“To work for peace, you must have a peaceful heart. When you do, you are a child of God. But many who work for peace are not at peace. They still have anger and frustration, and their work is not really peaceful… To preserve peace, our hearts must be at peace with the world, with our brothers and our sisters.”
“We often think of peace as the absence of war; that if the powerful countries would reduce their arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds – our prejudices, fears, and ignorance. Even if we transported all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the reasons for bombs would still be here, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we would make new bombs.”
“So working for peace must mean more than getting rid of weapons. It must start with uprooting war from ourselves and from the hearts of all men and women.”
“Root out the violence in your life, and learn to live compassionately and mindfully. Seek peace. When you have peace within, real peace with others will be possible.”
(Thich Nhat Hanh, Preface to Johann Christoph Arnold,
Seeking Peace: Notes and Conversations Along the Way)
No comments:
Post a Comment