Within this premise lies the genesis of one of the strands of our marquee philosophy and the annual event of the Sri Vishnu Mohan Foundation - the Peace and Reconciliation Conference.
Peace cannot be there where hatred resides ( As articulated by Shrihariprasad Swami)
This is not what the learned do not know. But yet hatred in today’s world and for the individual is a foundational attribute. Everywhere there are Dhrtarashtras who say, janami dharmam na cha pravrttim, janami adharmam na ca nivrttim. I know what is dharma but I cannot practice it.
I know what is adharmam, but I cannot stop doing it.
Ironical to say the least. This is not what the seers of the past or the philosophies of progress have taught us. From Krishna to the Buddha, from Christianity to Hinduism the song of peace has always been heard louder when the notes of hatred have disappeared. Every time the war drums beat, the calls for peace have also been there. Sri Krishna stopped all talk of war and worked hard for peace. When I say this possibly there are echoes of peace at what cost and there is no point pursuing it for an individual.
But then has the world progressed because of wars? Has history recorded creators of war with the glory of shaping mankind? Peace in a way is the opposite of hatred. A mirror image that hatred would not want to see. The Buddha said, “Hatred does not cease by hatred. Hatred ceases by love. The world does not know that we must all come to an end here; --but those who know it, their quarrels cease at once”. But it is our duty to look at peace from the point of view of growth and as a character that we engender in ourselves. If there is anything that the Indian philosophical tradition teaches us it is that the way to perfection is slow but sure and that, that way is by constant effort to change ourselves, rejecting unpleasant and unnecessary traits and cultivating positive and good ones. We have so much in ourselves, memories, unfulfilled dreams and misunderstanding in our minds that shape our thinking. We must work, just like a farmer works in his field weeding out the bad and increasing the good so that our minds are free from hatred and misunderstanding.
From Sri Sathguru:
Sri Sri Sri Vishnu Mohan, an ideal disciple, placed everything before me, whatever reactions he received, whether they were good or bad or indifferent and forgot about it afterwards. He did not think it was done to him. Once he placed it before me, he forgot it and so he was always happy, peaceful and calm. The happiness which comes from worldly things is not really happiness - it can be spoilt easily and then becomes pain. But other people, they feel that good and evil is being done to them. Since their concentration is on themselves - they cannot offer it to God and so they run around in circles alternatively being happy and sorrowful.
Sri Sathguru said this on the morning of Vaikunta Ekadasi, 2003, while teaching the following verses (chapter 1 verses 3-4) of the Dhammapada:
“He abused me, he struck me, he overcame me, he robbed me” - In those who harbour such thoughts, hatred will never cease.
“He abused me, he struck me, he overcame me, he robbed me” - In those who do not harbour such thoughts, hatred will cease.
There is a widespread perception that we live in increasingly dangerous and violent times. Yet, recorded information tells us that at no other point in time of recorded world history have there been as few wars as, say, in the last 50 years, nor fatalities due to war, and the lowest number of concurrent conflicts across the world
Why this perception, about a lack of peace in the world.
A lot of the feeling of being at peace, is linked to whether justice that we see being meted out, is true justice.
It seems that there is a fear that true justice is, at best, something experienced only by very few. And certainly a strong part of this is that while justice may be delivered as per the prevailing law and regulations, it is often not true justice. Some people get jailed for that which seems trivial, and some people escape justice on purely technical grounds rather than on whether a crime was committed.
True justice, itself has many interpretations, ranging from morally defensible, contextual, fair, quick, or a combination of one or more of these. If the sentence is perceived to have a lot of subjectivity, interpretation, ambiguity, or biased, as often seems the case, then justice is not deemed to have been carried out.
This is the larger import of the 10th Peace and Reconciliation Conference that will be held in April 2025. .
This is the tenth edition. The theme Peace is born of Justice has been planned to have many sub- strands.
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