Tag: war

The Buddha’s solution for troubled times

A group of monks dressed in brown robes walking in a procession, accompanied by a dog, with a crowd of onlookers in the background.
Walk for Peace USA – Very impressed with the monks.

Before I get started, I wanted to acknowledge the 2,300-mile walk for peace in the USA that started on October 26th, 2025, and is still going on as of February 1st, 2026. The above picture must be from Texas, where they started; they are now walking in January weather, and are currently in Virginia. This is what peace and dedication look like. I feel fortunate to be able to see this on social media every day, as it is truly inspiring.

I wanted to start this post with a quote from the great James Baldwin, as it pertains to what people around the world are going through today. Sorry, no Pali Canon quotes today.

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or thought one knew; to what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free-he has set himself free-for higher dreams, for greater privileges.

I live in the United States and during the last year I’ve seen our civil liberties eroding, corruption in government to a degree that is absurd, violence directed against citizens, including immigration officers actually killing US citizens, and a President that is destroying the economy, threatening other countries, bombing at least 8 other countries within the first year of his second term. Our government acts more like an organized crime organization, using threats and coercion against its citizens and the rest of the world. Many in this country fear we no longer have a democracy, but are now an authoritarian regime. No one chooses this, but it is now our reality. The anger and push back it has unleashed is of epic proportions and never seen except maybe during the civil rights protests in the 1960’s.

As one who has studied a fair amount of history, none of this is new, and many of you from other countries would have your own tales of injustice and oppression that may make what we are going through pale in comparison. Cruelty, greed, hate, seeking power, injustice, and endless wars seem to be features of the human world. The suffering from all these things has been the experience and a big part of the history of mankind. At the same time, much of mankind is kind, generous, loving, and works for a better world, not just for themselves, but also for their families, communities, nations, and the world at large. In my long lifetime, there may have been a few years you could count on one hand that we were not experiencing significant conflicts in the world resulting in thousands, if not millions, of deaths in this world. The negative human conditions caused by war, seeking power, corruption, injustice, and greed are so far part of an endless cycle of humanity. As technology has progressed, we are being bombarded by images, truths, and untruths of the atrocities being committed in our world. This real-time information flow does nothing but keep us in a state of anxiety. We either become so disturbed by it all or end up tuning it out altogether.

As the quote by James Baldwin illustrates so well, we change as our illusions are shattered and forced to give up privileges and possessions we thought we owned, but never really did. He goes on to say in the last sentence of the quote above:

“Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free-he has set himself free-for higher dreams, for greater privileges.”

Baldwin was not writing about Buddhism when he made this statement, but for this illusion we have about ourselves and the suffering that we experience is where I make the case for Buddhism, the 2500+ year old philosophy. While many of us in the world view the current state of things as unacceptable, we need to only look back a few decades ago to what Stalin did in Russia, Mao in China, and Hitler in Germany. According to the Pali Canon and other historical references, peace was a rare thing even in the Buddha’s time, and the personal suffering of sickness, old age, and death was not radically different from what we experience today. The Buddha was very observant as a young man, and having realized the suffering in the world, he decided to understand the root of suffering and how it could be alleviated, or more accurately, created a path to eliminate it for the individual.

After achieving clarity on how to end suffering through enlightenment, he developed an approach or method, if you will, that includes the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. This came to be known as Buddhism, the revolutionary approach to living we know today.

I don’t want to give you the wrong impression that practicing Buddhism will make this all go away if you leave the life you have and join a monastery as a monk. For people who care about others, what is happening in the world will influence their thinking. Caring people want to see justice in the world, and it deeply hurts them to see the injustice and cruelty we experience in this country and so many countries in this world. If you put it in perspective, what we see as the end of the world now is another cycle in the great historical shit show we call mankind. This probably won’t console you, but we tend to think this time in history is either unique or the worst of all time, and neither is true.

The Buddha never intended his teaching to turn us into unfeeling nihilists. Quite the contrary, he and all the enlightened ones taught compassion and followed the precepts, but they also taught detachment. To me, this is the paradox that you can create happiness in your own life with your practice, yet still recognize that suffering exists in this world and you can play a part in it to make things better. Buddhism offers a way to train the mind so that you can experience happiness through the elimination of suffering for yourself. Your responsibility is to share the dharma with others so they, too, can obtain right view and find peace in this volatile world.

