Friends,
Peace Class meets tonight. Join in LIVE by simply clicking on
this Zoom link at the start time 6:00 pm.
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| Weekly Peace Class on Zoom (prs.org) |
Please note this this week, clocks here in California shifted back an hour, from Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) to Pacific Standard Time (PST). If joining from Arizona, Hawaii, or from abroad, please check to see what 6:00 pm PST translates to in any other area:
Time Zone Converter.
It's free and ALL are welcome at Peace Class.
What happened last week? There were guided meditations and other activities, plus this message:
NOW WE ARE AT WAR
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| Bibi dictates to Dept. of War Secretary Hegseth |
Now we are at war. As we look around, we see, in various forms of violence, what is inside the collective consciousness we all share.
There must be much anger, much resentment, and much sadness in the collective consciousness for us to see this violence externally.
Now let us gaze upon this moment in history. Seeing it, we stand at a point of opportunity. Why?
We can ask ourselves: Do I choose this violence? Do I choose to continue this Era of Belligerence?
If we do, then there's nothing to change: We, as a human collective, made this violence, and if we choose to continue living as we have been living, we will get more of it.
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| "Be the peace you wish to see in the world." |
Perhaps next time, the violence will be in a different region; perhaps next time, it will directly affect different people and everyone else indirectly. If we do NOT change our habits, there will be more of the same, more violence. That is the result if we see this and choose to remain as we are.
But there is another option. And that is to see this outbreak of violence and to say,
I do not choose this. I choose something else. If we say (if any individual says) that, we are at a powerful point of opportunity, because we have the inspiration required to change what needs to be changed to see something new in the world. "
Be the change you want to see in the world," urged
Indian peace activist Mahatma Gandhi.
- EDITORIAL NOTE: However Gandhi or MLK Jr. may have lived out their personal lives, one liberated India from harsh British imperial rule, the other from brutal American racism and institutional discrimination. First, they had to see and understand the mechanisms then subvert them. Gandhi was educated in England, so he did see how the empire worked. MLK Jr. learned in university and from activists (such as peace activist, friend, and Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh) how the USA and the American War Machine were operating. Second, they seized the opportunity to dismantle those empires' hold on and exploitation of others. Third, they did it peacefully, even if Malcolm X or others, remaining in anger, would have wished for violence to oppose violence. That could never work. Why? If violence beats violence, then violence wins. But if energizing peace beats depleting violence, then the power of peace wins. And it shows that peace, which is sustainable, is the way. War destroys, exhausts, ruins itself and sets enemies aflame against it, which is in no way sustainable, however many battles it may seem to win in the short run. Everyone told them peace and justice would be impossible.
What is war?
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| I feel sad and guilty. I will kill these feelings. |
War is the resentment, anger, sadness, and guilt that festers in the collective consciousness, manifesting outwardly in the world of form.
Before we see the outbreak of war, we might find it possible to ignore the discomfort that indicates that there are massive amounts of resentment, anger, sadness, bitterness, and guilt in the collective.
Just so, before the body has a 105-degree fever, we might ignore the runny nose we experience the week before, which is indicating to us that this body needs rest, resilience, and care.
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| I feel sick with fever for more ego and money. |
If we do address it, it never happens. If we fail to address the issue when we see early symptoms, sickness will manifest. So it has, now.
The runny nose of how we have felt about each other, the runny nose of how we have felt after we judged each other with thought-violence, has turned into a life-threating fever; it has manifested into outward violence anyone can see.
And now that we can see it, some will ask, How can we change this? How do we END this war? How do we bring about peace?
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| I choose genocide! Deal with it, stupid Arabs! |
The root of this violence is many people feeling something that could be translated into the phrase:
“I have not been honored.”
How can we bring the opposite of that phrase into the world?
How can we become the phrase, “I honor you, honor myself, and honor all beings”?
How can we become this “I honor all beings” presence?
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| Israeli Jews say no to genocide, yes to peace! |
How can we become the “I have compassion for all beings” presence?
First, it is simple, by setting an
intention (a determination, the root of what the Buddha explained determined action/karma).
Simply speaking, we can intend:
Let me be the “I honor all beings” presence in the world.
Let me fill with the spirit of the phrase “I honor all beings.”
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| It's too hot! No, it's too cold! Now it's just right. |
When we slip into a bathtub and the water is too hot, we run the cool tap to balance the overall temperature.
