Buddhist Practices for Peace and Solidarity in Times of Conflict

May You Be Well And Happy

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Summary

The following is a talk presented by Frank Carter, President of the Buddhist Discussion Centre Australia, on a scholar’s panel presentation held during the International United Nations Day of Vesak commemoration in Bangkok, Thailand on the 13th of May 2022.

The talk explains the ingredients of fellowship and goodwill between person regardless of their religion, ethnicity, age, wealth or gender that can be practiced for the development of peace and solidarity at a time in the world where these conditions are greatly needed.

Content

Buddhist Practices for Peace and Solidarity in Times of Conflict

Respected Venerables, Maha Sangha, Honorable Excellencies, Distinguished Guests, Dhamma friends, ladies and gentlemen,
Greetings, Good afternoon.

It is a great pleasure for me to meet with you all here today in a gathering of peace, friendship, goodwill and harmony to celebrate the birth, enlightenment and Parinibbana of Buddha at Vesak.

To acknowledge our Teacher Lord Buddha : Namo Tassa Bhagavato Arahato Sammasambuddhassa.

I present my talk today from the viewpoint of a Buddhist practitioner relying on the words of the Buddha, and drawing on my experience, and the experience of some well-known Buddha Dharma Teachers of recent times, and as such it is an experiential discussion on the topic.

Last Sunday, the 8th of May, we celebrated Mother’s Day in Australia. Mother’s day is an occasion when we recognise with gratitude our Mother, and typically it is a time of family gathering, or perhaps, a visit to the cemetery where our dear Mother was buried.

The Buddhist Centre I am a Member of ran several Mother’s Day Flowers stalls to raise funds. It was an honour for us to be part of the supply chain in supporting so many people’s expression of love, appreciation and gratitude to their Mother’s on this day.

A Dhamma teacher at our Centre once wrote that if people truly knew the Blessings of offering their Mother’s flowers, all our centre’s flower stalls would be sold out by 9.00am in the morning.

The practice of making offerings is fundamental in Buddhism. It is the practice of generosity, which is a foundational practice.
Can we imagine what friendship would be like without generosity, what love would be like without generosity, what kindness would be like without generosity? Those virtuous human qualities would not be well developed, they would be stunted and small.

Generosity is nutrient for the mind. It is likened by the Buddha to good quality, rich, fertile soil which supports and nourishes the growth of the seeds that are sown there. Generosity supports and nourishes the wholesome seeds that we generate by our good intention and actions, so they can develop to their fullest potential.

Generosity is the temperament of giving and forgiving, openness, cheerfulness, supporting, accepting, easing the way for the other person, joyfully lending a helping hand and nourishing.

This is not what we could refer to as conventional giving, this about the Buddhist practice of giving.

What does it mean to be sincerely generous? Giving appears to be simple enough. We have been giving all sorts of things to others many times a day for most of our adult life. If we are a parent, that is all about giving. It seems like simple stuff.

The Buddhist author Nina Van Gorkom wrote in her essay Generosity: The Inward Dimension:

“The giving away of useful or pleasant things is an act of generosity. However, if we only pay attention to the outward deeds we do not know whether or not we are being sincerely generous. We should learn more about the mind which motivates our deeds. True generosity is difficult. While we are giving, our thoughts may not all be good and noble. Our motives for giving may not all be pure. We may give with selfish motives – expecting something in return, hoping to be liked by the receiver of our gift, wanting to be known as a generous person”.

There is a story in the Buddhist texts about a young boy named Priyadarshi. He knew about the Buddha and had great respect and love for him. One day, unexpectedly, he had an opportunity to meet the Buddha face to face. Immediately he wanted to make offerings to the Buddha and pay respect to the great man.

As he looked around for something to offer he realised he had nothing to give. He was not carrying anything to offer yet in his heart his wish to give something to the Buddha was so strong that he bent down and scooped up a handful of dirt from the ground. As the Buddha looked at him Priyadarshi offered the dirt with his heart filled with love, joy and respect.

As the Buddha blessed Priyadarshi he said that his offering would bring him to many lives of great wealth and good fortune because of the way it was offered. The offering was done with strong volition to give, accompanied by heartfelt generosity, gratitude, and joy.

We can see how having a generous heart is at the core of what it means to be kind to others. In generosity is the willingness to help others, the willingness to get up out of our chair quickly and happily when our help would be beneficial.

Generosity has the openness, flexibility and lightness to put our own needs down for a while and consider the needs of another, to be sensitive enough and patient enough to find out what the other person really needs to be well and happy.

