In our mental images of the word “peace” we should accept multiple variations of the word, the concept and it’s reality. One of these variations is personal, internal, as in, “I just want peace and quiet.” While strolling through a park we might say “This is very peaceful.” Another manifestation of this personal peace is, “I’m not at peace with this decision.” All these examples are of an internal personal peace.

     I’m sure that if we could take a survey of every person in every nation, we would find that 99.9998% of people would respond saying that they personally wished for peace in the world. If we asked these same people whether they believed that such a peace is possible, that percentage would be much less. I would dare say, realizing that I have no actual data to back this up, that only about a third, 33.333%, of the world’s population believe that peace is actually possible.

     And yet there is a longing for peace, often expressed by Prophets, seers, philosophers, poets, artists, and song writers.

     To digress a moment, I wonder how many of us have given adequate time and thought regarding why it is, that creative people among us are the ones who see deep in our souls and hearts? Maybe it is simply that they take the time to ponder the deep questions of life and dare to believe they can find the answers.

     Regarding peace I’m reminded to two songs, one of which I only have the title to share.

“Let There be Peace on Earth & Let it begin with Me,” by Jill Jackson Miller & Sy Miller, written in 1955, and most often associated with the Christmas season.

     It expresses a longing, a belief, that peace is possible, but it doesn’t ask someone else to be peaceful. It’s not the other guy who must give up his aggressiveness or lay down his weapon. The songwriters place the responsibility for peace squarely on her own shoulders. “Let it begin with me!”

     The other song is one by Sir Paul McCartney, one-time Beatle, long-time musician and songwriter, entitled “People Want Peace”

People want peace
People want peace
A simple release from their suffering
People want peace
People want peace

Nothing in life is as sad as the lonely soul
Searching for peace
Only to find disappointment is waiting
Behind every door that we open
Every catch, we release

     The concept of internal peace is spoken of in most, if not all, of the religions of humanity. My two favorite sources are the Buddha and Bahá’u’lláh. Most people know who the Buddha was, Bahá’u’lláh is less known. Bahá’u’lláh refers to himself and the Buddha, as Manifestations of God, because they manifest, or show forth, the attributes of God, attributes such as Mercy, Love, Truthfulness, Kindness, Trustworthiness, etc. Bahá’u’lláh names Abraham, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, Jesus Christ and the Báb also as Manifestations and states that God has not left any people guideless through history. Therefore, other unknown people could also be Manifestations. With that brief explanation stated lets look at some examples of quotations from the Buddha and Bahá’u’lláh.

From the Buddha:

“He has cast away Restlessness and Mental Worry; dwelling with mind undisturbed, with heart full of peace, he cleanses his mind from restlessness and mental worry.” ~~ The Eightfold Path

“A mendicant who envies others does not find peace.” “Thus whoever worries about food and drink given to others will find no peace of mind day or night.“

“Whoever destroys that feeling, tearing it out by the root, will truly find peace of mind day and night.” ~~ Dhammapada-Sayings of the Buddha

     These last two quotes are focused on refuting envy, saying that we can’t find personal peace if we are focused on what slights we might be receiving because someone else is “given” something. This is the result of an erroneous belief in limited resources. A prime example, but one that isn’t thought of often is the decision by the U.S. Congress to give ex-slaves “forty acres and a mule” in reparation for the years they spent enslaved. That promise was never fulfilled. One reason, in my opinion, that it was never fulfilled is because “forty acres and mule” costs money, and essentially if you spend taxpayer’s dollars to fulfill this promise to these ex-slaves and their descendants there will be less money for everyone else. It’s a bogus argument in my view, partially because there are an abundance of mules and millions of acres of unsettled land, even today. Additionally there are many examples of waste in our national budget that could be controlled in order to fulfill this promise. In any case, it was clear to the Buddha that such worries will also be a barrier to inter-peace.

Let me be clear about something else. We can be a champion of difficult to achieve causes and still have inter-peace. The secret is not to allow the difficulties associated with such a project to interfere with our inter-calmness. This is known as serenity. Though it is difficult to achieve, it can be done.