The same is true of our collective humanity:
When we see war, we know that many are feeling the phrase, “I have not been honored.” We can balance that by simply adding the spirit of The Honoring of All Beings into our collective consciousness.
Just as adding cool water to scalding water balances the temperature into a mild and tolerable tepidness, our Honoring of All can restore balance to the collective.
But here's the most important thing I've come here to say:
We can carry the Honoring of All Beings Presence and still have strong political opinions.
Carrying The Honoring of All does not result or require neutrality of opinion. This is exceptionally important to understand.
We can have any opinion and still carry the I Honor All Beings presence.
Here's how.
How? Compassion can be added to our strong opinions.
We can think or say, “I have a preference here; I have a preference for Group A or Group B, or perhaps a preference for neutrality. And even as I prefer that, I carry compassion for all beings. I also honor all beings. I honor them because I know that everyone deserves a safe world.
“I know that compassion-for-all is the thing that builds it. So even as I have my preferences, however strong, I surround that preference with my compassion-for-all.”
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| Vote with me for more war and capitalist profits. |
The lie that we were told is that it is our responsibility to choose sides, and in choosing sides, we must oppose others, condemn them, carry vitriol for those who dare to stay on the “wrong,” namely, the side we did not choose. No. We CAN choose a side, and we can still feel compassion-for-all.
Understand, our opinions are a part of our experience of selfhood, and we are here to be who we are. We are loved as who we are. We will never be asked to step away from our point of view by those who understand what we are here to do, which is to be ourselves.
We do not need to be less ourselves to be instruments of peace in this world.
We can be exactly ourselves and we can be instruments of true peace.
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| A nation says no to kings and dictators. |
Whatever our opinions are—whether we have a preference for neutrality or a preference for one group or another, or anything in between—we can be aware of it, and we can express it, and we can still build a bridge to the Age of Peace.
When we see violence and say, “I don't condone that violence” and add our vitriol, our vitriol actually builds more violence.
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| Republicans in power, give us peace! |
I wish I didn't have to say that, because many won't like hearing it. But it is objectively true. And we have been shielded from the truth for too long.
We deserve to exercise our true power. Our true power is to choose the kind of world we want to build first then to consciously engage the tools that will build what we want.
If we want a peaceful world, choose it by pairing compassion-for-all with any opinion. If we want more war, choose it by pairing it with vitriol, with cruelty of thought, and with harsh judgments of others with any opinion.
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| We need change. Change now or be voted out. |
That is how we choose what will come. We choose not by what our opinions are, but by what feeling we pair them with.
That is the greatest secret behind war:
It's not which side we choose that truly affects the violence around us. It's what feeling we pair whatever we have chosen. If we pair our opinion with compassion-for-all, we are choosing the Age of Peace.
If we pair our opinions with vitriol, with cruelty, with judgment, with violence of thought, we are choosing the Era of Belligerence.
Any of the following three phrases builds peace:
- I have a preference for neutrality, and I carry the spirit of compassion-for-all.
- I have a preference for Group A, and I carry the spirit of compassion-for-all.
- I have a preference for Group B, and I carry the spirit of compassion-for-all.
Any one of these builds a bridge from where we are to the Age of Peace.
Why are we here?
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| We are here to be live out integrity: peace, peace |
We are here to be ourselves.
But we are
also here to build the world that we want.
If we were taught that we were obligated to carry vitriol for those we disagree with, we were told that by those who preferred we build more of the Era of Belligerence or by those who had been told how to be by those who prefer the Era of Belligerence.
I am choosing the Age of Peace, so I am telling everyone the truth about how to build it.
The future is ours to build.
We build the future with our thoughts (beginning with our
intentions) and with the emotions that surround our thoughts.
We build it by how we think of others, judge them, and how we think of ourselves and judge ourselves.
We were probably told that we build the future with our opinions.
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| Imagine all the people living life in peace. |
But we really build it with the feelings we generate, by way of our thoughts, thought-habits, that surround our opinions.
I honor others' opinions, even if they differ from mine.
And I honor what others choose to do with their infinite ability to build our world together.
But I offer these words to make it clear what we are choosing between and how so we can be sure that we are building what we really want.
- Mandy Kahn (prs.org) edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly
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