Mandy Kahn: Peace not opposite of war

(Sum of Some Books) Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace explained in 7 minutes (War and Peace)

Peace is not the opposite of war

Mandy Kahn (edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly)

We went LIVE in person in the PRS Library for the first and only time so far.

Inner peace begins when... (Tiny Buddha)

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.

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.

When genocide is caught on film (NYT)

What is there is a natural honoring of our earth.

In this loving experience of compassion-without-end, war simply does not begin.

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

War Force  Gives Us Meaning

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

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

"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.

See you Wednesday for a guided meditation

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 (mandykahn.com)

Mandy Kahn's Peace Class goes live every Wednesday evening at 6:00 pm (Pacific Time) on Zoom. It is free to attend. To sign up, visit: eventbrite.com/e/peace-class-with-mandy-kahn. To get Mandy Kahn's free weekly peace emails, visit: mandykahn.com.

• Mandy Kahn (text); Sum of Some Books (War and Peace summary); Dhr. Seven (ed.), Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly

The MIND that sees without reacting

(Buddhist Wisdom)

(Inner) Peace Class weekly on Zoom

Friends, Peace Class meets every Wednesday night on Zoom and starts at 6:00 pm (Pacific Time). Join a Zoom meeting. Share link with friends. All are welcome at Peace Class. The most recent peace talk was delivered at last week's class:

 

Inner peace and World Peace

I was thinking, Where does peace begin?

Inner peace is World Peace that one person experiences first before the world feels it.

 

Inner peace is World Peace happening locally, radiating globally.

 

Inner peace is World Peace that one person has just grown in the garden of oneself.

 

Inner peace is World Peace. We call peace “World Peace” when enough people are experiencing individual peace and flowing it into the collective consciousness so that the peace experience becomes the common experience in society. But before profound peace is the most common experience, it's a notable if unusual individual experience. We call this “inner peace” because we are not yet in a world where profound peace permeates everyone's experience all the time. We can see the contrast between the inner peace we are feeling and the lack of peace that many others are feeling. For now, inner peace is still an unusual experience. It is not yet World Peace.

 

It is “still” this way because experienced peace will be the baseline experience for all beings eventually. But for those of us who were born in the Era of Belligerence, an experience of inner peace will most likely be something we must cultivate — something we move into and out of over the course of a day, week, or year.

 

When many (consider the 100th monkey theory) have brought forth their own peacefulness, collective peace will begin to manifest. First it will be experienced by small pockets of humanity. Then it will spread out into the surrounding areas.

 

Imagine being in a swimming pool and adding a drop of food coloring. The water will reflect that new color most strongly where the coloring was first placed, but eventually it will be incorporated more widely. It cannot help but spread. It will first make itself powerfully apparent locally.

 

Peace works this way.

 

One person in an experience of peace sends the flow of that peace into the collective consciousness, and it enters the collective at the precise point where that person is situated. One's peace begins a collective consciousness of peace, first locally then more widely. It can be felt most potently locally, where it is most concentrated.

 

World Peace begins as inner peace experienced by one person, two people interacting, or a group directly impacting one another. It eventually spreads into the collective, which is a term for all of their indirect contacts or all the people we impact without being aware of it.

 

World Peace is a result, not a cause; it comes last. Inner peace is a cause of World Peace and a result of it just as a stone cascading makes a sound that keeps reverberating every time it newly impacts a surface.

 

Eventually, experienced peace is the standard, the common experience. Then individuals are able to build on that standard, that foundation of peace. When there is standard peace, what will we see? Flowing creativity. Self-actualization. Self-exploration. New collaborations. New forms of art. New inventions — acts of genius. That's what's waiting for us when we arrive at World Peace.

We think of World Peace as the end of war. But in that state of generalized inner peace, war will not begin. Generalized peace will look like the absence of war to those who lived before during the Era of Belligerence. But for those who were born in the Age of Peace, it will look like flowing creativity, inventiveness, collaboration, artmaking, inspiration, and flowing ideas. It won't look like the end of war because war will sound so odd — such a strange thing for anyone to choose — that war will simply seem like a historical curiosity, the way we now think of outdated medical practices such as bloodletting. We look back at bloodletting and think, Why would one think becoming healthier is achieved by purposely losing blood? What a strange thing to do! What a strange way to treat one's body. Why would anyone ever do that? We look at bloodletting as a historical curiosity — as a marker of how things were at a peculiar moment in history, a time when humans were doing the best they could but were living in confusion that led to certain aberrations we now see clearly and would never choose today. That's how war will appear to us. We will look at it as a marker of a particularly strange time in human history.

