practical peace

Practicing Peace in the World as It Is

Dec 22, 12:11 pm

This seems like a good time to share again some of the things I have learned in many years as a nature mystic, student of the sciences and of wisdom traditions, and activist for peace and justice. Practical peace, as I call it, is both a working model of how change happens and a set of practices for living it out.

Practical peace is about living with eyes open to injustice, heart open to suffering, mind open to take in the complexity of the forces and systems that shape our world. It is not an ideal about a future perfection or an abstract that, turned into an absolute, can be used as a dogmatic hammer.

This is a moment to moment practice, a tool that does not desert me in the face of fear or anger as it allows me to be flexible, creative, and effective as a force for justice and peace.

And so, a pocket guide to practical peace –

Foundations

Mindfulness makes a space between the sensations, emotions, and thoughts that arise, and the stories we make out of them.

Compassion trains the body for easy access to a sense of abundance, the safety of trusting, and the benefit of sharing.

Peace in the Moment

Gratitude for everything that comes, the welcome and the unwelcome, the comforting and the discomfiting—is a powerful source of creative vision. It affirms that the moment is as it is and reminds us not to waste time wanting more or pushing away.

Non-judgment is seeing that whatever we think we know about others is a projection from our own disowned darkness and our hisotrical and cultural point of veiw.

Peace in the World

Non-enmity means refusing to be in the relationship of enemy with others. Affirming that the world is continually being made anew, it denies that conflict and estrangement have to be permanent.

Action means to wake up to all that is making the world and to see that we are part of it. This moment is the initial condition for the rest of time. Actions now matter in ways that we cannot know.