As I say in the header at the top of the page I am a lover of peace. Even my cabinet at work has (in addition to a picture of each of our kitties) quotes from the Baha’i Faith about peace.
Below is my cabinet at work.
[There are a few animal rights signs too :-) ]
[There are a few animal rights signs too :-) ]
I suppose I love clever sayings generally, but this topic is particularly close to my heart. In the past I have sported peace bumper stickers, peace T-shirts, and gone to a peace march. I read books about peace, listen to interviews on NPR about peace and read and listen to Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist monk) wherever I can find him. Truthfully I’d like to stand up in front of a few million people and tell just exactly what I think about the way our world is going. Since that’s unlikely to happen any time soon I will, from time to time, include a post with a peace quote…. an ineffective action for change but a satisfying form of expression nevertheless.
Venerable Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Thien Mu Pagoda, Hue, Vietnam.© 2001-2006 Dang Ngo. All rights reserved.
Thich Nhat Hanh : "We may think of peace as the absence of war, that if the great powers would reduce their weapons arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we will see our own minds - our own prejudices, fears, and ignorance."
6 comments:
Your last entry felt like a tease, presented very interesting topics, clever sayings about peace, Bahai faith, zen, etc., but then abruptly ended in an incomplete saying by the Zen Master. It almost felt like getting the first half of a sentence. Did you suddenly have to go to the bathoom, as is the case with Anahita's blog entries?
Actually his two sentences were so perfect, so succinct, you don't need a paragraph to expand upon it. I'll be happy to post more quotes if you like, but they are all "quotes," not dissertations.
With all due respect to you and to Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, I must say that his statement not only is incomplete, it hardly makes sense. How is seeing our prejudices and minds in the barrels of guns related to, or opposite, as he seems to imply, people misconstruing what peace consists of? He may very well need a full dissertation to explain this strange assertion. Perhaps, you my beloved wife and a lovely student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's peace teaching, would do us the honor of explaining the intended meaning of his statement.
What he’s saying is that we wouldn’t have weapons if we didn’t have prejudice, fear and ignorance. The very presence of the weapons reflects these shortcomings (prejudice, fear, ignorance) in our way of thinking, but that getting rid of the weapons won’t cause the shortcomings to go away because the problem is in our way of thinking. One must change their way of thinking… then the need for instruments of violence no longer exists. Peace is really a state of mind. Weaponry, or lack there of, is an outer representation of this state.
This is why I only posted one quote; there is so much packed into one sentence.
:-)
The point became absolutely clear after reading each of your added explanation and the additional passages of the Master's writing. Hopefully we will have less abridged quotes from you on your future posts. Now may I ask for more of his words of wisdom, but hopefully in an unabridged form.
Tita was listening to his CD in her car when she came to visit me. He's very peaceful to listen to.
-Shirin
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