First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Doing Peace

What is it about holy people - people like the Buddhist monk, teacher, and author Thich Nhat Hanh? You don't have to believe in their theologies in order to be touched the quality of being that sets them apart; a quality composed of equal parts serene joy and moral gravity; a quality that requires that they be listened to, even in those times when we choose to reject their advice and go our own willful way. If you are lucky, you may know such people in your own life, people whose moral clarity rings clear in the pattern of their days, transparent as crystal - not that they have no flaws, but that they own them openly, and strive with patient good cheer to amend them.

Holy people like this carry around an aura of wisdom; a presence that makes you feel better just from being near them, and that makes you wonder, when you think about it, what IS their secret? Such people recognize one another across all faith traditions, for their secret is never about being right where others are wrong, and they have no need to validate themselves at anyone else's expense. We are instinctively drawn toward them when we are in trouble or suffering, for something in their presence seems to promise consolation, comfort, the cessation of pain. Often they are described as radiating peace - not the peace of withdrawal and passivity, but an active, healing peacefulness, that serves to transform its environment, and helps to bring others into a growing spiral of wisdom, justice, serenity and good will.

I suspect that we all have these moments, whether they be rare or common, when we find ourselves temporarily in this state; when our own calm centeredness and compassionate wisdom flows through our perceptions and thinking into our actions, and is visible to those around us. However briefly, we let go of ego and status and score-keeping; we are freed from the insatiable hungers for revenge, approval, control, self-importance. At such moments, we are accessible both to the feelings of others, and to our own creativity; we are at our maximum capacity for problem-solving in human relations.

Various religious traditions have sometimes described this awareness as being in a state of grace, or connected to god, but these are merely ways of trying to talk about something that is a widespread experience - there is nothing essentially supernatural or unhuman about it. It arises when we are securely centered in the values that we completely trust, which may be truth and reason, integrity and human connection and creativity.

The Buddhist tradition has a specific practice that it is designed to evoke this particular frame of mind; it is called TongLen - taking and giving meditation, or lovingkindness meditation. TongLen involves a kind of visualization that accompanies one's breathing, the image of drawing into your body, along with your breath, some aspect of the suffering of the world; using your internal resource of wisdom, compassion and endurance to transform it, and breathing back out into the world happiness, serenity, and good intentions. You can do this on a one-to-one basis, as when you sit with someone who is ill, or grieving. You think of drawing that person's pain in through your own breathing, and sending back strength, wholeness, or relief. You can also do TongLen for yourself, by recognizing your own suffering, which is shared by many other people in the world, and breathing in that fear, anger, sorrow, or whatever it is, replacing it with love, gentleness, and relaxation. And of course, you can do TongLen for other groups, situations, or even the world as a whole. It's merely a matter of your endurance and attention span.

Now, I am not superstitious enough to think that little pink rays of healing energy actually go bouncing around the world when I do this kind of exercise - but let's be clear that the Buddhists don't think that either. Here is what one teacher says about how TongLen really works:

The ability to engage this kind of spiritual capacity in ourselves is indispensable to the creation of real and lasting peace among the people of the world. And make no mistake - as simple as it sounds, in practice this is difficult, demanding work.

They didn't call it by its Buddhist name, but it was precisely this capacity that enabled the Israeli army to carry out the evacuation of the Gaza settlements in August without violence or bloodshed. I had the opportunity last week to hear a presentation by Michael Tsur, Director of the Mediation and Conflict Resolution Institute, and a professor at the Hebrew University College of Law, speaking here at the Hamline University Law School. Once the government decided to pull the Israeli presence out of Gaza, they began a careful planning and training program with the army, designed to minimize traumatic confrontations between settlers reluctant to leave their homes, and army units assigned to implement the evictions. They called the program "Negotiating with my brother", recognizing that it would be very difficult for the soldiers to force their own fellow citizens to leave the settlements against their will. By the August 15^th deadline, somewhere between 70% and 80% of the Gaza settlers had voluntarily left the area; at that point, the goal was to remove the remaining Israelis as gently and compassionately as possible. Professor Tsur was among a number of conflict resolution and negotiation experts who worked with the officers and the troops, preparing them mentally for the encounters they would have, and working through individual situations as they developed. The planners had prepared for a month-long operation; in reality, the evacuation was completed in only four days.

There were several elements that went into creating the surprising smoothness of this process, but one of the keys was certainly the approach in which the soldiers were trained to identify with the people they were confronting, to engage compassionately with their feelings about leaving their homes and communities, and to the greatest extent possible, to honor their requests and preferences for anything that would make the departure easier for them. Soldiers and settlers prayed together, wept together, sang songs of mourning together. Many requests were simple and easily provided; some people refused to leave the house until their rabbi had visited, so the visit was arranged. Some wanted to speak with distant relatives; cell phone calls were placed. Others wanted to talk to ranking officers, or those in charge; commanders made themselves available, and dealt respectfully with the distraught citizens. Women soldiers approached women settlers, to avoid violating gender taboos. By creating a mindset in which the troops comprehended their job to be taking in the anger, confusion, grief and despair of the evacuees, and responding with calm, compassion, understanding and authentic sympathy as well as all possible practical help, the government forces were able to defuse a potentially lethal conflict, and avoid adding a new rent in the already torn fabric of the Israelis' and Palestinians' common life.

Alas; if only we could recognize that we are always negotiating with our brothers, and sisters! If only we could be liberated from that very ancient prison of selfishness more consistently, and tap into the capacity we all share, genuinely to recognize the suffering of others, and take it into ourselves, trusting the power of what is best within us to send back peace and loving kindness into the world. How might we transform this earth, beginning in our own families, in our own communities, in our own nation, if we practiced using our very stuckness and disappointment itself as a key to the common human condition and our potential to hold one another in deep awareness and healing compassion.

There is a teaching story from the Islamic tradition which speaks of this same timeless truth:

How many places on this poor, battered planet, has the dawn not yet come? When shall we learn to look into one another's faces and recognize our sisters and brothers? How shall peace come, if not through the holy, transformative work of the heart, that will open to accept the experience of suffering and confusion, returning to the world the strength of truth, serenity and active compassion? Unless we do this inner work as well, all our outward striving for justice and change may only add to the strife and contention that we seek to heal. If we would truly be makers of peace, we must be doers of peace within the fabric of our daily lives. For until we can look into one another's faces, and recognize our brothers and sisters, and open our hearts to each other, the dawn has not yet come, and we are still in darkness.