Breaking News

In a stunning turn of events, peace has broken out. All over the world.  In fact, it has always been here and gone unnoticed! Story at 11:00.

The news is incredulous, I know. How is it we have been so blind to the presence of peace? How is it we have walked right past it into discord, conflict, wars and violence? The Holy Wars? The Inquisition? The World Wars? Peace was there and unseen.  Countless wars, battles, attacks, skirmishes, acts of revenge, acts of aggression, murder, mayhem, brutality and oppression. Peace was there and ignored. And that's just the roster of obviously horrendous events. Don't forget disagreement, contention, quarrels, grudges and just plain everyday "I'm right, you're wrong" stubbornness-- disharmony, it seems, is hardwired into human behavior. How, then, could peace have been here all along?

Peace is the spacious, patient, ever present and all allowing environment out of which all conflict arises. And why does it arise? Simple. It arises because people believe the thoughts in their heads. These thoughts tell us, quite frequently and incessantly, that the way things are is not the way things should be. Every head has a different set of thoughts, we all want to be right and have our way, and we're off to the races. We stray from peace, our natural state of existence, intentionally. Now, I want you to consider this-- just because a thought comes up in your head doesn't mean it's true and yet even given the obvious contradiction of sometimes having conflicting thoughts and confusing thoughts, most people give their thoughts gospel status and identify deeply with them. Isn't a thought, after all, just a symbol for something else, just a collection of words spoken in the head? A flag is a symbol for a country, yet we don't take the flag to be the country do we? Thoughts come and go like clouds in the sky and who knows from where or how they suddenly appear. We would be wise to stand back a bit and watch them to gain a better understanding of the hypnotic effect they have on us and the power they hold to predispose us to conflict and discord and suffering.

 Could our personal happiness or even world peace be as simple as understanding how our minds work and moving beyond that to whatever state allows us to simply observe and experience this wonder of wonders we call Life? What if it just took that realization? What if, one by one, we commit to peace and do not waver even in the face of others choosing conflict all around us? To achieve world peace, it would eventually take, of course, all of us. But, that has to begin with some of us making the choice. Right now. Today. We can't make peace happen, peace already is when we make a conscious choice to live it.

Lessons in the Sand

Many years ago I attended a closing sand mandala ceremony. For two straight weeks, monks from a Tibetan Buddhist monastery had worked tirelessly to create an exquisitely intricate sand mandala in our local museum of Asian art. Millions of tiny grains of colored sand were painstakingly tapped from their small metal instruments, working from the center of the mandala outward. The entire mandala was about five feet in diameter and mesmerizing in its complexity and detail. I arrived about a half hour before the closing ceremony was to begin and was astonished to see the monks still laboring on the outer edges of the mandala, patiently, steadily, tap, tap, tap, each tiny detail completed with full attention and great love and care.

Mandalas are considered sacred in Buddhist tradition, representative of the interconnection of all things and the great web of life. The monks who worked on this one were doing so with clearly evident joy and enthusiasm; their smiles were as broad as their fingers were nimble. As time for the closing ceremony drew near, they quietly completed the finishing touches on the mandala without fanfare. By this time quite a crowd had gathered to admire this awe-inspiring and incredible work of art. The moment was brief, however, for the closing ceremony soon began. Ritual blessings were offered and then the mandala, this beautiful, exquisite mandala which had taken two full weeks of work to complete, was swept up into piles and small vials of the multi-colored sand were filled for the attendees. Quietly, reverently, we lined up to take our vials, the receipt of which is considered a great blessing in Buddhist tradition.

The lesson of of the mandala, of course, is the lesson of impermanence. The vast intricacies of our lives are all, like the sands of the mandala, eventually swept away. Nothing is forever; there is no permanence, no enduring thing. All of life is ephemeral, fleeting. To acknowledge this, to really know this truth and take it into your heart deepens you, enriches you, allows you to appreciate the grand web of life, complete with all its joys and its sorrows. This lesson, learned well, connects you in a very profound way with all people and deepens your compassion. When we cling too tightly to life, when we fear death, when we resist change, we struggle and we suffer. The Buddhists call this dukkha. The quality of non-attachment, which flows from the lesson of impermanence, is essential for an enlightened, joyful life, and allows for a vision of life in all its glory and wonder from a far higher vantage point.

Forgiving, Redefined

As I recently listened to an acquaintance talk about her ex boyfriend, the cruel things he'd said upon their breaking up, what a miserable attitude he has, how much he'd hurt her and so on and so forth, we came to the most amazing part of the conversation, the part where she said that she forgave him because he was just, well, an unfeeling ignorant person, not worthy of a second thought. It was this conversational exchange that got me to thinking about the idea of forgiveness and how we apply it in our lives.

The Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary describes forgiving as "allowing room for error or weakness". Clearly, my acquaintance was allowing room for her ex-boyfriend to exist, lots of room, as in keep a wide berth, I never want to see you again room. Forgiveness, used in this application, is a concept carefully and sometimes, as in my acquaintance's case, angrily placed on top of judgment. It is the metaphoric equivalent of placing a lamp on the elephant in the room and hoping the pacoderm will pass for a side table. One must, eventually, deal with the elephant.

At a much deeper level, forgiveness can effortlessly arise when we are brutally honest about our participation in a relationship gone wrong, when a true understanding of contributing human frailities and the dynamics of human exchange give rise to compassion for the human condition. At this level of depth, forgiveness serves to dissipate the original judgement entirely and can literally transform life.