Peace
In Oneself; Peace In The World
On October 8th, 2005, the renowned Buddhist
teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, led over 3000 people in a silent, mindful Peacewalk
around MacArthur Park, Los Angeles. It was a beautiful demonstration of
embodied peace.
Thay, or "teacher", as his students refer to him, called upon us to
"walk in such a way that each step we make becomes a realization of peace; each step becomes a prayer for peace and harmonyÉwalk together in silence with no banners and no picketsÉnot a petition addressed to anyone, nor a demonstration against anyoneÉ walk to unite our hearts, to nurture our togetherness and to dissipate fear and separationÉlearn together that wrong perceptions of self and others are at the foundation of separation, fear, hate and violence, and that togetherness and collaboration is possible."
That walk initiated Peace Is Every Step. Â PES is a community of peace and mindfulness which has taken up the task of sponsoring Peacewalks on a regular basis.
As a young monk in his native Vietnam, Thay faced an orthodox religious establishment which remained aloof to the horrors of the Vietnam War. Buddhism, it was felt, was to be practiced in the temple. Thay believed that the essential tenets of the Dharma required practitioners to proactively relieve and prevent suffering. In the early 1960's, as part of the movement towards ÒEngaged BuddhismÓ, he founded the School of Youth for Social Services (SYSS), a grass roots relief organization of some 10,000 student volunteers that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers and resettled homeless families. During this time, Thich Nhat Hanh also founded a new monastic order, a Buddhist University, a publishing house, and an influential peace activist magazine in Vietnam. Refusing to be partisan these activities earned him the enmity of both sides in the conflict. When President Diem ordered the arrest of peace activist monks, Thich Nhat Hanh presented documents on human rights violations to the U.N. SYSS students and staff were continually attacked and murdered and the University was harassed and coerced to exclude political activity.
Exiled from Vietnam, he traveled to the U.S. where he made the case for peace to the American government. He may have changed the course of U.S. history when he persuaded Martin Luther King, Jr. to publicly oppose the Vietnam War and so helped galvanize the peace movement. The following year, King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1969, Thich Nhat Hanh led the Buddhist Peace Delegation at the Paris Peace talks. When the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973, the Vietnamese government denied Thich Nhat Hanh permission to return to Vietnam, and he went into exile in France.
The First Mindfulness Training is the practice of ahimsa or reverence for life and is the foundational principle for non-violent action in Engaged Buddhism. It reads:
Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I am committed to cultivating compassion and learning ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to support any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.
Once we become aware of suffering, we can then be moved to compassion for ourselves and others as we see that we are all mutually caught in the web of worldly pain. According to Thay, Òwe undertake to cultivate compassion and use it as a source of energy for the protection of life-- to remove suffering and transform it.Ó
We may have a tendency to define ahimsa as simply a failure to kill or support killing, but the principle extends further, into our qualities of mind and heart. Thich Nhat Hanh says, ÒIt is not just by not killing with your body that you observe ahimsa. If in your thinking you allow the killing to go on, you also break this precept. According to the Buddha, the mind is the base of all actions. When you believe, for example, that yours is the only way for humankind and that everyone who follows another way is your enemy, millions of people could be killed because of that idea. If we see deeply into the nature of interbeing, that all things "inter-are," we will stop blaming, arguing, and killing, and we will become friends with everyone. To practice nonviolence, we must first of all learn ways to deal peacefully with ourselves.Ó
Thich Nhat Hanh also points out that true peace requires non-fear and courage: ÒTrue peace 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 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.Ó
The active, engaged practice of peace initiated by Thich Nhat Hanh in Vietnam has been continued and propagated in many forms. Thay has led and inspired many retreats for Israelis and Palestinians at his Plum Village monastery in France as well as within Israel and Palestine. At these retreats the participants are led in the practices of Òcompassionate listeningÓ and Òloving speech.Ó ThayÕs teachings have also inspired a Peacewalk of Israelis and Palestinians from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, passing by Jewish and Arab towns and settlements, in silence and awareness, declaring a commitment to deep listening and non-violence.
There is no better time than now to take up an engaged practice of peace following ThayÕs example. We have the opportunity to transform through practice the pervasive fear, anger and hatred which foments non-peace in ourselves, our society and the world.
Sometimes we are asked whether Peace Is Every Step is Òsome kind of movementÓ. Rather than a movement, we are a stillness. Our practice is not to drive towards peace in the future; it is to be peace in the present moment. If we can, more and more of us every day, be true manifestations of peace on a continuous, ongoing basis regardless of circumstances or conditions, then we create the solid foundation of true peace in the world within our very hearts and minds.
Please visit www.PeaceIsEveryStepLA.org or call 818-569-3009 to engage peace with us today.