Musings

May all beings have Peace, Love and Joy.
— A Buddhist Prayer
 
Prayer might seem an ineffectual response to the scale of conflict engulfing the world today but this particular prayer is a powerful invitation to consider an orientation that could actually result in world peace. After all, the world is a collective of individuals and for the world to be at peace would it not require each individual to embody a Love that is all inclusive?
 
Given the extent to which we are wired to believe that well-being arises from a perfect configuration of externals, it isn’t hard to understand why we might think world peace arises when the world, as represented by those “others” out there, is at peace. But isn’t this stance of considering ourselves apart from the world, this illusion of separation, the root of every conflict?
 
It we contemplate any act of injustice, prejudice, bigotry or unconsciousness, and get identified with hatred, anger, blame, anxiety—any expression of absence of love—we’ve just made the same movement that devolves into expressions of violence, cruelty and destruction. In that identification with the duality of self and other, we may not be wielding a weapon that takes a life, but we are collectively responsible for adding to an absence of love that swells into a movement of hate. 
 
World Peace, as the license plate reminds us, begins with Inner Peace, with transcending the barriers to love, not without, but within. In the words of Peace Pilgrim:
 
When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.
 
As awareness practitioners, working out our own salvation diligently, we are activists for peace. We embody this intention when we make Gasshō. Gasshō represents the peace of the reconciliation of all opposites. When we bring our hands together and bow, we bridge the separation from our Buddha Nature and the duality of self and other, acknowledging that “my heart and your heart are one.” It seems counterintuitive that an inner individual focus will make any difference to the world at large, but doesn’t that depend on our world view? In a nonseparate reality, isn’t the consciousness of the collective the sum of its parts? This is perhaps why Buddhists the world over subscribe to another recitation:
 
All harmful thoughts, words and deeds, from before the beginning of beginning-less time, having been caused by greed, hate, and delusion, through body, mouth, and mind, I openly acknowledge, accept, embrace and let go. 
 
World peace arises from acknowledging that no one is exempt from responsibility for the whole. Contemplation of our part in collective disharmony isn’t meant to make us feel bad. It is meant to make us willing to look at the ways we are not loving, willing to disidentify from the illusion of separation that makes “me” reactive, unkind, selfish and self-hating, willing to be attentive to Conscious Awareness so it can express itself as love in action.
 
Willingness to notice one’s process is the primary responsibility of an awareness practitioner. It’s a basic movement of attention prompted by very familiar questions: 
 
Who is here? 
What are the voices saying? 
What beliefs am I entertaining? 
What am I projecting? 
 
The objective of the movement is not to answer the questions but to have Attention on awareness. As soon as attention shifts to Conscious Awareness, we are no longer in a habitual modality of relating to the content of our experience through identification with it. Rather, we drop into a practitioner’s perspective, one that is interested in going beyond what creates a turbulent and discordant inner world. With practice, that perspective evolves to being an affectionate witness—loving, kind, curious, dispassionate and nonjudgmental. From this vantage point, it is possible to examine anything (a partner’s retort, current events, the death of a pet, planetary desecration, even spiritual guidance) that triggers a reaction to and, therefore, separation from What Is. Rather than being buffeted by the conflicting positions of the world of opposites, we confront the swirling currents of conditioned impulses from a tranquil center. We broker peace within by embracing the human being in the compassion that dissolves self-hate and absolves all “transgressions” committed from identification with vestiges of childhood survival strategies.
 
Once we’ve made this first movement, we are ready to interface with Practice. Perhaps we have not been able to fully disidentify from an ego position. Perhaps we need assistance with how to look at a reaction to some content in our lives. Perhaps we need to validate an insight or a Practice approach to a situation. As long as there is willingness to be facilitated to a greater awareness of our process, we’ve surrendered to the structure that governs all Sangha interactions: the privileged environment. 
 
The privileged environment is the ultimate peace treaty, explicitly agreed to and fiercely protected by all participants involved in this Practice. Within the privileged environment, it is understood that we are all invested in outing rather than colluding with the enemy within the walls. This doesn’t mean we cannot be identified with ego and speak in a Sangha setting. It simply means when we put up our hands in group or get into the queue, we signal our readiness to abide by a protocol that protects the Heart and assists us to restore an inner equilibrium.
 
The protocol of peace in a practice of awareness is processing.  Processing isn’t about asserting an ego position, debating content, airing grievances, requesting accommodation or getting answers. Processing involves taking responsibility for awareness of our process and engaging in dialog with Practice. We reveal what we’ve seen about conditioned mind so that Practice can reflect our insights, expand our way of seeing, give us fresh places to continue inquiry and deepen our practice. We submit voluntarily to this implicit structure of call and response because we trust that it is for our benefit. Within the privileged environment, any content can be processed, even resistance to compliance with a Practice structure. Training in the form of compassionate communication is given generously when we unconsciously and inevitably violate Practice guidelines. But if we choose non-compliance with implicit or explicit Practice structures, it means we are still holding on to an ego position. Practice will make every attempt to reflect our process to support disidentification from it, but if we continue to choose a defended, defensive or offensive ego stance, the Practice checkmate is non-engagement. 
 
There is wisdom in the strategy of ignoring conditioned mind, a kindness in denying ego any kind of attention, whether it is the attention of the practitioner or a facilitator. In those oft repeated words from The Perennial Philosophy:
 
So long as the attention is fixed on the delinquent ego, it cannot be fixed on God, and the
ego (which lives upon attention and dies only when that sustenance is withheld) cannot be dissolved in divine light.
 
Not confronting a defended ego is sometimes a vote for peace. It is a movement the Guide exemplified on a recent Open Air show when a caller expressed shock at the Guide’s suggestion to “tune in to the Democratic National Convention for an experience of a group of people with powerful enthusiasm for goodness and kindness,” given that this group is “currently funding genocide.” This brief and powerful exchange, the inspiration for this Musings article, is an invitation to consider what it means to be a practitioner of Awareness. 
 
An excerpt from an exchange between a seeker and Nisargadatta Maharaj:
 
Q: All I want is peace
M: You can have for the asking all the peace you want.
Q: I am asking.
M: You must ask with an undivided heart and live an integrated life.
Q: How?
M: Detach yourself from all that makes your mind restless. Renounce all that disturbs its peace. If you want peace, deserve it.
Q: Surely everybody deserves peace.
M: Those only deserve it who don't disturb it.
Q: In what way do I disturb peace?
M: By being a slave to your desires and fears.
Q: Even when they are justified?
M: Emotional reactions, born of ignorance or inadvertence, are never justified. Seek a clear mind and a clean heart. All you need is to keep quietly alert, enquiring into the real nature of yourself. This is the only way to peace.
 
Whatever content we practice with, we must examine our part in disturbing the peace. And so we practice:
 
Here in humble submission in order to experience this most perfect now, I deeply bow and sacrifice all thoughts, all tensions, all pressures and desires
 
in order that 
 
all beings have peace, love and joy.

Gasshō
ashwini