Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh

If we are peaceful.
If we are happy.
We can smile and blossom
Like a flower.

And everyone
In our family,
Our entire society
Will benefit
From our peace.

A Piece of Mirror: Wartime Memories

I have a mirror. I always keep it with me. Actually, it's nothing more than a piece of broken glass about the size of my palm. A piece of broken mirror, somewhat on the thick side, the kind you could probably find on any trash heap.

But to me, it's anything but trash. When my mother married, she brought as part of her trousseau a mirror stand fitted with a very nice mirror. How many times it must have clearly reflected her face as a young bride! Twenty years later however, the mirror somehow got broken. My eldest brother Kiichi and I sorted over the fragments and picked out two of the larger ones to keep.

Lion of Freedom by Daisaku Ikeda

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There is something very special about Nelson Mandela’s smile. It is honest and pure, full of gentle composure. There isn’t a single line on his face that would suggest anything cold or harsh. And yet it embodies the convictions and strength of character of a man who has led his people to freedom.

He was brimming with confidence when we met in Tokyo on a July afternoon in 1995. It was our second meeting, a little over a year since he had been elected president of South Africa. He seemed to have grown stronger and wiser with the passage of time, as a mighty, deep-rooted tree continues its ceaseless growth. His bearing offered living proof of the saying that high positions, which make small people smaller, make great people greater.

The “dangerous criminal” who had been imprisoned for 27 years for high treason had emerged from that prison to become president of his country. He symbolized the fact that justice, which had been locked away for so many decades, had finally begun to reign again in South Africa.

Engaging Compassion: Boston and the interrelatedness of our own actions.

by Enver Rahmanov

Boston. Baghdad. New York. Kabul. Tel Aviv. Gaza… Syria…Burma… Rwanda… Tibet… the sorrow of violent tragedies that I have learned in my generation seems to have crossed all the borders. The reality is that there are no borders, even if we try to build the walls and fences that separate us. Hurt, like love, travels thousands of miles. This is not to suggest that it comes from that far away, it can easily come from our own neighborhood, house, and ultimately from within us. The interrelatedness of our own actions is ultimately what matters on the scales of negative and positive actions. Unlike the lady of justice, there is no blindfold, and both violence and love are in our face. How we respond is what will be added to the scale of human fate. Hope, as our wish, cannot remain a noun. It must be a verb. In times of tragedies, hope is our compassionate response.

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For The Sake of Peace.

Compassion and love are the answers to everlasting peace.

“But when all the young men refuse to kill for the sake of peace, and when all the women forbid their men to kill for the sake of peace, and when you realize that no peace will come through killing, and that the end does not justify the means, and when you grow full and light with thoughts of peace, there will be an end to war. But as long as any men go to war for the sake of peace, there will be war. And, as long as any woman teaches her sons to go to war because of love of the peace, there will be war.

You make your world. When you populate your world with ideas of peace, then peace will grow. When you think thoughts of aggression, you attract aggression and you draw it out from others in daily contact, and on the part of nations.

...Now you cannot understand this now, and yet I tell you that your own preoccupation with arms, as a country, is received by others, and your own thoughts are materialized and you create wars in your minds that then must be faced with your flesh and your blood.

The reality that you have is a replica of your thoughts. If you do not like the world, you must change your thoughts and no exterior manipulation will change the face of your experience one iota, if you do not change your dreams and your thoughts.

...Unfortunately, you equate aggression with strength, so you are afraid to elect a peaceful man. And all the other countries feel the same, so they are afraid to put into power, by whatever means, peaceful men. And so your world situation is the result of your individual beliefs, en masse.

...Now, when individually you believe in peace, and when you no longer believe that good is weak and evil is powerful, then, on countrywide bases, you will put people into power who believe in the active nature of peace. And, again, there is no other answer.”
- Seth

Find out more about the teachings of Seth here - http://www.sethlearningcenter.org/