by Stefan Schindler
The peacemaker’s path is a rhythm, a balance, a dialectic. Faced with the horrors of the postmodern world, it is necessary to refresh oneself daily with what Kierkegaard calls “infinite inwardness.” In Asian terms – Buddhism is a way of staying sane in a world gone mad, and a way of healing the madness. Detachment and a passion for compassion go together like Yin and Yang.
It’s not a question of cultivating apathy, in any degree. It’s a question of letting go, having faith, taking the time to put the world on hold to sink into the bliss-wisdom-grace of one’s own enlightened heart, there to be nourished, strengthened, and refreshed, so as to return to the world with a passionate but equanimitous dedication to peace and justice.
Total freedom from suffering is a nirvanic ideal, and if we’re lucky, we occasionally get a fleeting glimpse of it; but striving for it is like a monkey trying to grasp the moon’s reflection in a pond. Buddha was a pragmatist. His path to equanimity – balancing compassion and detachment – is a Middle Way. For us, it’s a razor’s edge. And Socratic refreshment of the soul – Kierkegaard’s boundless faith in what Plato calls the Good, the True, and the Beautiful – can benefit from meditation, but just as easily be found in a walk in the park, a walk in the forest, a walk along the beach, baking bread, or pruning a garden.
You and I and so many others … we’re just Pilgrims on The Path, and it’s OK to feel, really feel, sorrow, even anger, so long as we attempt to respond to those emotions with some degree of enlightenment. For us, a broken heart is an Opening Heart. Crucifixion leading to Resurrection. Not merely once or twice in a lifetime. Rather, the more informed one is, the more haunted life becomes by the tragic and absurd – all the unnecessary and ceaseless suffering humans cause other humans – and the crucifixion-resurrection rhythm becomes a part of every day, for decades.
Daily faced with the Chinese holocaust in Tibet, going on sixty years now, perhaps there is no more broken-hearted person in the world than the Dalai Lama, and yet, from the depths of that abyss he daily rises to teach peace and work for peace, with a smile and a sense of irony and humor, because in that same abyss he finds a measure of peace, where the finite is kissed by the infinite.
