Peace Within Us, Peace Among Us

Imagine this if you will: The Jesus we call Christ could have chosen not to follow a radical path. He could have put on the Parasitic robes, found himself a nice seat in his local synagogue and grown old opening the scriptures to his people. In his village, maybe for a generation or two, people would have recalled what a wonderful Rabbi he had been, so wise, so caring. But we who now call ourselves Christians would have no inkling of who he was. History would show no trace of him. Jesus—just another small town Rabbi who served his people well, then died.

Imagine who we would be. Maybe we would practice some kind of pantheism, worshipping nature. Some might ask “what’s wrong with that?” Maybe we’d all be agnostics. Maybe we’d be chanting “Allah Akbar,” although I’m not sure there’d be an Islam if there hadn’t been Christianity. The God shared by the three great Semitic faiths may have remained the God of the Jews.

Fortunately, Jesus was a man of courage who rejected the conventional for a radical path. He confronted the authorities of his time in the name of the poor and oppressed, in the name of God’s true way of selfless mercy and compassion, and he was killed for his efforts. In his death we found inspiration for a way of life.

Imagine this: The Buddha decided not to forego the life of luxury he knew as a member of his culture’s aristocratic elite, decided not to make a radical change, decided he would instead try to influence the “system” from within. In his father’s kingdom, maybe for a generation or two, people would have said, “Oh that Prince Siddhartha, wasn’t he a kind man? So much more understanding and selfless than most of the wealthy.” It’s true; he might have helped make things marginally better for awhile, but he would not have left behind the path to meaning we know today as Buddhism.

For all their differences—one a poor boy, the other a prince—Jesus and the Buddha shared this in common: they both felt the breath of the great beyond, the eternal more, God’s breath if you will, blowing on their necks. And they didn’t run from it. They didn’t try to convince themselves God was just trying to cool them off when in fact God was trying to fire them up. They accepted the challenge, radical as it was, and each in his own way set out to make God’s will known in the world.

Radical. For some it’s a frightening word, but it works well to describe either Jesus or the Buddha. Both call us to radical change. Many times people ask or even debate whether the goal of peace is best reached by promoting a peace within each of us or a peace among all of us. Do we project a world of peace, love and compassion by first building such a world within our own hearts, or do we follow the existential path of publicly demanding peace and compassion and then find peace for ourselves in knowing we’ve done what God asks? How people answer often influences which of the two prophets is most appealing. My answer is that the paths are parallel, if not the same path. Choosing between the two is a false choice. We build the worlds of peace within us and peace around us together. Jesus, who in his ministry confronted the power structure in the name of peace and fairness, also taught a simple love between neighbors and the solitude of prayer, a form of meditation. The Buddha, who we think of as encouraging meditation as a path to enlightenment, broke radically from his class and culture after he was exposed to the terrible suffering of the masses. Despite their differences in style, both prophets call for radical departure in the quest to become one with God.

Each of us must decide for ourselves how to begin the journey to peace. What is required is that we journey with radical intentions. And along the way we must nurture both the peace within and the peace among us or our journey will be fruitless.

I was inspired to write about radical intentions by two articles I read this week, the first from the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Palestine who sent an open letter to President Obama which reads in part: “On Tuesday June 15th, you said of the protests in Iran, ‘When I see peaceful dissent being suppressed, whenever that takes place, it is of concern to me and it is of concern to the American people.’ For the last 13 years, Christian Peacemaker Teams have witnessed the brutal suppression of peaceful dissent here in Palestine. … Every day, Palestinians hold nonviolent demonstrations and defy curfews and closed military zones. They rebuild demolished homes and work their land despite the threat of arrest and attack. Though their struggle is largely ignored by the media, we find inspiration in the way Palestinians are working for justice and peace. …”

The second article was a column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times warning that the eager-to-compromise approach of the Obama team on health care reform would likely lead to a measure so watered down as to be useless. Now is the time to do the job once and for all, Krugman argues, and that means showing the courage to act with radical will.

What is the purpose of faith? Why do we seek enlightenment? Is it so we can rest easy in our own cocoons? Study the lives and teachings of Jesus called the Christ and Siddhartha Gautama called the Buddha, and you will see that the purpose is radical change and nothing less than a restoration of a world stripped of its glory by humankind.