In discussing our panel topic today, it is worthwhile to talk about what are the true foundations of good relationships. In order to live in peace and solidarity with others, what qualities, behaviours and attitudes facilitate, build and maintain beneficial, harmonious and peaceful relationships.

To quote Arvind Kumar Singh in his paper World Peace and Conflict Resolution: A solution from a Buddhist point of view:

“In Buddhism, the concept of peace or Santi, is extended to include both inner and outer peace. Inner peace (ajihata santi), which is generally known as peace of mind, is a mental state free from “disquietening or oppressive thoughts and emotions”. Inner peace is a prerequisite for outer peace, which involves inter personal relations”.

Buddha taught the psychological root causes of conflict in the Samagama sutta which are, in essence, greed, hatred and ignorance.

These are also the root causes of suffering, unhappiness and all the troubles we find ourselves in, in the world. There can be no true peace for us without us reducing, diminishing and eventually overcoming these three generators of dukkha within ourselves.

Buddhist practices can be grouped into what is known as perfections, or as they have sometimes been referred to as “perfectors”. Generosity is the first Perfection to be developed on the Buddhist Path and is the direct antidote to greed and stinginess. The antidote to hatred is the development of loving kindness or metta in the Pali language.

The Late Venerable Ashin Thittila in the Buddhist publication Metta wrote:

“Metta – Universal Love – is generally taken to exist in connection with other people, but in reality love for self comes first. It is not a selfish love, but love for self – pure love – comes first.

By having pure love, Metta, as we defined it, for self; selfish tendencies, hatred and anger will be diminished.
Therefore, unless we ourselves possess Metta within, we cannot share, we cannot give something we do not have”.

In the article Buddhism and Peace Professor K.N. Jayatillake reflected that:

“When the Buddha’s disciple Ananda suggested to him that half of the religion of the Buddha consisted in the practice of friendliness, the Buddha’s rejoinder was that it was not half, but the whole of the religion. It was this emphasis on compassion which made it possible for Buddhism to spread it’s message over the greater part of Asia, without resorting to military force or political power”.

To have no sense of friendship among persons is already very unfortunate, but sadder still is when one cannot have it with “oneself”.
The Buddha advised his followers to live a life of harmlessness. The Buddha’s Teachings advise that harmlessness is the root of all virtues.

From the Sallekha Sutta : Discourse on Effacement:

“A person given to harmfulness has harmlessness to lead him upward”

Harmlessness has the characteristic mark of making one refrain from immorality which, on it’s part has the mark of harming. Hence harmlessness is an especially strong cause of morality; and morality, again, is the basis of concentration of mind, while concentration of mind is the basis for wisdom. In that way harmlessness (non violence) is the root of all virtues.

From the Dhammapada we read the Buddha’s words:

Once I dwell in peace
In adversity I react with no anger
Living among angry people
I act with no anger.

Buddha has given us so many teachings on how to build and maintain good relationships with others.

In the Sigalovada Sutta, as translated by Venerable Narada Thera, we read Buddha’s explanation to a young boy named Sigalovada how peace and goodwill can be developed between persons. The Sigalovada Sutta is known as the layperson’s code of discipline or the vinaya of the householder.

The sutta includes descriptions of good conduct of persons with regard to each of their relations, whether it be with their partners, their children, their parents, their teachers or their friends.

In the sutta we read:

“These four, young householders, should be understood as warm-hearted friends:

  1. he who is a helpmate,
  2. he who is the same in happiness and sorrow,
  3. he who gives good counsel,
  4. he who sympathises.

Also in the Sigolavada Sutta we read:

“In five ways, young householder, should a wife be ministered to by a husband:

  1. by being courteous to her,
  2. by not despising her,
  3. by being faithful to her,
  4. by handing over authority to her,
  5. by providing her with adornments.

“The wife thus ministered to by her husband shows her compassion to her husband in five ways:

  1. she performs her duties well,
  2. she is hospitable to relations and attendants,
  3. she is faithful,
  4. she protects what he brings,
  5. she is skilled and industrious in discharging her duties.

There are a number of core Buddhist practices which are at the heart of living peacefully with oneself, and living in peace and solidarity in one’s relationships with others. Mindfulness is indispensible.

