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| Buddhist priests of the Big Asakusa Temple prepare for the Second Sino-Japanese War as they wear gas masks during training against future aerial attacks in Tokyo, Japan, on May 30, 1936. (AP Photo) |
Every
war is a civil war. We construct an
illusory distance between ourselves and whomever we deem to be the enemy of the
moment, polarizing them on the side
of evil and us on the side of
good. President George W. Bush’s
familiar rhetoric of the “axis of evil” used to incite and maintain the current
state of war is an overt example of this distancing technique. In truth, however, when we engage in any war,
there are no clear-cut lines of good and evil; when we battle our “enemies,” we
battle our friends and neighbors, our sisters and brothers. Political, social, and economic allegiances
are in a constant state of flux; we have all been allies at some point and will
be reborn again as allies as our needs and attitudes shift over time. In the meantime, we rend the very fabric of
people’s lives in search of a victory that can never come. No matter who wins the battle, we all lose
when we fight in service of the monumental deception of selfhood.
The geopolitical
borders of the nation-state are not physical walls built to keep our enemies
out, but are manufactured conventions, no less fortified, which keep our
fragile selves within. The nation is not a physical reality but
instead a conceptual construct we use to maintain the fallacy that we are
separate from and superior to the other communities around us. This convention is a projection of our
collective egos, or our wego, as
referred to by David R. Loy in his book, The
Great Awakening. Loy posits that
just as we individually create and preserve a notion of self, we collectively
create and maintain similar group “selves.”
This self-identification is inextricably bound up in the dualistic thinking
we utilize in an attempt to stabilize an unstable existence. Ironically, the very tool with which we are
attempting to steady our world is one of the main causes of instability and
conflict. Dualistic thinking is one of
the delusions that propagates war.
Peter Harvey, in An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics,
cites delusion such as this along with anger and greed as the root causes of
war. These three seeds of unwholesome
individual action are writ large on an international scale when our collective wegos engage in them. Just as the individual can overcome these
poisons by cultivating their opposites (wisdom, compassion, and generosity), so
too can nations. This is the Buddhist
solution to war. In practical terms,
though, what does this mean and how can we apply it to contemporary global
conflict?
Increasingly, I
believe that justice may be, ironically, a hindrance to peace. That is to say that our conception of
“justice,” more akin to retribution, is a source of conflict. In our democratic society, if an individual
is wronged, that individual or the individual’s loved ones seek justice. If property damages are involved, people seek
to recoup at least the monetary amount of the damages and the costs of legal proceedings. Many murder victims’ families seek the death
penalty for those charged with the slaying of their loved ones. We have an “eye for an eye” notion of
justice. On an international scale, we
think in similar terms. If we as a
nation are attacked, our sense of justice will not be satiated until we strike
back. Justice, for us, is reactive,
vengeful, and delusive.
Although Buddhism
generally does not discuss justice, we can apply Buddhist thinking to the
concept to shift it from this harmful notion focused on consequences to a
proactive, beneficial one focused on motivations. What are the causes of our current
conflicts? What ill-will, greed, and
delusion are we engaging in that may have led to conflict? How are we responsible, even when we don’t
want to admit any responsibility? Instead
of striking out, we may be able to avert conflict by looking inward.
If, instead, we do
take aggressive action, we are submitting to another delusion—that we can
alleviate our own suffering by causing others to suffer. This idea is one which surfaces time and
again in Harvey’s discussion of topics like euthanasia and abortion. This fundamental delusion seems to inform
much of our decision-making concerning ethical issues. In our often-impassioned attempts to serve
justice, we instead create a sustained cycle of suffering. When we act to satisfy our need for justice,
there is always the possibility that another group will view those actions as
threatening to their wego and act, in
turn, to satisfy their own need for justice.
This sounds very much like the perpetual revolution of the wheel of samsara.
How are we to
break such a cycle? As individuals, in
order to escape from the wheel of suffering, we must awaken. With clear vision, we can see through the
delusion and we can elect not to participate in our unjust system of
justice. That is not the same as
“turning the other cheek” when we are wronged.
Instead, we should seek resolution over retribution, eliminate the causes
of others’ suffering and we eliminate the causes of our own. This is true justice, though it may sound
like the converse of our current skewed concept of justice. It may be bittersweet as we are forced to
recognize our own responsibility, or at least our own complicity, in the
processes that create conflict. If we
can make this kind of change on a personal level, we can then effect change on
the institutional, national, and global levels.
At the most basic
level, this is just another call to give up our illusory sense of self and to
stop acting in ways to protect that delusion at the expense of others. This sounds more difficult than it really
should be because our society has been built around the glorification of the
individual; we are taught from an early age just how to maintain the sense of
self. Even our most conformist of
institutions, the military, recruits with slogans like “be all that you can be” and “army of one,” again glorifying the individual
while simultaneously conditioning soldiers to sacrifice that individuality for
the larger wego. We must indeed sacrifice our selves, but not
to be replaced by larger, institutional bodies which would lead to a
totalitarian state. We must sacrifice
our selves for one another, regardless of nationality or other superficial
differences like gender, skin color, sexual orientation, religion, or political
beliefs. Sacrificing our selves need not
mean sacrificing our lives or the lives of others, just sacrificing our
misperceptions.
Thich Nhat Hanh’s
description of our fundamental relationship with all things is
“interbeing.” This is more than a series
of cause and effect relationships or links in a chain of being, but an
inextricable interpermeation of all beings, each dependent upon all
others. In order to successfully coexist
with one another, we must awaken to the understanding of this concept. Just as our individual egos collectively form
ever-radiating circles of wego based
on our self-identification with various groups like families, states, and
nations, we have to recognize the multiple layers of the web of interbeing affecting
those groups. Our beliefs and actions
cannot be separated from those of other individuals, families, states, and
nations, again each dependent upon all others.
When we strike others, we strike ourselves. When we save others, we save ourselves. We will never alleviate suffering by causing
more suffering, we will never achieve justice through retribution, and we will
never achieve peace through violence.
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