War and Peace - How We Lose Our Happiness

War is the opposite of peace. When we say that we wage war in order to secure the peace, this is delusion, this is being ignorant of the truth of the moment, which is war, and replacing it with an ideal for the future, which is peace. It is a shell game. If we believe and confuse ourselves with these kinds of ideals, soon we are claiming that we are really peaceful (if it wasn't for this darn war), in order to live up to some kind of an ideal, when in fact we are violent.

This play of psychology happens all the time. Instead of actually being aware of what we are, we live in worlds of illusion and images of what we imagine ourselves to be, or hope to be, and images are never true. Our thoughts, speech, and actions reveal the truth of our character, not our beliefs and principles.

This is an important area to discuss, because if we in fact live in illusions and images, we can never deal with what is directly before us and can only deal with our confused idea of what is happening. This always leads to disorder and conflict. Then there is a dichotomy between what our thoughts are and what reality is, and when we attempt to make the adjustment between the principle and the reality, conflict appears and no progress is made. This is where we lose our happiness. Instead of adjusting, if we could only "stop and see," only one time - see what we are doing and how we are fooling ourselves, then we could change our entire perspective.

An indication of how we fool ourselves is when we continue down the same paths of anger and hatred with nothing internally ever changing. Either we don't realize how angry we are, or we are proud of our anger. For example, if we believe that we, as a person, are kind, and the reality is that we are not kind at all but merely the product of what we read in books and hear from others, then when we do hear truth, we will naturally reject it. We reject it because the adjustment, from images based on second hand knowledge to reality based on actual experience is too great a chasm to traverse.

Instead, we will vociferously deny the truth by ignoring it and attacking the messenger, whether the messenger is a human being or a traumatic event such as death. Either way, a seed is planted. Over time, as this truth seeps into our principles whether that truth says that everything changes, that human life involves suffering, or that there is no permanent entity behind this psycho-physical entity we call ourselves; we will gradually accept truth, and believe that it is our own idea. This is a psychological thing and a way of accepting a new idea.

We can begin to see by becoming aware of ourselves and working on ourselves. Working on, or attempting to change others, is only a clever diversion and a temporary escape from the way things actually are. It all starts with opening up to what we actually are right now, this moment. To see what we are right now, this moment, requires an objective observation, and the best observation that I know is observing our own thoughts. All ideals, all beliefs, all principles are based on thought, and are therefore false. All thought is false, not truth, and any observation other than observing our thoughts and emotions takes us outside of ourselves where images and principles are formed, rather than an observable truth.

If you don't believe this, just look at the world. Even the highest principled and idealistic people with the finest of beliefs are full of anger toward those that don't agree with them. The world is on fire, religiously, economically, and politically.

It is time for each of us to look within ourselves.

"How easy it is to see your brother's faults,

How hard to face your own,

You winnow his in the wind like chaff,

But yours you hide,

Like a cheat covering up an unlikely throw."nn- The Dhammapadann