCRIPTIONS
Providing people with physical well-being and wealth does not necessarily lead
to peace. Lewis Lapham recently wrote:
Apparently it is not poverty that causes crime, but rather the resentment of
poverty. This latter condition is as likely to embitter the 'subjectively deprived'
in a rich society as the 'objectively deprived' in a poor society.
Mental attitudes and the actions to which they lead are the key.
Buddhists believe that the minds of all living beings are totally interconnected
and interrelated, whether they are consciously aware of it or not. To use a
simple analogy for the interconnection, each being has his or her own transmitting
and receiving station and is constantly broadcasting to all others his or her
state of mind and is constantly receiving broadcasts from all others. Even the
most insignificant thoughts in our minds have some effect on all other beings.
How much the more so do our strong negative emotions and our acting out of them
in direct or indirect forms of physical violence! In other words, each thought
in the mind of each and every one of us brings the world either a little closer
to the brink of global disaster or helps to move the world a little farther
away from the brink. If each time we feel irritated, annoyed, thwarted, outraged,
or just plain frustrated, we reflect on the consequences of our thoughts, words
and actions, perhaps that reflection in itself will help to lead us to behave
in a way that will contribute to global peace. If every time we get angry at
our wife or husband, girl friend or boy friend, parents or children, we are
aware that we are driving the entire world toward the brink of war, maybe we
will think twice and wonder whether our anger is worth the consequences. Even
if we feel our cause is just, if we in thought, word, and deed make war against
injustice, we are still part of the problem and not contributing to the solution.
On the other hand, if we concentrate on putting our own minds at peace, then
we can broadcast peace mentally and generate peace through our actions. We should
use a peaceful mind to act for peace in the world.
As to the interrelations between the minds of beings, the being we may be about
to harm or even kill, from a Buddhist point of view, may well be our own parents,
children, wives or husbands, or dearest friends from former lives.
Because Buddhists see the problem of war as a karmic one, the solution is seen
as the practicing and teaching of correct ethical behavior. Good deeds lead
to good consequences, bad deeds to bad. If you plant bean seeds, you get beans;
if you plant melon seeds, you get melons. If you plant the seeds of war, you
get war; if you plant the seeds of peace, you get peace.
The most fundamental moral precept in Buddhist teaching is respect for life
and the prohibition against taking life. Generally speaking, all living beings
want to live and are afraid of death. The strongest desire is for life, and
when that desire is thwarted, the response is unbelievably powerful anger. Unlike
almost all other religions, Buddhism teaches that there are no exceptions to
this prohibition and no expedient arguments are admitted. The taking of life
not only covers human life but all sentient beings. Reducing the karma of killing
is equivalent to putting out the fire under the pot of boiling soup. If we end
killing, the world will be at peace.
The prohibition against stealing says, more literally, that one must not take
what is not given. Stealing, whether it is by individuals, corporations, or
nations, occurs because of selfish greed. From the time of the Trojan War, sexual
misconduct has also been a cause of war, as has been lying. National leaders
whose minds have been clouded by drugs are not rare in history either--their
conduct is rarely just and peaceful. The international drug trade in itself
has become a major impediment to peace in most parts of the world. The taking
of intoxicating substances is also prohibited by fundamental Buddhist teachings.
The Buddhist vision is a world in which all life is sacred, in which selfishness,
in the guise of greed, anger and foolishness, does not interfere with the basic
interconnectedness of all living beings. That interconnectedness, when freed
from the distortion of selfishness, is based upon the potential for enlightenment
that every being shares.
PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
A beautiful vision, some might say. But how can such a peace be realized in
a world such as ours? Isn't it mere impractical fantasy? No, it is not. Now
the time has come to outline some concrete and practical steps that can be taken
towards making it a reality. As a beginning, here are three steps.
Step One
If the karma of killing is the flame beneath the soup pot, by reducing it, we
directly affect the boiling turmoil of violence and war. We need to reduce the
atmosphere of killing and violence, both in our society and in our own lives.
Each one of us can reduce the level of killing in our own lives by the very
simple act of becoming vegetarian. An ancient sage once said:
For hundreds of thousands of years
The stew in the pot
Has brewed hatred and resentment
That is difficult to stop.
If you wish to know why there are disasters
Of armies and weapons in the world,
Listen to the piteous cries
From the slaughterhouse at midnight.
In a more contemporary vein George Bernard Shaw wrote a "Song of Peace:"
We are the living graves of murdered beasts,
Slaughtered to satisfy our appetites.
We never pause to wonder at our feasts
If animals, like men, can possibly have rights.
We pray on Sundays that we may have light,
To guide our footsteps on the paths we tread.
We're sick of war, we do not want to fight,
The thought of it now fills our hearts with dread
And yet we gorge ourselves upon the dead.
Like carrion crows, we live and feed on meat,
Regardless of the suffering and pain
We cause by doing so. If thus we treat
Defenseless animals for sport or gain,
How can we hope in this world to attain
The Peace we say we are so anxious for?
We pray for it, o'r hecatombs of slain,
To God, while outraging the moral law,
Thus cruelty begets its offspring--War.