From a peaceful mindset, we will not judge ourselves, or previous humans, for what they did not yet understand; we will have compassion for ourselves and for others. Knowing more, we will not again choose that which does not serve us.

 

War is a marker of a time in our development. It is an indicator of where we are in our evolution. The lower mind wants to know the answer to this question: Is war bad or good? The higher mind is so loving, so peaceful, that it does not judge. It simply says, War indicates that a society is very early in its development. We will know that we have evolved, we will know that we carry more peace, when we do not choose war — when we find that we, as individuals, simply would never choose to harm another person.

 

We will know that we have evolved when we look at the practice of harming another and find it puzzling. We will think, Why would anyone ever do that? It simply won't make sense. We will think, I'd never choose to hurt someone; I respect everyone here too much. I wouldn't chop down my own beloved house; I wouldn't throw away a cherished gift. And I wouldn't harm anyone, as everyone brings something valuable to the collective; everyone bears a gift, and therefore everyone is a gift.

 

We look at a loving world, a world where there are no skirmishes between individuals, a world where there is no violence, and we call what we see “World Peace” — and to us that means The End of All War. But it won't feel like the Age of No War, except to those who began their lives in the Era of Belligerence. It will feel like the Age of Inspiration, the Age of Creativity, the Age of Invention, the Age of Innovation. It will be the Age of Feeling Just Right, the Age of So Much to Get Out of Bed to Experience. It will be the Age of What Can I Build Next.

 

When we are in the Age of Peace, we will see it for what it is, not for what it isn't — not the contrast to what came before.

 

Only by living in peace will we truly understand its nature.

 

We do not call our time the Age of No Bloodletting. We don't notice what isn't there so much as we notice what is here. That's how we'll feel in the Age of Peace. We'll notice how good it feels to express ourselves, to be creative, to be full of innovative ideas. We'll notice how good our own kindness feels whether expressed towards ourselves or others. And the idea of not feeling these things will seem strange to us. We will think, What would possess anyone to treat another cruelly when expressing kindness feels so good and cruelty feels so terrible? Why would anyone choose to act in a way that feels terrible? What a strange way to live!

 

Those who feel called to build inner peace even as they are living in the Era of Belligerence are getting a preview of coming attractions. They're getting a taste of what will one day be the standard. But they're also seeding a world where one doesn't need to cultivate inner peace because it has become the standard. One only needs to choose what to focus into existence by way of one's already peaceful, already connected self. For that reason, the Age of Peace will also be the Age of Choice; all will have the freedom to concentrate on what they enjoy doing rather than spending their primary energy creating safety for themselves and making sure their basic needs are met.

 

Some of us in the Era of Belligerence already carry the perspective that will be common in the Age of Peace. Such people might look around at their society and think, How do I get out of here?

 

One “gets out of here” by building a future from where one is moving in the present.

 

One builds the Age of Peace by building inner peace. One builds peace for oneself in whatever increments one can and is grateful for whatever slivers of peace one can experience. One lingers in appreciation of peace whenever it arrives. One revels in the feeling of peace and thinks about what one loves about peace and speaks of the joys of peace and does what brings one more peace. That's how one builds the Age of Peace before it is here. This is how one gifts the Age of Peace to everyone.

Where do I begin?

Peace Class every Wednesday at 6:00 pm PDT

Sign up for this mailing list: mandykahn.com. Zoom link to join Peace Class: us02web.zoom.us/j/844396... (changes weekly). To get the latest link, sign up for mailing list.

To convert our 6:00 pm PDT meeting time to any other time zone, see: dateful.com/time-zone-converter.

To learn more about Peace Class and to sign up for future classes: eventbrite.com/e/peace-class-with-mandy-kahn....

If only Buddhism had anything to contribute to a discussion about peace

How can we cultivate inner peace?

Passaddhi, in the Buddha's language, the ancient lingua franca of Pali, is a noun (Brahminical Sanskrit prasrabhi, Tibetan ཤིན་ཏུ་སྦྱང་བ་, Wylie shin tu sbyang ba) that has been translated as "calmness," "tranquility," "repose," and "serenity" [1]. It is inner peace.

The associated verb is passambhati (to calm down, to quieten) [2]. In Buddhism, passaddhi refers to tranquility of body, speech, and mind (thoughts, consciousness on the path to enlightenment).

As part of the cultivatable mental factors, passaddhi is preceded by "rapture" or "joy" or "bliss" (pīti) and precedes profound stillness (samādhi).