In his keynote speech at the Australasian Buddhist Convention held in Melbourne, Australia, in June 2002, eminent Buddhist scholar Dr. Ananda Guruge said:

“If you are mindful, if you are conscious of everything you do, from the very simple things such as how you react to people you meet, how you choose the words by which you address a situation, the way you would like to criticise a person, then the criticism is necessary. If you are mindful, you will be very careful, you will be tactful, you will be doing exactly the kinds of things you would like others to do to you. This is ‘mindfulness in action'”.

In the Middle Length Discources the Budda advises:

You shall carefully guard your mind ,
Maintaining mindfulness all the time,
In order to cease conflicts.

In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, the great, late Bodhisattva Monk Thich Nhat Hanh explains that:

“Mindfulness is to nourish the object of your attention.
When was the last time you looked into the eyes of your beloved and asked, “Who are you, my darling?”
Don’t be satisfied by a superficial answer.
Ask again: “Who are you who has taken my suffering as your suffering, my happiness as your happiness, my life and death as your life and death?
Ask with your whole being …
When you are in the car together, if you are lost in your thoughts, assuming you already know everything about her, she will slowly die. But with mindfulness, your attention will water the wilting flower.
“I know you are here, beside me, and it makes me very happy.”

Right View or Right Understanding is the first factor taught by the Buddha when explaining the Noble Eightfold Path. Right view is understanding what is true, what is the nature of things, correct understanding that can be relied upon, that we can take refuge in, that can help us navigate the turbulence of samsara to realise the ultimate safety, peace and freedom.

Mahayana Buddhism teaches the eight worldly conditions or four pairs of opposites as basic samsaric conditions that we meet in every type of birth. They are inherent in life and inescapable. These are:

  • Gain and loss,
  • Praise and blame,
  • Honour and dishonour,
  • Happiness and unhappiness.

These are the universal conditions of the world, arising from impermance. From the beginning of our life at birth, when we gain our human body until the end, when we loose our human body, we are meeting these worldly conditions in a myriad of forms every single day.

So much of the world’s conflict is coming from people reacting badly, unskilfully, blindly to these natural and inescapable conditions.

Through the practice of studying the Buddha Dhamma, we can start to learn and appreciate the nature of the world we are living in. So we understand that what we see and experience is the product of kamma. When we have loss for example, nothing is actually going wrong. It is not automatically someone’s fault. It’s just the causes made in the past playing out.

So as we gain more depth in this understanding we have a base to learn to let go. From the start of the Buddhist path until the end, it is a process of learning to let go. From our practice of mindfulness and Right View we can understand the present with more clarity, upon which we see, letting go is the best option.

In the beginning of our Buddhist practice when something occurs that upsets our mind, we may realize we have used an unwholesome mind ten minutes after the event. Then we say “I shouldn’t have reacted like that”. Or “I should have stopped myself earlier”. Then we recognise a bit closer to the event, maybe a minute after we got angry we say, “I am annoyed, I need to stop being so upset”, “I need to give up this anger”.

As our mindfulness improves we start to catch ourselves in the moment, we recognise how our mind moves, reacting to unpleasant events or experiences, and at that moment we have the possibility of gaining some space in our mind, to restrain our reactive mind and prompt a better response. Like on a railway line, we are building a set of points into our track to switch directions away from defilements.

We learn we don’t have to stay annoyed with someone who did something we didn’t like. When we see ourself starting to get stuck in any unwholesome thinking we can say to ourself to let it go. We can say that as an instruction for our mind to follow. We can see the unwholesome state is not actually a “me” or “mine”, it’s not a “self” or something precious or important; it’s just one possible state that can arise for a period of time. Because it produces unhappiness and clouds our view, we give it up.

We start to understand the nature of the defilements. We can see that anger doesn’t know how to stop anger, worry doesn’t know how to stop worry, and anxiety can’t find a way out of anxiety.

We can see these minds as like a lost child that doesn’t know what to do. Like the adult looking after a child, we can softly speak to the unwholesome mind and reassure it that everything is OK. We can then choose to be wholesome, to replace the unwholesome with wholesome. We learn there are many ways and strategies to do this.

This is a Dhamma process called Right Effort, for dealing with the unpleasant, the difficult, the conflictual without being reactive. Let the other person off the hook – they did not make our kamma.

We should note the words of the Buddha as found in the Dhammapada:

“Hostilities aren’t stilled
through hostility,
regardless.
Hostilities are stilled
through non-hostility:
this, an unending truth.
Unlike those who don’t realize
that we’re here on the verge
of perishing,
those who do:
their quarrels are stilled.”

These are the facts of all life.