For those who still do not see the logical relationships, I shall try to spell
them out more clearly. Non-human life is not qualitatively different than human
life, according to Buddhist teachings. Just as when a human is killed, an animal
too most often responds to its death with thoughts of resentment, hatred and
revenge. While it is dying, these thoughts or emotions poison its flesh. After
it is dead, its disembodied consciousness continues to broadcast thoughts of
resentment, hatred and revenge to the minds of its killers and those for whom
it was killed. Think of the billions of cows, pigs, chickens and sheep that
are killed for consumption each year in the United States alone. Those of you
who have passed the slaughter yards on the interstate highway near Coalinga,
California, have probably noticed not only the stench but also the dark cloud
of fear and violence that hangs over the place. The general mental atmosphere
of that entire county is thick with thoughts of violence with which such thoughts
within our own minds can all too easily resonate.
One of the problems of modern society is that the karma we generate is often
indirect and not immediately obvious to us, even though it can be quite powerful.
We are no less responsible for the death of the animals when we buy meat wrapped
in plastic in the supermarket than if we had killed them ourselves. We are no
less responsible for the environmental poisoning of people by chemicals that
we pour down our drains or by industries we work for or whose products we buy,
than if we had personally added the poison to their food. So too we may not
be directly aware of the ways in which we may be providing support for many
conflicts and wars around the world. Of course, it is much worse to do something
wrong, clearly knowing that it is wrong than to do it in ignorance. Yet ignorance
does not absolve us of blame.
Step Two
Since war can come about when the general level of violence in the population
reaches the boiling point and can either manifest in civil war or be channeled
into foreign wars, anything we can do to reduce the general level of violence
in the population will certainly be most helpful. One of the major teachers
of violence in our society is television. Turn off your TV--permanently. Michael
Nagler has written:
* 96 percent of American homes have at least one television set.
The average home has a set going six hours a day.
* In 'ordinary' viewing, there are 8 violent episodes an hour.
* Between the ages of five and fifteen the average American child has watched
the killing of 13,000 people. By age eighteen he or she will have logged more
than 15,000 hours of this kind of exposure and taken in more than 20,000 acts
of violence. . . .
* 97 percent of cartoons intended for children include acts of violence. By
the criteria of the Media Action Research Center, an act of aggression occurs
every three and a half minutes during children's Saturday morning programs.
Dr. George Gerbner counts one every two minutes by similar criteria.
* In a typical recent year "children . . . witness, on prime time television,
5,000 murders, rapes, beatings and stabbings, 1,300 acts of adultery, and 2,700
sexually aggressive comments," according to a group of concerned mothers.
How can all this be helping the cause of world peace? From an early age our
citizens are learning that violence the best solution to their problems, that
violence is a socially acceptable and socially approved way of dealing with
problems both personal and interpersonal. Turn off the TV!
Step Three
By constantly being mindful of your own thoughts, words and actions and by constantly
trying to purify them, we can become part of the force for peace rather than
part of the force for war. Teachings about karma indicate to us that no matter
how just our cause, no matter how right our ideas, if they are accompanied by
anger and hate, they will merely generate more anger and hate. If our minds
are inundated with the emotions of war, we aid the cause of war, no matter how
noble our cause. Buddhist teachings about karma indicate unequivocally that
a fundamentally moral life is a necessary prerequisite for ridding our minds
of negative emotions, for transforming them into selfless compassion for all.
There are many selfless endeavors that we can take upon ourselves to stir the
soup and help cool the pot. But we should remember to be constantly mindful
of our own mental attitudes. If we are not, no matter how hard we stir, we may
also be unconsciously helping to turn up the flames.
How do we change our own mental attitudes; how do we rid our minds of those
strong negative emotions that cause turbidity in our minds? Part of the Bodhisattva
Path consists of the practice of giving as an antidote to desire, greed, stinginess,
and craving; the practice of patience as an antidote for anger; and the practice
of wisdom as an antidote for foolishness.
Step Four
We should work on the systematic extension of compassion towards others. From
the level of our own minds, to our speech and then our actions, we can work
on generating compassion to those who are closest to us, the members of our
own familes, and then progressively extend our compassion to our communities,
countries, and the entire world.
Many of you may be disappointed in these suggestions. Perhaps you are looking
for something more exciting or stimulating. However, I hope that you will realize
that there is some indication that these Buddhist ideas do really work. King
Asoka, the Mauryan emperor of India who was coronated in 268 BCE, was converted
to Buddhism after experiencing personal revulsion in the aftermath of his bloody
conquest of Kalinga. Thereafter he prohibited any form of killing and encouraged
humane treatment of all peoples and also animals. The Tibetans were bloodthirsty
and warlike before conversion to Buddhism. Likewise, their neighbors the Mongols,
particularly the armies of Ghengis Khan, terrorized many peoples, from China
to the gates of Vienna. It would be hard to find people more fierce and bloodthirsty.
Buddhist missionaries subsequently transformed the Mongols into one of the most
peaceful peoples of Asia. Buddhists have never advocated war and have never
sanctioned the idea of religious war. The ideal of the Bodhisattva (an enlightened
being who devotes himself or herself to the enlightenment of all beings) is
to voluntarily return, life after life, to our world of suffering to teach the
Way to permanent inner peace, which is the only way to true peace in the world.
Whether for us or for the great sages of the world, peace can only be brought
to the world one thought at a time in the minds of each one of us. Only on that
basis, can our actions for peace, also performed one at a time, be truly effective.