What Is True Peace?
Excerpted from Creating True Peace: Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community and the World
Buddha - Dharma -BuddhismBuddhist Sutra Kindness Compassion Wisdom Education Vegetarian Peace www.drba.org/
|
Now, in this new book, perhaps his most important work to date, Thich Nhat Hanh uses a beautiful blend of visionary insight, inspiring stories of peacemaking, and a combination of meditation practices and instruction to show us how to take Right Action. A book for people of all faiths, it is a magnum opus — a compendium of peace practices that can help anyone practice nonviolent thought and behavior, even in the midst of world upheaval.
More than any of his previous books, Creating True Peace tells stories of Thich Nhat Hanh and his students practicing peace during wartime. These demonstrate that violence is an outmoded response we can no longer afford. The simple, but powerful daily actions and everyday interactions that Thich Nhat Hanh recommends can root out violence where it lives in our hearts and minds and help us discover the power to create peace at every level of life — personal, family, neighborhood, community, state, nation, and world.
Whether dealing with extreme emotions and challenging situations or managing interpersonal and international conflicts, Thich Nhat Hanh relies on the 2,600-year-old traditional wisdom and scholarship of the Buddha, as well as other great scriptures. He teaches us to look more deeply into our thoughts and lives so that we can know what to do and what not to do to transform them into something better. With a combination of courage, sweetness, and candor, he tells us that we can make a difference; we are not helpless; we can create peace here and now. Creating True Peace shows us how.
Chapter 1
True peace is always possible. Yet it requires strength and practice, particularly in times of great difficulty. To some, peace and nonviolence are synonymous with passivity and weakness. In truth, practicing peace and nonviolence is far from passive. To practice peace, to make peace alive in us, is to actively cultivate understanding, love, and compassion, even in the face of misperception and conflict. Practicing peace, especially in times of war, requires courage. All of us can practice nonviolence. We begin by recognizing that, in the depths of our consciousness, we have both the seeds of compassion and the seeds of violence. We become aware that our mind is like a garden that contains all kinds of seeds: seeds of understanding, seeds of forgiveness, seeds of mindfulness, and also seeds of ignorance, fear, and hatred. We realize that, at any given moment, we can behave with either violence or compassion, depending on the strength of these seeds within us.
When the seeds of anger, violence, and fear are watered in us several times a day, they will grow stronger. Then we are unable to be happy, unable to accept ourselves; we suffer and we make those around us suffer. Yet when we know how to cultivate the seeds of love, compassion, and understanding in us every day, those seeds will become stronger, and the seeds of violence and hatred will become weaker and weaker. We know that if we water the seeds of anger, violence, and fear in us, we will lose our peace and our stability. We will suffer and we will make those around us suffer. But if we cultivate the seeds of compassion, we nourish peace within us and around us. With this understanding, we are already on the path of creating peace.
The teachings of this book are offered to help anyone who aspires to lead a life of nonviolence. These practices are the living legacy of the Buddha and of my ancestral teachers. They are as powerful today as they were at the time of the Buddha's awakening, 2,600 years ago. Together, they form a practical manual of peace - for you, your family, your community, and the world. At this time, with so much conflict in the world, I am offering this book to help us realize that violence is not inevitable. Peace is there for us in every moment. It is our choice.
The Nature of War
In 1946, during the French-Indochina War, I was a novice monk at the Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, central Vietnam. At that time, the city of Hue was occupied by the French army. One day, two French soldiers arrived at our temple. While one stayed in the jeep outside the temple gate, the other came in, carrying a gun, and demanded all of our rice. We had only one sack of rice for all the monks and he wanted to take it away.
Horoscope for all 2011Claim your Free Reading from this accurate & talented Astrologer now AboutAstro.com/horoscope
Instant Deep MeditationDid U know that you can be in deep meditation at touch of a button? www.EocInstitute.org
8 Minute Deep MeditationIncrease Brain Function, Eliminate Stress - Peace of Mind - Free Demo Project-Meditation.org/LifeFlo
Copyright © 2003 by The Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh
Tags: Buddhism, Philosophy
| Share |  |  |  |
About the Author
Thich Nhat Hanh (tik not hahn) is a world-renowned writer, scholar, spiritual leader, and Zen Buddhist monk. He lives in the monastic communities he founded in France, Vermont, and California, and his lineage is traceable directly to the Buddha himself. The author of the New York Times bestseller Anger as well as numerous other books, which have sold well over a million copies, he conducts public workshops throughout the world and peace-making retreats with Vietnam veterans, Palestinians, and Israelis. More
No comments:
Post a Comment