The Buddhist Path is described as having three major components. These are virtue, concentration and wisdom. These three go together supporting each other as a path of training. This training enables a person to recognise the causes of suffering in their own lives and then overcome them as a means to becoming stable and happy, and ultimately to do what the Buddha did, to become fully enlightened.

When we read or hear about what people do in their life to improve their wellbeing and happiness they don’t usually mention virtue or concentration or wisdom! They don’t say “I’m practicing generosity to reduce my stinginess” or “I decided to keep five precepts as a foundation for my and others wellbeing”, they say something like “we’re planning to move into our new house next year” or “we’re going to Disneyland for our holidays”, or something like that!

It’s not to say these things are of no benefit. However such a viewpoint does not take into account the way things work from the ultimate understanding, the way the Buddha taught that the world really works.

Buddha taught about cause and effect, the Law of Kamma. From this viewpoint our true well-being and our path to becoming happy comes about from the development of wholesome minds and actions. This is the basis of all Buddhist morality.

The Buddha advises us to train our minds and actions so that we keep the five precepts of no killing, no lying, no intoxicants which cloud the mind, no sexual misconduct and no stealing, with understanding.

If we consider the strife in the word now or at any other time, the destruction, the suffering, the violence we can see that these things are arising from individuals not keeping the five precepts. At the individual, community and national level, we see the damage and harm presented to us daily in the media from the breaking of these five behavioural codes of conduct.

Precepts are governors of kamma; they prevent us making the worst types of negative kamma. All five precepts help us have good relationships with other living beings. All five precepts stop us from making really bad present and future relationships with other living beings.

Each of the five precepts is like a mandala of good, harmless conduct. In the middle of the mandala is the precept of no killing, for example. The next layer out is not to cause physical harm to another, the next layer out is not to cause sickness or illness to others, then not to cause physical discomfort to others, and so on.

These reducing steps are like ripples further out on the same pond. They are one step away from killing, two, three, four steps away from killing. We learn to guard our actions like that. We train in avoiding actions which are less and less severe relatives of breaking the precept.
Then we can start going the other way, to save beings from dying, to help beings get over illnesses, to offer them medicines, to protect them, feed them, and in so many ways that we can support life.

If we value our relationships, if we appreciate them we need to nourish them, to renew them, to rebuild them every time we meet the other person. From our side we take responsibility for the well being of our relationships. Even if the other person doesn’t know this, even if they don’t have this understanding, we make the causes from our side to frequently replenish the kamma. We live in the way we wish our relationships could be.
If we think it doesn’t matter, it isn’t that important to really pay attention to our relationships, in the future we will meet people who think like that when they meet us. We won’t have good friends, good relations, good partners; we won’t experience lasting, caring relationships. Then we start to mistrust people, to resent people, to see more and more enemies appearing in our world.

The Buddhist teaching of Right Speech is very important with regard to maintaining peaceful relationships and solidarity. When I think back in my life nearly all instances where I have disturbed others minds or hurt others emotionally, have been done by wrong or unskilful speech. Much conflict in the world and in communities arises from the use of harmful speech.

In the Anguttara Nikaya 5.198 we read the Buddha’s words:

“Monks. A statement endowed with five factors is well spoken, not ill spoken. It is blameless and unfaulted by knowledgeable people. Which five? “It is spoken at the right time. It is spoken in truth. It is spoken affectionately. It is spoken beneficially. It is spoken with a mind of good will.”

The Five Precepts are our Occupational Health and Safety guidelines for living.

From The great Thai Master Venerable Ācariya Mahā Boowa’s Water for the Fires of the World we read :

“As for people who sympathise with each other and see that all human beings are of equal value, they find it easy to be forgiving and to live with one another in peace. They don’t despise one another for belonging to this or that class or for having only this or that much wealth – all of which are simply a matter of each person’s kamma.

If we can forgive each other, with the thought that each living being has his (or her) own kamma, we can live together in peace. If we believe in the Dhamma, we have to believe in kamma and not in the defilements that make us arrogant and proud.

So! This is how the principles of the religion teach us to understand things and to conduct our lives so as to make peace within ourselves.
The result is that society, too, will be at peace …”

Thank you very much for listening to my talk today. I wish you all to have a happy and bright Vesak!

From the Buddhist viewpoint, we must have some karmic connection to experience this wonderful occasion together, so may our good karma and harmonious friendship, goodwill and solidarity continue always.

May we always meet in harmony, act in harmony and disperse in harmony.