Passaddhi is identified as a wholesome factor in the following canonical contexts:

• kāya-passaddhi is one of the "beautiful mental factors" in Theravāda Buddhist Abhidhamma ("the Doctrine or Dhamma in Ultimate Terms") tradition
• citta-passaddhi is one of the beautiful mental factors in Theravāda Abhidhamma tradition
• one of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment (sambojjhangas)
• meditative absorptions (jhanani)
• transcendental Dependent Origination (lokuttara-paticcasamuppada)

Pali canon references

In various Buddhist canonical schema, the calming of the body, speech, and various mental factors is associated with gladness (pāmojja, pāmujja), rapture (pīti), and pleasure or happiness (sukhaṃ) and leads to the stillness (and effortless concentration) needed for release from pain and suffering (dukkha). More

• Inner peace (passaddhi) is a vital element in Buddhism's Seven Factors of Enlightenment, just as happiness is
• Peace and Sustenance | Dictionary of Buddhism | Nichiren Buddhism Library
• Mandy Kahn (mandykahn.com), Philosophical Research Society, Hollywood, California, Jan. 22, 2025; edited by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly with added Wiki edit

Not thrilled to be alive? Try Death Meditation

Deborah Netburn, LA Times, 7/20/23; Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Wow, consciousness carries on into the afterlife. We're reborn over and over again!

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Want to feel thrilled to be alive? Try death meditation

Deborah Netburn

On a recent Saturday night, the scene was serene inside Tac-tile Mountain, a small, carefully curated shop in Pasadena.

Meditation cushions were laid out on the concrete floor. A sea of white candles was flickering in the window. And then the restaurant next door started blasting “Umbrella” by Rihanna.

The six of us who had gathered inside laughed nervously. We were already excited and a little hesitant. After all, we were there to contemplate our own deaths. Tac-tile Mountain was hosting “Death Reflections,” a two-hour, $55 workshop led by Marifel Catalig, a trained death doula [birthing assistant] and breathwork instructor.

I hoped death meditation would ease my fear of dying (Jeffrey Decoster/Los Angeles Times).

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It had been advertised on Instagram as “a breath guided meditation intended to contemplate death in many forms.” The description ended there, so no one knew exactly what to expect.

Going into the workshop, I hoped that spending an hour meditating on my inevitable demise would ease my fear of dying. What I didn’t anticipate is that I would walk out feeling profoundly grateful for all the ordinary, messy, glittering life I’ve been blessed to live so far.

• Struggling to calm the mind? Buddhist monastics in Hacienda Heights offer meditation tips

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This overwhelming feeling of gratitude is not unusual after a prolonged death exercise, said Ines Testoni, a social psychologist who directs a course on death studies and end of life at the University of Padova in Italy.

“What I have been seeing for 15 years now is that knowing one has to die allows one to value life and feel more grateful for what life allows us to do and enjoy,” she said.

Welcome

What I really need is Mind-Cleansing Meditation. But where to get it? (Meditation Town)

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Marifel Catalig, 40, greeted us at the door wearing a white blouse and wide-legged jeans, then asked us to find our seats.

After lighting the candles that were placed at the head of each of our cushions, we began with a gentle movement to release the tension of the day, then focused on our senses — paying close attention to what we could see, hear, taste, feel and smell.

Death meditations are wildly variable. In the Buddhist tradition the practice of maraṇasati, or "mindfulness of death," is designed to remind practitioners that death might come as soon as the next morning, the next meal or even the next breath, and encourage them to act accordingly.

Another Buddhist practice focuses on a detailed visualization of the body’s eventual decay to help relinquish [clinging] attachment to the material world.

• 12 places to find solace for the soul in Los Angeles

I thought it would be scary.

Catalig once attended a death meditation at which participants were wrapped in a white sheet to mimic the shroud they might wear after they die. Another time she led a living funeral workshop where participants were asked to write a eulogy for themselves that she read out loud to the group.

The meditation I attended was simpler. The focus was primarily on the type of life review many people undertake before they die.

Accompanied by a playlist of instrumental music that was more evocative than annoying, Catalig asked us to imagine our earliest memories and consider where we were, who was there, what we felt like, what it smelled like, and what sounds we heard.

We did the same for our early childhood, pre-adolescence, adolescence, early adulthood, and so on. As she spoke, memories of the many lives I’ve lived flashed through my mind. Most of them were mundane, but they filled me with a sense of tenderness.

There I was playing with a Fisher-Price barn on a green carpet, walking to school in new saddle shoes, riding bikes on the sidewalk with my sister. I saw sleepovers and middle school dances, late summer nights wandering around my hometown, blissfully bored and aimless.

