Unfortunately there are wars not just because of trials of strength between groups and nations, but also because it is in the interests of some to keep others at war. The Middle East was a relatively peaceful place when I lived there as a small child, even though it has been a theatre of wars throughout history. For most of my lifetime, however, wars have gone on there and the overspill from those wars affects us all. Despite the fact that we hate these tragic events in our Western cities, we should also reflect that they are relatively small compared with the carnage going on in the region itself.London is not Aleppo.
The terrible war in Syria was needlessly provoked, has become a proxy war in a needless tension between East and West, is needlessly sustained both by those who take sides and by those who actually do not want either side to win and so prefer an enduring chaos. All of this provocation is unnecessary from the point of view of a person of peace, but that does not mean that the things that are happening are unmotivated. Syria is a small country. The powers involved in this war are huge. If they wanted peace it would surely be possible. Such is the world we live in. The events in London are awful - heart rending - but they are as nothing to the things that are happening in Syria itself. Somehow we are all caught up in this madness of animosity, the delusion of greed and hate, that keeps all this going. No amount of "security measures" can ever substitute for real peace, yet no real peace is possible while we remain at war in our attitudes.
We have then to ask, what would happen if there were real peace? If there were no need for armies any more there would be no borders. Governments would find it difficult to keep control of their people. Would they pay their taxes? Who would do the policing? Would gang wars replace national ones? Is there really going to be such a change of heart in enough people for peace to become a natural state of affairs in which everybody does their duty and never seeks to carve out a personal or group advantage at the expense of others? Unlikely. People would have to live calmly with other people who had different values, different outlooks, different habits and cultures, somehow free from resentment, disgust, and the urge to get the other to change. How can we even move in that direction? The best that human's have achieved so far is to be found in combative, oppositional forms of polity that are, nonetheless, bounded by civilised rules that make it possible to change governments without bloodshed and to battle over causes without resorting to actual violence. We should be grateful to the civic state system, even while recognising that it is still far from perfection.
We can build peace as best we can where we are. If possible we can create peaceful places and peaceful communities and we can avoid stirring up the devils. Buddhism and Taoism are, in one sense, religions of learning to disappear. When you do not move, the devils cannot see you. Learning to move without moving is the supreme art. This is what the Taoists call wei wu wei. However, such unpretentious moving is important. The Buddhist bhikkhu was a friar - a holy person who wandered - taking peace wherever he went. Travel does broaden the mind and the traveller who comes not to colonise but to understand and share is a gift to the world.
I feel very sad for London, Paris, Brussels, Madrid, New York, for their terror events. Yet I feel even sadder for the Middle East where I spent an idyllic childhood, a region that has degenerated into chaos and mayhem under influences that are by no means entirely indigenous to the region, but are a result of it being "the fulcrum of the world" where so many competing interests collide. There, all the petty animosity that we are all party to in different ways, coalesces and culminates as a vast turmoil of great waves, waves of blood and fire.
Every day I pray for solace for the hearts that everywhere lie broken, shattered by this dreadful scourge of war and terror which is an endemic disease of our species.
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