Some Thoughts on Peace

Humankind has become a very dangerous species. We need people who can sit still and be able to smile, who can walk peacefully. We need people like that in order to save us. Mahayana Buddhism says that you are that person, that each of you is that person.

 —Thich Nhat Hahn

Can you sit still, smile and walk peacefully? Thich Nhat Hahn tells the story of a Vietnam Vet, an American, who during the war had purposefully killed children. Years later, this man could not forgive himself, could not get over the shame and guilt. Hahn asked him: “How many children did you kill that day? Six?” And the man said, “Yes, six. Six or eight.” And Hahn said, “You can’t bring back the children you killed. But how many could you save today?”

The man began saving children.

Out of our pain comes our deepest calling: to sit still, smile and walk peacefully beside people who hate us, as well as those whom we may hate. Our task is to transfigure hate. Our task is to resist any simple formulation about the value of another human being—even if we want to hold that person up as a hero—because the making of heroes is yet another distortion, like stereotyping, like prejudice, when the story that needs told is the old story of fallibility, suffering and the chance for redemption. 

I’m much more interested in the historical Jesus, for example—the Jesus who ate and drank, who walked and talked and wept, who knew the joy of the little children—than I am in the supernatural Jesus. This was the Jesus, after all, whose words and deeds were so revolutionary he was sentenced to death. This was the Jesus who faced his death feeling he had been forsaken. What you have done unto the least of them, he said, you have done unto me. It is sad that so often this Jesus is forgotten or neglected in favor of Jesus the hero. Jesus the judge. There is a desire when afraid, I suppose, to want to identify with power. To tell a story that makes you less afraid. (Like the story that possessing nuclear weapons makes us safer rather than more vulnerable; that we will “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” when really there is no “us” and “them,” and everywhere is “here”.) If there is to be peace we need to take a hard look at our fears and at the effect of the lies we tell ourselves about who, what and where we are. In the meantime, we need to sit still, smile and walk peacefully.

(image source here)