Nobody has lived your life but you. All of your experiences, everything that got you here,

that belongs to you

 — Marifel Catalig, breathwork instructor

I saw scenes from my adult life before kids, my life as a new parent, my life with small children and, finally, my life now — my husband, my teenage sons, my colleagues, my friends, all the different and distinct lives I’ve lived.

“Nobody has lived your life but you,” Catalig said. “All of your experiences, everything that got you here, that belongs to you.”

Then the music shifted, and she asked us to imagine that we were nearing death. Our eyesight was fading, our hearing becoming more muffled. Food didn’t taste as good as it once did, and we were eating less.

In my mind I felt myself receding from the immediacy of life — a fog of gray between me and the world. As my experience of the world became more muted, I felt less afraid of leaving it.

Then Catalig had us imagine our last days. Who would visit us? What would they say? And then we pictured our last breath.

The Buddha was right all along!

“What do you want to breathe in?” she asked. “And what do you want to breathe out?” We imagined hovering above our lifeless bodies, what they would look like, and who would tend to them. For a brief moment, we imagined what might be next. In a society that rarely encourages reflections on death and dying, many of us respond to our innate fear of death with denial, Testoni said.

Carving out time to visualize and imagine our own passing can help us face that fear in a productive way. “Reflection makes us realize that we are afraid of something we do not know,” she said. “Knowing that we don’t know but we can know a lot is definitely reassuring.”

Sharing

When the meditation was over, Catalig invited us to share about the experience. One participant said the meditation helped her reframe the times in her life when she thought she was a bad person. Instead, she saw herself with more compassion.

Another participant said she felt that her higher self had been with her all along and was still with her. This brought her great comfort.

As for me, I walked out of the store in a state of elation. I was less afraid of dying, but mostly I felt so thrilled to be alive.

ABOUT: Deborah Netburn covers spirituality, joy, and faith for the Los Angeles Times. She started in 2006 and has worked across a wide range of sections including entertainment, home and garden, national news, technology, and science.

Curious to try one of Catalig’s death meditations? Find future offerings on her Instagram page or contact her through her website breathtodeath.com. More + VIDEO

Rescuing farm animals: The sad Ram saved

Lonely ram had no friends for 10 years. This woman gave him a family.

(GeoBeats Animals) Nov. 15, 2022. Lonely ram had no friends for 10 years. This woman gave him a family. Check out Huxley's story: instagram.com/uncleneilsh... #bekind #animals

Eckhart Tolle: How to control emotional triggers (video)

Eckhart Tolle (youtube.com, Feb. 8, 2019); Ashley Wells, Crystal Q., Wisdom Quarterly

How do I keep from being triggered?

How can I be aware of my aggressive ego prior to it arising? Eckhart Tolle (toe-lay) explains that as we develop deeper Presence [a kind of "mindfulness" or sati], the gap between an ego assertion and becoming aware of it will shorten. To strengthen our awareness of ego, he suggests practicing Presence in everyday situations so you can notice being taken over by the "pain-body." To find greater fulfillment in life, see: youtube.com/c/eckharttoll... Interested in diving deeper into Eckhart Tolle's work? Enjoy a FREE 10-DAY TRIAL to "Eckhart Tolle Now": eckharttollenow.com/v9/join/ Check out some other playlists, such as meditation: bit.ly/2QkG5uU.

Sharon Salzberg in Los Angeles (Feb. 2)

Insight LA; Ananda (Dharma Meditation Initiative), Dhr. Seven, Crystal, Wisdom Quarterly

Through guided meditations, talks about the Buddha’s teachings, and Q&A periods, this daylong will explore the practice of upekkha, usually translated from the Pali as "equanimity." But this equanimity can also be described as balance: a spacious stillness that allows us to accept things as they are. The power of this balance is that it allows us to avoid both apathy and indifference on the one hand and acute reactivity on the other. This can be most helpful when we are facing challenging times in our lives, especially the challenges that we are deeply invested in. Often though such moments in life also tend to be the ones where equanimity is most out of reach. Awakened American teacher Sharon Salzberg offers practical and empowering tools to cultivate equanimity when it is most needed. Learn how to cultivate clarity and compassion through different mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation techniques. When true equanimity is present, it is the ground out of which resilience is strengthened so that sustained transformation can occur.​ More Equanimity for Challenging Times: A Daylong with Sharon Salzberg Saturday, Feb. 2, 2019, 10:00 AM-4:00 PM First Presbyterian Church, ​Santa Monica

REGISTER NOW

There is special funding allocated to People of Color (POC), Queer people, folks with serious medical conditions, and young adults (ages 18-24). Funding is offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. Please email programs@insightla.org for more information.

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