“My State of Being Affects Others”

Years ago when I first began a meditation practice, I quickly learned this simple act could have an effect on other areas of my life even while they seemed unconnected. I experienced greater self-confidence and equanimity in tense situations. I also learned I could carry this practice of awareness into the activities of my daily life, practicing mindfulness in simple tasks and in my interactions with others. The Vietnamese teacher Thich Nhat Hanh advised in Being Peace the practice of smiling a small, unforced half-smile. I tried this out, and noticed a sharp difference in people’s reactions to me when I remembered this task of mindfulness, and when I didn’t remember it.

Through awareness and positive intention, a person can pinpoint and manage her mistaken avoidances and dangerous desires. This is the essence of the Third and Fourth Noble Truths of Buddhism. By doing the practice, I was learning how closely connected I am to others. Not only my actions, but my state of being affects others. While one can take up the practice of being peaceful immediately, being peaceful isn’t necessarily a given. The practice needs to take root as a habit, and to be fed with a questioning awareness. In time, that awareness refines and deepens, and it usually becomes even more unnatural for a person to contemplate harm to others.

The War on Terror

A year ago, the national Buddhist Peace Fellowship released a statement: “The war in Iraq has begun. Another war. The world itself is wounded, and people everywhere are grieving, anxious, angry and confused. An endless river of suffering karma flows out of this technologized violence, whose victims are not machines but living beings, like ourselves. Unforeseen consequences of terrorism, regional war, and environmental disaster will follow quickly.”

While the concerns expressed are no different than more secular political views, BPF’s statement reflects a deep sensitivity to cause and effect and our interconnectedness. Our hearts break as we see our government respond to our nation’s suffering with those ancient mistaken responses to suffering: anger, greed, and ignorance. We cringe as we recognize such violent responses can only breed more violent responses. It cannot end unless someone takes the first step to stop it.

War creates an endless loop of the first two Noble Truths: we suffer, we create suffering, we react to our suffering in deluded unskillful ways, we create more suffering. Many people support war because they think there must be an end: when the enemy is crushed. The War on Terror sinks us even further into delusion, making it possible for anyone to be the enemy. Such an open-ended Other only nourishes this fundamental form of suffering that has no basis in the physical world. The Self wants to protect itself, and tries to control the world around it in unreasonable ways. It is possible for people in governments to step out of this endless loop, and move on to the third and fourth Noble Truths. Early in the history of Buddhism, a war-mongering king in India, King Asoka, was convinced to end his harmful ways by Buddhist teachings. He stopped expanding his territory through war; instead he erected pillars with edicts on being moral citizens. He supported monks and the spread of Buddhism. Surely our governments can stop the war-mongering in these modern times.

The deliberate cultivation of violence against another self or another country to protect oneself or one’s country comes from a fundamental flaw in attitude and understanding. The Other is no different than me. Just as I wish to be happy and to protect myself from harm, so does the other. If on the other hand every self or every country were deliberately to cultivate respect, kindness, and understanding, imagine what the world could be. [