How do you make peace a part of your life?

Your devotion to peace should be known more widely. Someone should make an effective slogan that touches people on the insanity and injustice of war. (I think of the UNCF slogan, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”) As a Christian, I keep Jesus before me throughout the day, remembering that He was called the Prince of Peace centuries before He was even born. For me, that shows just how important peace among us in the human family is regarded by our God. May the peace of this season be only part of the peace we witness to throughout the year.

By advocating a really serious reduction in the military budget at every chance I get to whoever will listen. If we, as a nation, stop funding these wars for profit, guess what, our country will no longer wage them. We will also need to seriously reduce the budget of the C.I. A.

I work for Justice and Peace. I do not believe you can have Peace without Justice.

Kindness to myself and others in all situations; compassion too.
Mindfulness wrt impulses to behave with aggression.

I try to avoid harming others, and to help others when I can. This means that I don’t lose sleep at night dealing with feelings of guilt or regret (at least most of the time!). I sleep far better now than I did before I started this practice.

The work I do contacting my representatives and working in politics is very disturbing to my mind, and I have to be careful how I approach it. It’s difficult not to get angry when I see so many people abusing their positions of responsibility to take from and harm people who they ought to be helping. The Buddhist practice of seeing the world as a projection of my own mind and my own past negative actions, whether it is true or not, is the best defense I’ve found against this—if the evil I see in the world is of my own making, there is no reason to get angry at the people who do it. If I want to see a better world, I need to make one, and stop worrying about what others do.

I also find Master Shantideva’s advice very helpful. He points out that when someone beats me with a stick, I don’t get angry at the stick—that would be crazy! But the person who is beating me is in the grasp of strong negative emotions; these emotions are wielding them just as they are wielding the stick. And they are the same emotions that arise when I am being beaten with the stick. So the enemy is not the person in the grasp of those emotions, but the emotions themselves. And since I am having those same emotions, it is not difficult to have compassion for the person beating me. Once I have compassion for that person, I can respond with wisdom, and not with anger.

Even if I don’t actually succeed at following Master Shantideva’s advice in the moment, the compelling logic of it helps me to deal with my feelings of anger without either suppressing them or acting on them.

Over the last 25 years I have joined several delegations to conflict zones in Latin
America (also one to Iraq). Always our delegations would bring “peace stories”
to the people suffering conflicts. They would tell us their peace stories, and we
would share them back in the US. Always we worked to promote actions for peace.

Lately, I have come to realize that the biggest foe we have is the whole oil-coal-gas
complex which has declared war against our planet. I will be an active witness for
peace in this war too.

Lynn Shoemaker

Peace is the consequence of knowing what and why war exists. We are socially structured species that mass murders each other for our entire history on the planet. Resources, population control (politics), access to females and protecting offspring, and power. All species do this. We seem to be the smartest species, but deny we are animals and deny our biological drives that are IDENTICAL to other social predators.

When we stop denying who we are, as animals, lose the dysfunctional culture based on our biological drives of competition, territoriality, and alpha male domination(GOD)-that is authority that can not be questioned- we will start learning who we are as a species.

Only by understanding our drives, psychology, and identity dependence on alpha male themes (god, employers, military hierarchy) will be able to plan their avoidance and critically think about choices that are not based on biological drives.

Humanity, love, and peace are the absence of baser biological drives. Other social predator species show love, courtesy, and kindness, without the tendency for mass murder-war (chimpanzees being the exception) because they can not politicize the group-society to the point wherein the group desires to wipe out the other group-enemy to control territory, resources, populations, and the accompanying power.

When the power of love and understanding of who we are is greater than the love of power, we will have peace.

