Peace is not the opposite of war
Mandy Kahn (edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly)
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Peace is
not the opposite of war.
When true peace is present, war does not
begin.
When people who live in a war-ravaged society arrive at a place of true peace, they first tend to notice the absence of war.
They are surprised to see that war is not there, so they say: "This state is the
opposite of war."
But peace is not the opposite of war. What they are noticing when they enter the state of peace, the peace state, is the absence of war.
We use this shorthand until we are hamstrung by it, defining peace as absence.
But to define peace by what is not there is to fail to understand what IS there.
What is there? In the peace state, what is there is the experience of honoring all beings.
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| Let's bury them alive? War gives IDF meaning |
What is there is an experience of deep and sustained
compassion—a caring for all others as well as self.
What is there is an awareness that one’s true nature is loving and peaceful with a conscious, vibrant experience of one’s loving and peaceful nature.
What is there is a deep remembering of the interconnectedness (intermeshed oneness) of all beings.
What is there is a natural honoring of our earth.
It is not that war is not allowed in the peace state—it’s that no one in the peace state ever chooses it.
War not beginning is a result of what is present in the peace state.
It is not that the "absence of war" is present, it’s that compassion-for-all-beings is present. And when compassion-for-all-beings is present, war is never present.
Definition
Defining peace as the opposite of war is like saying, "What’s notable about Los Angeles is that it’s not San Francisco." It’s like saying, "What we know about Los Angeles is that it is the place where the Golden Gate Bridge is not; therefore, Los Angeles is the
opposite of the place where the Golden Gate Bridge is." This is nonsense.
This would be like teaching our children, "There is the Golden Gate Bridge, and there is Los Angeles, which is where the Golden Gate Bridge is not." Then our children would grow up to say, "Yes, Los Angeles, that’s the place where the Golden Gate Bridge is not!"
To associate peace with one thing that is not present in the peace state is to be distracted from what is there.
What is inherently present in the peace state is compassion-without-end, the honoring of all beings, the honoring of earth, a sense of the connectedness of all human beings, the knowledge of one’s inherent true nature, and the feeling of love-without-limits and without-end,
unconditional love (Buddhist
metta, Ancient
Greek love).
These presences are all inherent aspects of peace.
When we begin to think of peace in terms of its presences, we begin to understand what peace is, how to build it, how to sustain it, and how to share it.
An experience of peace
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| Then a wave of bliss came over me: metta |
How do we
know that we are having an experience of peace?
We know we are in the peace state when we feel peace’s presences—love-without-end, compassion-without-end, a connection to all others, an awareness of our own loving and peaceful true nature, and an inherent honoring of the earth.
As a result of these presences, we act in ways that are respectful of self and others concurrently. These actions are a result of what we know when we are in the peace state, what we remember we are when we are in the peace state.
Misdefined peace
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| "Let that sh*t go," the Awakened One might say |
When we make the mistake of defining peace as "the opposite of war," what is really happening is that we are confusing peace, a state in which war does not
begin, and a ceasefire.
A ceasefire is an action taken as a step to end a war.
Peace and ceasefire are two very different things. The fact that we have used one word to mean both indicates our fundamental confusion about the true nature of peace.
A "ceasefire" can only exist in a place where fighting is a possibility. In the peace state, fighting never begins. Therefore, a ceasefire cannot exist in the peace state.
Conflating peace and ceasefire has created profound confusion—one of the greatest of our time.
That’s what makes this moment so powerful. We can begin, right NOW, to learn what peace is—to learn what is present when peace is. We can begin to understand the difference between peace and ceasefire, and to separate them as distinct. Once they are separated, we can begin to learn about peace free of confusion.
Once we have begun to separate peace and ceasefire, we can begin to engage with true peace, as it is, without its power being dampened by the idea that it is a dance in-and-out of war.
A ceasefire is simply a part of the cycle of belligerence.
The peace state is infinitely more powerful than any ceasefire.
To equate peace with a ceasefire is to reduce peace’s power.
To separate the concept of peace from the concept of a ceasefire is to return peace’s power to us.
- Mandy Kahn (text); Sum of Some Books (War and Peace summary); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly
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