Buddhist Presents Path to Peace at MH Lecture

War and violence are all around us, from the daily casualties in Iraq to the crime reports printed in this newspaper. How can we find peace?

“A Buddhist Perspective on Peace” was the topic of a lecture presented May 31 at the Morgan Hill Community and Cultural Center. Nearly 100 local residents turned out to hear Ajahn Chandahko, a Buddhist monk from New Zealand, explain a different kind of “peace process” in an event sponsored by the Morgan Hill Friends of the Library.

Born Jim Reynolds in Minneapolis, Minn., Chandahko graduated from Carleton College with a degree in religious studies and eventually joined the Wat Pah International Forest Monastery in Thailand. This institution draws non-Thai-speaking visitors from around the world to study Buddhism.

Chandahko calls this international community good training for peacefulness, because friction was always appearing in the monastery due to the different responses and misunderstandings caused by the multinational viewpoints of the residents.

The monk began the evening by leading his audience through a five-minute guided meditation. People sat erect, hands in laps with eyes closed, and allowed their bodies to relax gradually and systematically, “being attentive to any sensation.” The goal was to bring bodies to a state of peacefulness.

A helpful meditation technique is to slowly and quietly repeat a “mantra” (word or phrase) multiple times. Chandahko suggested the word “peace.”

People “crave tranquility and contentment,” he said, and meditation offers a way to systematically work toward that end. He referred to the goal of “mindfulness: developing a continuity of awareness, minute by minute.” 

Mindfulness allows people “enough space around moments so that they can choose how to react to a situation, rather than making a habitual response,”  Chandahko explained. It gives people “freedom in their reactions rather than being robots, always responding without thinking.”

Important in Buddhist teachings is “karma, a law of nature, which says whatever we do we tend to get the same thing back.” Our own greed adds to the world’s greed; anger adds to the world’s anger; jealousy to the world’s jealousy.

Karma is the key to the Buddhist perspective of peace. Environmentalists can feel overwhelmed with all the pollution around them and resolve to clean up their small corner of the environment. In the same way, Buddhists feel if they can make themselves peaceful, tranquil and contented, this can flow out to society, spreading like the ripples in a pool. 

“Enlightenment, awakening, nirvana is a path developed moment by moment, in everything we see and do,” Chandahko said. “Everything leads to or away from peace, has an effect on the amount of peace in the world.”

The great obstacles to peace are fear and insecurity, primarily about what others think about us, finances, health, death, etc. People need to “look behind these curtains,” look into their own hearts, have trust in following their own hearts about the right things to do; “criticism or praise from others is out of our control anyway,” he said.

The goal of a Buddhist is to be loving, kind and compassionate. It is easy to do this around pleasant, positive people, but it must also work with difficult, annoying people.  “The most difficult people are the ones in the most pain,” Chandahko explained.

Chandahko often conducts retreats dealing with forgiveness and has discovered a strange phenomenon: It seems easier to forgive people who have directly harmed us than politicians or government officials.

During the question-and-answer period of the presentation, the monk told about his life as a “homeless wanderer.” He has no personal funds but can only go where he is invited. He teaches for free when asked; friends, family and others give gifts to supply things like plane tickets.

Chadahko is the author of  “The Outer Path: Finding My Way in Tibet” and other books and pamphlets.