Friends, the following talk was delivered live last week and has been edited by Wisdom Quarterly:
THE WAR OF OPINIONS
When we are belligerent and violent, there are always two wars happening simultaneously, the War of Bombs and the War of Opinions.
The War of Bombs requires the War of Opinions as its fuel. If we end the War of Opinions, we simultaneously end the War of Bombs.
We are all responsible for the War of Opinions, so we can end it at any time. The way we end the War of Opinions is by thinking then saying this: "Whatever opinion you hold, I have compassion for you, and whatever opinion I hold, I have compassion for myself."
If we choose these mental positions, we will never have to agree with each other to see the end of belligerence, violence, war, disputes, arguments, and doing harm.
The true cause of violence is not disagreement; it is how we think about each other and feel about each other when we disagree with each other.
Violence can only happen if it is acceptable for us to withhold compassion from those with whom we disagree. This is the cause of war.
Our differences of opinion do not cause violence. What causes violence is that we are willing to withhold compassion from others, any others, because of their opinions.
As soon as we become unwilling to withhold compassion from anyone, we will see the end of violence, immediately, at that exact moment.
When our compassion ends nowhere, there will be peace on earth.
Opinions (holding views)
We are taught to use the opinions of others to justify withholding compassion from them.
There is only one reason to withhold compassion from anyone: to actively build more violence on this planet. That's what our withheld compassion does.
If we are trying to accomplish something other than that by withholding compassion, then we are using the wrong tool.
If we want to build peace, the tool that will build it is compassion-for-all.
These times
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The trouble with these times [is that they aren't a-changin' enough] is that many are trying to build peace by withholding compassion from those who disagree with them. That action builds war. So they are trying to build peace with that which only builds war.
That is like saying, "I'd like to build a house to sleep in, a good strong dwelling, so I'm going to build it with water." [What do we think we are, fish, mermaids, aquatic plants?]
Water is useful for many things, but we can't cut it into blocks and build shelters with it. [What if we freeze it first? Igloo ice, sure, but this is water we're talking about, not permafrost ice in the arctic.]
Our misunderstandings are so basic to our belief system that we do not see that we are trying to build a house with something we cannot build a house with. That's how elemental our misunderstandings are. But that's also how powerful our opportunities are.
All we need to do is say, "Now that I can see that I've been trying to build a house with blocks of water, let me try again, but with blocks of wood, and see what happens." Voila: a beautiful, solid house.
One can't build walls with wet fluid water; one can't build true and lasting peace with hatred of the people who disagree with us.
Our hatred builds something: It builds more of the Era of Belligerence.
It does not build peace in the world. It also does not build peace for us personally — in our day-to-day experience, our family and circle of friends, our workplace and our minds/hearts.
What builds peace for us, in our personal experience, is to say this: "I disagree with that point of view yet still have compassion for the person who holds it."
That builds the kind of deep peace that makes it easier for us to do everything we have to do throughout the day. It makes it easier to be a parent, easier to be a friend, easier to be a whatever.
A war brings these forces to our attention, but they are always at play, in smaller ways, within our lives. Disagreements break out in the home and the workplace. And we always make more peace for ourselves when we feel and think this:
"I disagree with the way my boss (spouse, child, friend, whoever) sees this situation. Still, I hold deep compassion for this person."
The War of Bombs
The War of Bombs requires the War of Opinions to exist. Without our War of Opinions, their War of Bombs will very quickly lose steam and peter out.
A fire requires fuel -- such as wood and oxygen, plus certain conditions, like heat and the absence of rain.
Similarly, the fire of war requires certain conditions to ignite and burn and grow.
Remove the War of Opinions and, no matter how many lit matches are thrown onto the fire of war, it will not ignite.
Compassion-for-all is like soaking fuel used in the fire of war. No matter how many flames are dropped on wet wood, it won't catch on fire. Our compassion-for-all ends this war and every war.
When our compassion ends nowhere, there will be peace on earth. When our compassion goes everywhere, there is no ready fuel for war.
What will happen when we start to pair compassion-for-all with whatever opinion (view) we hold?
What will happen is that we will spend more time in our Peace Mind, which is the higher portion of our consciousness. And when we do this, we'll see new solutions—solutions that already exist, except that we cannot see them yet because they can only be seen from the more loving portion of consciousness.
When we have compassion for others, we free them from our hatred, vitriol, animosity, belligerence, so they visit their Peace Minds more often, too.
And when we are all in our Peace Minds, new solutions will be so easy to see that we almost won't be able to comprehend how we ever stayed at war or disagreeing for so long.
Solutions to our problems already exist. Whether we can see them yet depends on our perspective. Where are we placing conscious attention in our own consciousness? Is it our Peace Mind?
It's not that this conflict, or any conflict, is based on an unsolvable problem. It's that we cannot yet see a solution that will resolve this issue from our current perspective.
Move our perspective, and the preexisting solution becomes apparent.
What's the one thing we can do to serve the world? We can learn to transition our own perspective upwards so we can see more solutions and bring more innovations to humanity.
What's another thing we can do? We can pair compassion with everything we think and feel. Compassion can be added to any thought, like this:
"I greatly disagree with what that leader has done, and I have compassion for everyone who lives in that country, even for the leader herself," or "I think that's a terrible thing to do, and I have compassion for the person who has done it." Just add one in.
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| I love you, Yoko. - STFU, John. |
We end it by adding our compassion-for-everyone to any opinion we have.
That ends the war, because now it's not a War of Opinions that we're seated within—it's simply a landscape of opinions that are allowed to exist.
It's not a War of Opinions when there is compassion-for-all present. Now it's a community of unique human individuals who compassionately respect each other. We came here to be unique.
We did not come here to create a consensus of opinion. We came here to be in a vibrant (lively and diverse) community of original thinkers, coexisting, more than tolerating but appreciating differences.
What makes that possible is this phrase: Regardless of how we see things, we have compassion for one another. That choice-of-thought builds the kind of peace we came here to build.
In peace, Mandy
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- Mandy Kahn (PRS.org), edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
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