Namaste

References:

Baldwin Collected Essays

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Practice Compassion

The Dalai Lama has written a whole book on compassion, which I believe I read over 10 years ago. I like his quote as the true feeling of compassion for others will in fact benefit them and yourself. In this post I want to make a case for adopting compassion, and how it is one of the most important virtues in life.

The Merriam Webster definition:

compassion

noun

: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it

I like this very brief yet powerful definition of compassion. Breaking it down a compassionate person has sympathetic consciousness for others distress and a desires to do something about it. You might also phrase it as a sympathetic awareness for the distress that others are experiencing. There are a number of synonyms for sympathy, but you also might phrase this as a compassionate person has a caring awareness of the suffering of others and wants to alleviate it.

Most of us can be compassionate when it comes to family members, friends, and often with people that think like us, but true compassion is not just for those you love or agree with. True compassion, even for those we don’t agree with means we have expanded our world view to all sentient beings. To be compassionate is a virtue, an unselfish expression of your better self. When your first reaction to things you do not agree with is negative, you are being judgmental, which is one of the biggest impediments to compassion. This propensity to judge others often comes from an inflated ego. Your thoughts may include viewing others as wrong, stupid, uninformed, unintelligent, and of course viewing yourself as better than everyone else or least those you judge.

If you recognize suffering in others and actually decide you want to do something about it, you are practicing compassion. In our very imperfect world there are many opportunities to be compassionate. Some examples may include:

  • Chronic conditions (cancer, heart disease, etc.)
  • Starvation
  • Disease (pandemics)
  • Mental illness
  • Death
  • War such as Russia’s invasion and destruction of Ukraine
  • Racisim and oppressing people based on sexual preference

There are no shortages of pain and suffering in our world, some of this may be very close to home for you. If you are a Buddhist, Christian, Jew, or Muslim you most likely have been taught compassion as part your doctrine or religion. Of course practicing compassion is not limited to a philosophy or religion, as an agnostic you may also be as compelled as anyone else to feel the pain and suffering that surrounds us and want to act. One could make the case that compassion is a universal virtue.

If you think you are a compassionate person, then you may realize the difference between empathy and compassion is about the action or lack of it. You can empathize with the plight of others, but if you do nothing about it you are not compassionate. This isn’t inherently bad and maybe it is a step in the right direction. The fact that you have empathy for others is better than as the quote above states you are just an observer. For most of us our heart is in the right place, but we don’t take that next step because we are so wrapped up in our own troubles, that we can’t take the time to act on the empathy we feel. Maybe we just don’t know how to help.

One of the things we have seen over the past couple of decades in the United States is that Americans are less inclined as in the past to belong to a religious entity like a church. You might ask why does this matter? Well in the past the church was a place that reinforced compassion as a virtue and maybe more importantly provided avenues to practice it by supporting numerous charities and causes. From the article on the web “America is losing its Religion” some of the statistics are shocking:

By the numbers: A Gallup poll released last week found just 47% of Americans reported belonging to a house of worship, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% as recently as 1999.

  • The shift away from organized religion is a 21st century phenomenon. U.S. religious membership was 73% when Gallup first measured it in 1937, and stayed above 70% for the next six decades.

Context: The decline in membership is primarily driven by a sharp rise in the “nones” — Americans who express no religious preference.

  • The percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion rose from 8% between 1998 and 2000 to 21% over the past three years, while the percentage of nones who do not belong to a house of worship has risen as well.

If religion as we know it continues to decline over the next couple of decades, what will replace it? Now you may be agnostic and feel that religion is unnecessary, but surely there will be a void of some sort, and those religious institutions that survive will have less to work with in terms of acting upon their compassion. The need for our society to practice compassion is not decreasing, in fact it is most certainly increasing. The vast income and wealth inequality has only forced more of our world wide population into poverty and often into homelessness.

If you have an awareness of all the suffering in this world and want to act upon it look at your own community. I don’t have all the answers, but there are food banks, homeless shelters, and other charitable organizations that my provide an avenue for your compassion. I feel that if we don’t act things are going to get progressively worse.

References

America is losing its religion

Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why?

In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace