The Peacemakers – Part One
When Jesus gave his famous Sermon on the Mount, he began with what have come to be known as the “Beatitudes”, which were eight categories of people who were considered to be especially “blessed”. They included the “meek”, the “merciful”, the “poor in spirit” and the “pure in heart”.
In addition, Jesus referred to another category of people whom he called “the children of God”.
“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” (Matthew 5: 9)
There is perhaps no other category of people in life who are more misunderstood than the “peacemakers”. And the reason why is because everyone assumes that they already know the meaning of the term.
All of us are familiar with the term “peacekeepers”, especially as it refers to groups of people, often associated with the United Nations, whose function is to act as monitors who observe peace processes in post-conflict areas.
But “peacemakers” are not “peacekeepers”. Neither are they “peace-lovers”. Most people today would consider themselves to be “lovers of peace”. Yet the ironic reality is that they are the very ones who are direct cause of the warlike conditions that afflict our world.
These people do not understand who they really are, nor do they grasp the subtle truth behind the words of Jesus. They don’t understand the true nature of life, nor how to deal with the conflicting forces of “good” and “evil”.
Soon after we are born, each one of us learns to divide our experiences into two separate categories. The first category covers experiences that bring us pleasure, while the other embraces those experiences which bring us pain.
As we grow we try to arrange our lives in a way that brings us the greatest number of pleasurable experiences, and reduces, as far as possible, those incidents which are painful. This process is also influenced by our culture; those conditional responses upon which we have learned to organize our lives.
In arranging our lives in ways which are the most satisfying, we are inevitably confronted by the problem of good and evil.
Our classification of experience into these two opposing groups is determined by our sensory perceptions and by the dictates of our society. For the most part, those things that bring us pleasure are regarded as good, while those things that bring pain are considered to be evil.
In dealing with these twin polarities of good and evil, the problem that confronts each one of us is that these experiences invariably manifest themselves through the actions of other people.
When we experience things in life that bring us pain, that are not the result of human action, such as natural disasters, society treats these events as accidents of fortune, or “Acts of God”. They aren’t considered to be evil in themselves. We are encouraged to deal with these reverses with stoic fortitude.
It is only when pleasure and pain involve other people that questions of good or evil arise. The determination of good or evil is always a subjective judgement, based on direct experience, and is moulded by the thinking of society. Different societies have different codes for good and evil.
The fundamental challenge that we all face in life is how to deal with people who do things that cause us pain. Our natural response in life is to link other people with the feelings they invoke in us. So if a person acts in a way that causes us pain, the pain that we feel becomes identified with that person.
If that action has been defined by our culture as evil, we associate this evil with the person involved, and that person becomes, by extension, an “evil” person. Likewise, if a person does something which causes us pleasure in a culturally acceptable fashion, then that person is regarded as “good”.
We transfer our personal feelings onto those people whom we consider to be responsible for them. Depending on the subjective sensations which we feel, we brand others as good or evil. These judgements sometimes change, however, for someone who is initially classified as good may later come to be regarded as evil, and vice versa.
In our day-to-day lives each one of us is faced with the challenge of dealing with people who do things that we call evil. In dealing with these situations, our natural response to those who hurt us is to retaliate. We want to pay them back for the harm that they have done to us.
We therefore transfer our feelings of pain onto those people who are the instigators of these feelings. In a similar way we also come to bear the brunt of the pain we have caused to others.
Because we live in societies characterised by group living, we are not encouraged to redress our own aggrieved feelings by acts of personal revenge. This instinctive urge for revenge is channelled by society into a codified system of behaviour that is considered to be in the overall interests of that society.
Institutional retaliation allows society to redress personal wrongs by a process known as “justice”. Punishment is imposed upon the guilty party according to a scale of compensation which is considered to be appropriate for the offending deed. Yet this system of justice, which exists in varying forms in all communities, is simply an institutional form of revenge.
This cycle of violence enacted upon the violent is one of humanity’s most ancient and enduring problems. It stems from the continuing desire by people to reward pain with pain. As we live our lives within our world community, we relentlessly pursue a policy of vengeance, seeking out the perpetrators of evil, and subjecting them to various forms of punishment.
