(no subject)

[lady_kishiria]

"You know that we have more than 50,000 nuclear weapons. 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 Hanh compares such people to the people who remain calm in the middle of a shipwreck or other disaster who are the islands of calm who save the others. I think there is immense wisdom in what he is saying. Discuss.

Comments

Living peacefully

[rachaelll.livejournal.com]

Peace is highly missunderstood. It seems that people are more interested in enforcing their own idea of 'living correctly' than in accecpting differences in other peoples world perspectives. Alternitavely, there are those who would just like it if they didn't have to deal with those 'different nationalities/races/etc' at all.

Peace begins when you let go of ego, and embrace differences as part of the whole.

(Unless someone is walking around with a weapon, set upon harming someone) Might is right ? NOT

Re: Living peacefully

[kishiriadgr.livejournal.com]

those are all excellent observations, both about those who want to enforce their own ideas and those who don't want diversity to exist. If you think about it, they are really two expressions of the same idea.

Benito Juarez, first elected president of Mexico and full-blooded Otomi Indian said, "True peace is the rights of the other." There's something to that; peace is not the lack of violence only, but the atmosphere in which everyone can grow.

So the question is how to do this when respecting the views of those we can't stand, who of course will always be with us.