From Bahá’u’lláh:

“There is the well-known case of the ruler who is fostering peace and tranquility and at the same time devoting more energy than the warmongers to the accumulation of weapons and the building up of a larger army, on the grounds that peace and harmony can only be brought about by force. Peace is the pretext, and night and day they are all straining every nerve to pile up more weapons of war, and to pay for this their wretched people must sacrifice most of whatever they are able to earn by their sweat and toil. How many thousands have given up their work in useful industries and are laboring day and night to produce new and deadlier weapons which would spill out the blood of the race more copiously than before.”  ~ Epistle to the Son of the Wolf

And,

“We have, under all circumstances, enjoined on men what is right, and forbidden what is wrong. He Who is the Lord of Being is witness that this Wronged One hath besought from God for His creatures whatever is conducive to unity and harmony, fellowship and concord.” [peace] ~~ Epistle to the Son of the Wolf

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the son of Bahá’u’lláh, also wrote on this subject of peace and tranquility, saying,

“O my God! Assist Thou all of them and pour upon them the showers of Thy Supreme Confirmations; so that they may become the cause of the tranquility of the world of creation; to be the servants of the human race; to become, with all their hearts and souls, the real friends of all nations; to become with the utmost joy and fragrance, the spiritual companions of the adherents of all religions; to dispel the darkness of strangeness and to spread the lights of friendship in this transitory world!” ~~ Tablets of Abdu’l-Baha

     Often-times the desire for peace isn’t the internal peace we’ve described above, but a secession of war. During the late 1960’s, many nations in the world were the scene of protest against the American war in Viet Nam. Although I just called it the “American” war, there were small contingents of troops from other countries, primarily from Australia.

     Most of the protest centered around the idea that the war was illegal. What I mean by that is two-fold. First, in the constitution, the power to wage war was vested in the Congress, but through various war powers acts, this formal declaration of war was fading in favor of granting the President the power to send American troops into a war scenario for a limited period of time without Congressional approval. The Viet Nam war was presented to the public as a “police action” and not a war, yet many young people saw through this façade arguing that you could “put lipstick on a pig” but it was still a pig. It was still a war.

     The second reason for protest was that President Nixon commanded air strikes into the country of Laos, and on top of that, hid the fact. Military action was to be strictly confined to Viet Nam according to the Presidential request to send in troops, and the bombing of Laos was outside the legal parameters of the “police action.”

     Now, in 2020, the argument is that situations develop so fast that we don’t have the luxury of taking the time for Congress to investigate and debate whether or not to declare war. Obviously, there is some merit to this, however, we have let this become an excuse for sending in troops without a clear mission statement and a clear withdrawal plan. That is why we have been in Afghanistan and Iraq since 9-11.

     In my view, protesting all these “police actions” has merit. It is good to pressure the government to think through its military plans and inform the public of those plans whenever possible. At the same time, as Bahá’u’lláh stated in the above quote,

“There is the well-known case of the ruler who is fostering peace and tranquility and at the same time devoting more energy than the warmongers to the accumulation of weapons and the building up of a larger army, on the grounds that peace and harmony can only be brought about by force. Peace is the pretext….”

     Peace is the pretext when it needs to be the action verb. We need to feed the bear of Peace at every turn and abandon the bear of war, and that can only be done beginning on the personal level and then actively transiting to the community level.

     One of the vital pre-requisites of achieving peace is the divine attribute, or virtue of Trustworthiness. At the end of the Second World War we were still allies of the Soviet Union, though that didn’t last much beyond the end of the war. It was said that it was extremely difficult to get the Soviets to agree to anything but that once an agreement was reached they were extremely faithful to the terms of that agreement. In other words, they were trustworthy.

     We also must be trustworthy, though sadly we often times are not, just ask any Native American about our trustworthiness regarding treaties, or the Russians regarding our sacred pledge not to open up NATO membership to ex-Warsaw Pact countries. It is a sad shame when the United States, which proclaims so vaulted of claims of rectitude, can’t be trusted to live up to its word.

     It is essential to remember that a country, a government, is composed of individuals. If the President or the Congress can’t be trusted to live up to its word, it is because the individuals who compose these institutions can’t be trusted to live up to their word. As the Buddha stated, and I quoted above, “…whoever worries about food and drink given to others will find no peace of mind day or night.”

     We can ill afford to be consumed with the “zero sum gain” concept that we must “win”, we must come out “on top”. Life and national security are not “game theory” and we aren’t in a limited resources scenario. in which one person’s gain is equivalent to another’s loss. There is more than enough land to accommodate the people of Earth, there is more than enough food, enough air, enough water. In places on the planet where any of these things are in limited supply, it is merely a matter of devising systems for changing that reality to a reality of our own making. In this enlightened age we have the power to do this, whereas in ages past the technical capacity to do so was lacking.

“Let There be Peace on Earth & Let it begin with Me!”