You Are A Force For Peace

Last week we shared a chapter from Easwaran’s book Strength in the Storm that describes transforming negative forces into positive forces. This week we would like to follow up with an excerpt from the afterword of that same book, written by Christine Easwaran. In this excerpt, Christine gives us some specific and practical pointers to enable each of to become a “force for peace.” 

Great teachers in every religion and every age have told us that goodness is as much a part of life as the force of gravity. The world would not endure for a single day without it. Somerset Maugham echoes this great truth in his enormously popular novel The Razor’s Edge, published in 1943 in the midst of World War II. Referring to the story’s main character, Maugham said, “Goodness is the strongest force in the world, and Larry has got it.”

Larry is a young American whose experience of war prompts a long search for meaning. By the end of the novel, his life is completely changed; but he has no philosophy to teach, only the desire to lead an ordinary life ennobled by what he has learned. A friend challenges him: “Can you for a moment imagine that you, one man, can have any effect?”

“I can try,” Larry replies. “Nothing that happens is without effect. If you throw a stone in a pond the universe isn’t quite the same as it was before. . . . It may be that if I live the life I’ve planned for myself it may affect others; the effect may be no greater than the ripple caused by a stone thrown in a pond, but one ripple causes another, and that one a third; it’s just possible that a few people will see that my way of life offers happiness and peace, and that they in turn will teach what they have learnt to others.”

We should never underestimate the effect of one person remaining calm in the midst of turmoil, the power of one person to change ill will into good will, anger into compassion, hatred into love.

I do earnestly believe that the greatest danger that faces us today is fear and hatred. In words that belong to the whole world, the Prayer of Saint Francis tells how each of us can be a peacemaker in his or her own circle – an island for those around us, a force for peace, a shield against fear and anger.

You Are a Force for Peace

The first step is to bring calm to your own mind so you don’t add fuel to the flames of fear and anger around you.

Keep this prayer in front of you. Put it on your desk. Don’t let it become stale. Write it out. Memorize it. Repeat it to yourself whenever you feel overwhelmed. Give it to your friends. Keep it in your wallet. Teach it to your children. Recite it out loud. Put it on your refrigerator door.

You Are a Force for Peace

Don’t get caught in angry, frightened talk. Choose what goes into your mind; don’t leave it to the media. Don’t let hostility and resentment take over your life. Step away from the whirlpools of negativity that swirl around us.

You Are a Force for Peace

Do something positive – every day. Take control of your life. Get together with your family and friends. Read elevating spiritual literature. Read with your children.

You Are a Force for Peace

Slow down. Stay focused. Pay attention to the needs of the people around you. Be kind and considerate. At home and at work, help create an atmosphere of trust and openness. Reach out to those you feel have offended you.

You Are a Force for Peace

Choose a mantram from the list given here. Repeat it silently to yourself whenever you can – while washing the dishes, standing in line, waiting on hold. Repeat it whenever you start to get angry, upset, or afraid. Combine it often with a good, fast walk. Fall asleep repeating it so it stays with you throughout the night. Write it out by hand – fill a page or two with it every day. Write it for the whole world. Keep a little book for that purpose and carry it with you everywhere. The mind has to be working; give it the mantram.

You Are a Force for Peace

Teach your mantram to your children. Get them to repeat it whenever they can. Show them how powerful it can be by using it with them to keep calm. Tell them they too are a force for peace and the mantram can be their shield.

Keep reminding yourself that goodness is the strongest force in the world.

Eknath Easwaran: A Light in the Darkness

This week, we found a chapter entitled "A Light in the Darkness" from Easwaran's book Strength in the Storm, which captures the essence of how we can respond to tragedy, bringing about peace and hope in the midst of darkness.

For most people, I imagine, radio has lost its magic. But I remember vividly the awe I felt as a boy in my remote Indian village when I first heard, as if by magic, a box with knobs and dials pull out of the air a thin voice from thousands of miles away: “Good evening. This is the BBC...”

Today, of course, the air around us is awash with messages at different frequencies. Music, news, chatter, advertisements – we can tune to whatever we like.

It is very much the same with the mind. All of us know how sensitive we can be to feelings around us. We sense tension when we walk into a room, register the hostility in a meeting, vibrate with the emotions of a football crowd. And in times of crisis, when the very air seems full of fear and anger, everybody’s internal radio picks up the mood – and, all too often, passes it on.

This is a useful illustration, because it reminds us that the mind can be tuned. We do not have to accept the fear or anger around us; we can tune to a more positive channel. And when we do this, we are not the only ones who benefit. Just as everyone in a café relaxes when loud music is turned off, not tuning in to anger creates a zone of calm that helps those nearby calm down too.

This is easiest to see by negative example. You must have noticed how easily one person’s irritation is picked up by others. We bring it home and pass it around until everybody in the family falls asleep in it. Whenever we are discourteous, unkind, inconsiderate, selfish, we are broadcasting emotional states for others to pick up, even if we do not express our feelings in words or action. It’s not the passing event it seems. The signal has been sent, and like sound or light, it goes on spreading.

Similarly, when we are kind to somebody, a little force of kindness is released in the field of consciousness around us. If we go on being kind, the force becomes stronger. And when we do this every day, even to people who are unkind to us, the force becomes potent and reaches far. Even as you read this, such forces are at work within and around you. Kindness is working against unkindness, and the stronger it is, the farther it will reach.

This is crucial, for as Emerson says, “The ancestor of every action is a thought.” How we think shapes how we act, and the net effect of how each of us thinks and feels shapes the behavior of the groups we live in. The family is affected; co-workers are affected; eventually there is an effect on society itself.