But repaying violence with violence can never solve the problem of violence. The cycle of violence simply escalates, involving ever greater degrees of violence, which ultimately embroil more and more people.
This continuing desire to meet pain with pain, violence with violence, and death with death, has created a spiral of conflict which has led, over the course of the last century, to two global wars, and it now threatens to undermine the continued existence of all life on this planet.
It is a circle which the Scottish psychiatrist Ronald Laing likens to a noose around our necks.
“Millions of people have died in this (20th) century and millions more are going to, including, we have reason to expect, many of us and our children, because we cannot break this knot. It seems a comparatively simple knot, but it is tied very, very tight – round the throat, as it were, of the whole human species.” (Original emphasis) 1
What makes this spiral so difficult to break, and why this knot is tied so tightly around the neck of humanity, is that we all instinctively feel that rewarding pain with pain is the proper response to the harm that is done to us. Yet this emotional reaction defies all reasoned thinking.
The founders of all the major religions, as well as enlightened Sages, have tirelessly pointed out the folly of our ways. This continuing cycle of violence meted out in response to violence can never bring violence to an end. In his Sermon on the Mount, the Prince of Peace told the gathered throng:
“Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (Matthew 5: 43-44) 2
Five hundred years earlier, the compassionate Buddha had taught: “For hate is not conquered by hate; hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal.” 3 In like fashion, the Chinese Sage Lao Tzu urged: “To the good I would be good; to the not-good I would also be good, in order to make them good. Requite injury with kindness.” 4
Yet we invariably allow our emotions to dominate this reasoned response. Every day brings home to us the iniquity of evil, the harm which violence brings in its train, and the sorrow and suffering which this entails. We see the consequences of evil and we are determined to fight against them. On every side today we are encouraged “to take up arms against a sea of troubles”, so that, by opposing, we may effectively end them.
This need to oppose evil is clearly expressed in the oft-quoted words of 18th Century Irish philosopher Edmund Burke: “All that is needed for evil to triumph in this world is for good men to do nothing.” And what should good men do when confronted by evil? Why, resist it, naturally.
Yet it is precisely by resisting evil that evil is strengthened and perpetuated. Speaking of evil, Jesus told the assembled multitude, “But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matthew 5:39) 2
These words of Jesus are seldom taken seriously today. They aren’t considered to be a realistic way of dealing with the problem of evil. The 20th century Indian Sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj had exactly the same advice. “It is exactly as Christ said, ‘Resist not evil’. By resisting evil you merely strengthen it.” 5
The folly of confronting evil with stern opposition is also stressed by the revered Indian teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti:
“Resistance to evil strengthens evil. The moment I resist, evil must be on one side and the good on the other and there is a relationship between the two. When there is no resistance, there is no relationship between the two.” 6
The reason why this Gordian knot of doom is tied so tightly around the neck of humanity, and the reason why it is so difficult to loosen, is because of our prevailing obsession with resisting evil. We are all intent on seeking out evil wherever it lurks, and in whatever form it exists, in the hope of banishing it by active intervention.
The problem which the Sages have continually pointed out, is that it is our very action to overcome evil that perpetuates evil. It is the act of resisting evil which creates the adversarial relationship that intensifies the original force of evil. When evil is met with resistance in the form of violence and revenge, the original force of evil is simply strengthened.
The evidence of this spiral of violence confronts us today on every side. No matter how emotionally satisfying and self-justifying it may seem to intervene actively against evil, it can do nothing but add to evil.
It does so because we have chosen, in our enthusiasm yet ignorance, to fight fire with fire. Hatred begets more hatred and vengeful violence generates yet more violence. This is so obvious that it hardly seems necessary to point it out.
But the noose that is remorselessly strangling humanity is not about to be loosed by simple logic. There are intense feelings involved. Whenever we suffer deeply, we instinctively unleash our feelings of anguish and sorrow back at their originating source, even though we may logically recognize the folly of our ways.