Good International Women’s, and Refugee, Days, happy holidays, and thanx All; all praises be, and blessings…. There are a couple things that support a real direction of peace as a path of study, for me and the universe. Of course the universe itself, and, only after, the greatest achievements of humanity, for e.g., deductive logic, insight, experience, growth, actuation, perception, consciousness, awareness, heart, soul, spirit, power, evolution, et al. Although, the way, and one’s path, must be discerned through discerning and dispelling the illusions that are the bricks that make up the delusional constructs that are the walls of our personal mental cells, hells; living studies like personal recapitulation of one’s entire past, journaling, poetry writing, etc., help- yet, not being mis-directed by mindfkng is also very important. For, few things are actually ‘a matter of semantics’, and, to quote the Rolling Stones, ‘you can’t always get what you want…, but, if you try someti…, you just might fi…, you get what you…(weed)’; “as ye sow, so shall ye reap” is central. The thought process of cause and effect comes to mind. Pythagoras and Kepler, Shakespeare, after him, relates that, if the mind’s eye were keen, dusted, and/or clouds removed from our sight, everything would appear as it is, infinite; to loosely paraphrase. As well, Carl Jung relates that 80 % of all human action, activity, thoughts, emotions are compensatory; part of our reactions to our pasts. Yes, of course, having, like any other human preoccupation, has a hold on us, could be an obsession, addiction, etc.. Though, I feel it’s far more interesting to discern on the facts that there is no such thing as having, and not no such thing as having, at once; it being a delusional construct of the human mind. More to the point, “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”; is this not the, supposedly, almost ultimate “having it like that”? Also, with the extreme purported power to destroy the life on earth, 10 thousand times over, with nuclear annihilation, and our seeing the increasingly more fragile existence of all of nature, as time passes, can we not readily discern that, not only don’t we have it like that, rather, there’s no such thing? Sure, it’s fair to say everything is relative, although, that being an intellectualism, the real question would more likely be, what does that mean to you; what would you, or does one, project that means and why? Especially since that intellectualism is like telling someone the sky is blue, a discerning mind, listening, would surely ask why you’re sky bluing them; for, it’s probably a re-direction from the actual reasons for the communication- kind of like talking about the weather. Although, there’s a deeper level of analysis, the ‘use’ of the word comes from the word relation, which is an illusion, for, there’s no such thing as separation, another illusion; ergo, no-thing is not in relation- therefore, the ‘use’ of the word relation is a projection of a person’s subjective perception, and, not at all real, universally. That, alone, is responsible for a good % of all the world’s problems. There are signs, meanings, dimension of perceptions, paradigm analysis, and a few real role models in the world, at 16, I logically disproved determinism, and since it was, and is, the basis for almost all religions, et al, I chose to study only the real aspects of everything, also, in relation to all, for true knowledge is experiential, et al. So, I stopped studying anything except reality, no belief systems, etc.; for me, there were only the Gods, Great Spirit, Sartre, Jung. Ghandi, Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha, Dogen, Bodhidarma, Confucius, Lao-Tzu, Chuang-Tzu, et al- and I soon experienced that I was, actually, my role model, for, my inner evolutionary leader began to sprout, as I listened to my soul and the universe’s song, et al. Young ones, your potential is illimitable, only if you be life, humane being you stalking what on earth that is, becoming you, evolving, et al; for, one can’t seek grace, grace seeks one. A quote from a Course in Miracles might elucidate further, “anything real can’t be threatened, anything unreal doesn’t exist, (herein lies the peace of God)”. Yet, especially with studies like peace, which would be more accurately termed non-violence, as peace is a uniquely human projection that, and, like Ghandi’s Satraygraha, doesn’t actually exist in the universe without us, it’s easy to err on the side of human, and be less accurate for relations’ sakes; which isn’t the path, so, we be more accurate and know, non-violence as a path of study is illusional, while it’s far better than he delusional highway of violence, it’s also not reality- for example WWII teaches that there isn’t peace without killing nzis, or notzys, if you prefer, when they unbecome into a state of unbeing too criminally insane, until they make believe they’re human again. As well, another lessen from WWII informs what non-violence is and isn’t, if you’re not taking (getting shot by the S.S. tea partiers, rems dinos, and totalitarians) bullets you’re making them (for S.S. tea partiers, rems dinos, and totalitarians to murder others). For, when we keep in mind that the intellect can’t lead, for, the life doesn’t follow, we can only then experience what Ghandi taught, “Abhaya, fearlessness, is most necessary for the individual and the nation.” 🙂

reality

I have to center and go into my heart to remember source.

I talk to my grandchildren about making peace, and I work with my congregation to emphasize peacemaking. My grandchildren and I talk about wars and bombs and how horrible they are and we talk about how important it is to talk through arguments, instead of hitting back. In 2013 our congregation will try to discern, through worship, study, films, and “peace meal” discussions, why it might be important to identify as a peace church.

As far as inner peace goes, getting in touch with your inner Buddha empowers you to not allow outside influences affect your in peace. Recogize the anger and jealousy and other emotions are within us and can only be triggered if we are receptive to it and allow it to happen. No one can anger you unless you allow it. As for World Peace, the US Government needs to stop supporting Israel(a phony democracy) with an extremely sinister attutude. I know because I worked for NSA. We need to take a more even-handed approach to the middle east or there will never be peace in all of the world. Both the Israeli Government and the Palestinian tactics are disgusting. Remember the Liberty, deliberately attacked by the Israelis, not the spin-doctored “accident’ “mistaken identity” that the US government lied to us happened.

I try to work for peace in every interaction remembering the humanity of all the people with whom I come into contact especially if there is any conflict, holding this principle in my heart can help me to listen actively and maintain humane relations.

I use the magic words “Peace and Thank You”.

Hello, I research and write a weekly peace calendar aired on our community radio station. What I learn inspires me and, I hope, people who hear the information that I share. The depth and breadth of possible ways to promote peace never cease to amaze me!

I’ve been involved with Beyond War, Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-violent Communication, sign every missive “In peace”, and am a Quaker. Cynthia Fisk

Peace begins between me and myself, and then is between me and the person next to me. I understand that we are all stuck together in the same boat, that we are all damaged goods, that we all must travel the journey of healing ourselves, and we must all work together to save ourselves. I understand the hate and blame is poison, both to me me and to my community. I look in the mirror and forgive myself, and lovingly accept myself even though I am flawed. I look at my relatives, friends, neighbors, and strangers, and see that we are all flawed, and I forgive us all. I realize that others suffer and are struggling to survive, like me, and the only path ahead is the path of Peace, tolerance, and respect.

In addition, there is no Peace without Justice. Therefore, I spend the majority of my time working to bring justice in our government even though my success might result in my assassination.