And just as personal interactions shape the dynamics of a home or office or community, the sum total of all these interactions shapes the events of history. Markets are moved by the fear and greed of millions. Collective fear and helplessness can throw up a dictator. Anger multiplied a million times erupts in violence and triggers wars: leaders arise who are attuned to those emotions and express them in destructive action.

The mental states we tune to actually gain strength from the attention we give them. The more attention we give, the stronger they become. And just as people become addicted to drugs, the mind can become addicted to certain kinds of thinking. Fear is a drug; it can alter consciousness. So can greed. Anger is one of the most powerful of drugs, far more addictive than cocaine.

Nothing is more important for the modern world to understand. Any decision or action taken under the influence of fear, anger, or greed has to be disastrous. That is why most international policies are not successful: they are taken under the influence of fear, greed, and anger.

Fortunately, negative states of mind fade if they are not reinforced by repetition. However strong they appear, they come and go. What is positive in consciousness is permanent, unchanging. That is why I say that original goodness is part of our very nature. When we cease to feed negativity with our attention, what remains is positive. We can strengthen what is positive by removing negativity from our minds. That is what spiritual practices like the mantram can do.

The mind, then, is not only a receiver. It is also a repeater, passing on what it receives. Most of us have only a few watts to broadcast with, while someone like Gandhi could send his message around the world. But each of us is on the air. We broadcast what we are, and others pick it up. When Gandhi said “My life is my message,” he was speaking for us all.

Most of us do not like the idea of being a passive repeater for other people’s messages. We want to have a positive influence. Why do our lives seem to have so little effect?

The answer is that most of us have minds that are scattered or distracted: sometimes positive, sometimes negative, constantly changing with our shifting moods and desires. If we don’t seem to have much effect on the world we live in, it’s because the signals we broadcast are weak and confused. It is the concentrated, focused mind that reaches people. All the great changes in the world for good and for ill have come from the impact of men and women with an overriding singleness of purpose and a concentrated mind. In our own times, on the positive side, Gandhi is a perfect example.

Fortunately, none of us are stuck with the mind we’re born with. With practice, a distracted mind can be made one-pointed. By skills like repeating the mantram and learning to focus on one thing at a time, the mind can be made one-pointed on the essential goodness in every human heart. Then every negative emotion can gradually be transformed into a force for good. Anger, the most destructive of emotions – destructive of health, of peace of mind, of relationships, of life itself – can, when transformed, become a loving force that can change the world.

It has been said that anyone who wants a peaceful life has chosen the wrong time to be born. The last hundred years have seen incessant turbulence, change, and danger. Around the world, people are living with a deep anxiety about the future.

In such situations it is only natural to ask now and then, “Why was I born into times like these?” The answer I would give is that we have been born to be of help to others. Desperate times are a sign of a more desperate need. To make our full contribution, we need to train the mind to be at peace and then radiate that peace to those around us.

Very few of us really know what peace of mind is, the phrase has become so hackneyed. To think peace of mind comes by using chemical aids or moving to a quiet cabin on the seashore is to deny the very understanding of the word mind. In order to have peace of mind, thinking should be under control rather than at the mercy of fear and anger.

I was never a very angry person, but as a boy I was known for my fear. My cousins and classmates were brave, but I was not. I would never get into a fight, not out of noble motives but out of fear.

***

I took heart from the example of another fearful boy who had made himself fearless and showed all India how to throw off fear. By the time I went to college, Mahatma Gandhi had taken center stage in India, and he made his life an open book. Everyone in India knew that as a child he had been subject to all kinds of fears. Even as a young man, he confessed, he was afraid to go out at night without his wife.

And he was terrified of public speaking! Early in his law career he had to plead an open-and-shut case where all he had to say was, “Your honor, the accused owes my client fifty rupees and he won’t pay.” He stood up, opened his mouth, and couldn’t get out a word. Finally he had to hand the case over to a colleague and rush out of court humiliated.

That is the man who went to South Africa as a timid, untrained clerk and got drawn into selfless service. By the time he returned to India, twenty years later, all that fear had vanished. Against overwhelming odds and brutal opposition, he had led a completely nonviolent campaign against racial legislation in South Africa and won. In India, he could stand against the greatest empire the world had seen and say, “Do your worst. I will not retaliate, but I will never retreat.”

Today we would ask, “What kind of therapy did he undergo? What workshops did he attend?” But Gandhi never set out to make himself fearless. He simply began trying to serve those around him, spending less and less time on indulging himself and more on helping others. And the primary skill he used to support himself in these efforts was repetition of the mantram. Effort and the mantram together changed fear into fearlessness, anger into compassion, hatred into love.

That transformation is the reason I consider Gandhi a beacon for our times. “I have learnt through bitter experience,” he said, “the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.” And he added, “I have not the slightest doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.” That is what the mantram can do.

Images of the November YA Retreat

This past weekend, the retreat house at the BMCM headquarters in Northern California was full of YAs gathered together to practice and learn about passage meditation. This retreat was especially remarkable with over half of the participants being newcomers to passage meditation!

The weekend was full of both light-hearted and deep conversations, and with a schedule intentionally set to put meditation at the forefront of everyone's mind – in short, it was a great time.

We had beautiful weather as well! California sunshine graced us on our beach walk, and much-needed rain fell on Sunday leading some YAs to cozy up under blankets during the workshops.

We hope you enjoy these photos from the November YA Retreat!