It was Mohandas Gandhi, later to be known as the Mahatma or Great Soul, who demonstrated in his life the correct response to evil. Gandhi didn’t simply accept evil and surrender to its inevitability. Whenever he met oppression and cruelty he actively confronted it.
Yet his method of resistance was unlike the usual reaction that had been followed up to that time. It carried within it the healing balm of love, which acted to remove the causes of evil, rather than simply proliferate the effects of its expression.
Gandhi called his scheme of active resistance to British rule in India Satyagraha. It was a term selected to denote positive action, but which became weakly translated in the West as “passive resistance”.
Gandhi never failed to express his repugnance at this translation, for there was nothing passive about the action that he proposed. The term Satyagraha was derived from the Sanskrit words Satya meaning “Truth” and Agraha meaning “to hold firm”.
As Gandhi himself described it: “Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (Agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian Movement Satyagraha, that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or Non-Violence.” 7
The force which Gandhi proposed to unleash in his battle for the independence of India was not a form of aggressive violence against the people to whom it was directed. Those who have misunderstood his teachings have portrayed them as a form of obstructionist non-cooperation, designed to impede the ability of the British to govern effectively.
It was the very opposite of this. Gandhi’s “Truth Force” required extraordinary discipline and dispassion. His followers were required to divorce their actions from any heightened emotional response. Satyagraha demanded absolute renunciation of physical force.
It also required enormous self-sacrifice, and the ability to bear suffering bravely. His followers were obliged to risk the horrors of military confrontation, but without resorting to violence themselves, or even the desire to hurt those who were responsible.
What Gandhi proposed to do, and ultimately was successful in achieving, was to demonstrate the iniquity of oppression by voluntarily and willingly submitting himself, and his followers, to the suffering which this oppression caused.
Wherever violence was entrenched, he willingly offered himself up as a victim of that violence. He did this, not in a spirit of retaliation or vindictiveness, but in a spirit of love. As he explained:
“I have found that mere appeal to reason does not answer where prejudices are age long and based on supposed religious authority. Reason has to be strengthened by suffering and suffering opens the eyes of understanding.” 8
Satyagraha was thus the complete opposite of compulsion. Its purpose was not merely to change the actions of those to whom it was directed, but to transform their very lives. Its aim was, as Gandhi pointed out, “ Conversion – not coercion.” 9
Gandhi’s inspired programme of action was not designed to force the British to submit, or to cause them any harm, but to reveal to them in human terms the consequences of their actions, in a way which would transform their hearts.
The challenge of how to impel people to change from within, rather than to compel them to change from without, lies at the root of the effective response to evil. For Gandhi, this meant divorcing the object of his action, the evil that he attacked, from those people who were the instruments of its manifestation.
His campaign was to attack British rule, not British people. Gandhi recognized in each one of his opponents a divine spark which could be encouraged to flame forth in inspired and benevolent action. It is this separation between the operator and the action that liberates evil from its perpetuating cycle of violence and destruction.
Attack the deed but love the person responsible.
As Laing points out, “Love and violence, properly speaking, are polar opposites. Love lets the other be, but with affection and concern. Violence attempts to constrain the other’s freedom, to force him to act in the way we desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the other’s own existence of destiny.” 10
References
1 Ronald Laing, “The Politics of the Family“, CBC Enterprises, Toronto, 1969, p. 49.
2 King James version of the Bible.
3 “The Dhammapada“, translated by Juan Mascaro, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973, p. 35.
4 “The Sayings of Lao Tzu“, translated by Lionel Giles, John Murray, London, 1905, p. 56.
5 “I Am That“, Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman, Book II, Chetana, Bombay, 1973, p. 100.
6 Jiddu Krishnamurti, “Tradition and Revolution“, Orient Longman, Bombay, 1974, pp. 16-17.
7 Glyn Richards, “The Philosophy of Gandhi“, Curzon, London, 1982, p. 48.
8 Ibid, p. 51.
9 Ibid, p. 50.
10 Ronald Laing, “The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise“, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1967, p. 50.
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