Author Archives: Patrick Cole

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About Patrick Cole

Husband, parent and writer. Sharing stories with a little humor and wisdom along the way.

Fostering Peace, Inside and Out

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Below is an excerpt from a Tricycle article on Inner Peace, Outer Peace. For the full article shared below see: tricycle.org/article/bhikkhu-bodhi-peace/

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A Theravada monk and scholar outlines three steps toward real peace, and the role of our spiritual practice in achieving it.

When I reflect on the challenge of achieving peace in today’s world, I have found it useful to treat the subject under three main headings: (1) The Obstacles to Achieving Peace—the barriers that maintain tension and foment conflict; (2) The Prerequisites of Peace—the goals we should pursue to achieve peace; and (3) The Means to Realizing these Goals. Each can in turn be analyzed into three secondary aspects.

The Obstacles to Achieving Peace

(1) Profit-seeking: Driven by the urge to expand profits, global corporations and other mammoth enterprises flood the market with harmful or frivolous commodities. They spend billions on advertising, despoil the natural environment with toxic waste, and scuttle laws that protect workers and consumers. They take wild risks which, when successful, benefit management and shareholders, and when failures, push the costs on to the public. The neoliberal economy has led to wider inequality of incomes and wealth. Recent figures reveal that the richest 70 people now own more wealth than the poorest half of the world, while in the US a mere 40 individuals own as much wealth as the bottom half. High levels of income inequality are associated with economic instability and crisis, whereas more equal societies tend to be more stable and to enjoy longer periods of sustained growth. More unequal societies show higher rates of violent crime and lower levels of social trust; more equal societies have lower crime rates and greater social trust. Greater economic equality thus contributes to peace.

(2) Plunder: Since the dawn of the industrial era we have been plundering nature’s treasures with reckless abandon. Today, this extractionist frame of mind drives us ever closer to the edge of calamity as rapacious economic activity disrupts the natural climate cycles on which human life depends. The big fossil fuel corporations plunder the earth for oil, coal, and gas, clearing ancient forests, blasting mountains to bits, and drilling down into the ocean depths. They transport the substances they extract over vast distances from source to refinery to market. Factories fill the skies with carbon dioxide, particulate matter, and harmful toxins. Extraction operations discharge toxic waste into rivers and lakes, poisoning the water resources on which whole communities depend.

Cumulative carbon emissions are cooking the planet and warming the seas. We’ve already had a taste of the future in the strange weather events that occur with greater frequency: droughts, floods, heat waves, and crop failures. As large regions of the earth turn barren, we will face mass migrations that can raise tensions and ignite violent confrontations. States may fail, unleashing chaos and giving the chance for tyrants to seize power and launch campaigns of conquest.

(3) Power projection: Driven by narrow economic interests, the powerful nations seek to enhance their might by projecting strategies of full-spectrum dominance across the globe. They finance ever more sophisticated weapons systems, spend billions on armaments, and spy on their citizens. They manipulate international protocols to their advantage, heightening tensions among old rivals. Weapons corporations thrive on the tensions, which they regard as new opportunities for profit. Global hostilities boil, and in certain hot spots periodically explode in outbursts of lethal violence.

The Prerequisites to Achieving Peace

(1) Protection: To achieve real peace, we need a global commitment to protecting people everywhere from harm and misery. This commitment must be rooted in a universal perspective that enables us to see all people as brothers and sisters, worthy of care and respect regardless of their ethnic, national, and religious identity. As Americans we can’t go on thinking that American lives are more important than the lives of people elsewhere—in Iraq and Afghanistan, in South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. We can’t think that only the lives of middle-class people count, but not the lives of black youths in Chicago, herdsmen in Ethiopia, rice farmers in the Philippines, or factory workers in Bangladesh. Rather, we must regard all people as endowed with intrinsic value, which we must affirm by establishing greater economic, social, and political justice.

(2) Preservation. The greatest challenge of our time is to avoid climate chaos. The earth is our irreplaceable home, and if we destroy it, we will have no other place to go. At the rate we’re spitting out greenhouse gases, within a few decades we may raise the earth’s temperature to the point where the planet becomes inhospitable to human life. All the money in the world will be worthless on a planet where the grain belts have withered and oceans have turned deadly acidic.

We need to start making a rapid and full-scale transition to a new economy powered by clean and renewable sources of energy. The sun, wind, and heat of the earth are capable of providing us with all the energy we need. The main obstacle to date has been the lack of political will, whereby a band of powerful corporations, lobbyists, and compliant politicians reject the hard truths of science and even the clear decrees of rational self-interest.

We must stand up against moneyed interests and press our governments and civil groups to expedite the transition to a clean-energy future. Our window of opportunity is closing, and we must act fast before it slams shut. We need a sense of urgency, as if our clothes were on fire, an urge to act to preserve this precious planet—a miracle in a sea of cosmic dust, a blue-green pearl teeming with living forms.

(3) Prosperity. While extreme wealth for a few means misery for many others, prosperity is a good in which we all should be able to share. There is certainly enough wealth in the world to ensure that everyone can obtain sufficient food, clothing, housing, and medical care. The problem is not lack of wealth but its uneven distribution.

To lay the foundations for real peace, both national policies and international institutions must give precedence to uplifting people from the worst extremes of poverty. In today’s world, 900 million people live in perpetual food insecurity, while at least two billion suffer from malnutrition. Six million people a year, over half of them children, die from chronic hunger and related illnesses. The UN estimates that it would take just $30 billion a year to solve world hunger, a small fraction of the $737 billion that the US spent on defense in 2012. Tackling global hunger is not only a moral and ethical obligation but a policy that would have positive economic impacts and promote global solidarity. It could be a giant step in the direction of world peace.

Here in the US, some 50 million people—one out of seven—live in poverty. A half-century ago, the US had a social system that, while far from perfect, excelled in its public services. Over the past 30 years, many of these services have been downgraded or slashed. As the wealthiest country in the world, we can easily provide for the basic needs of all our citizens. But this will require new values. Instead of exalting individualism and ambition, we should prize cooperation and compassion. Instead of inciting competition, we should nurture harmonious communities and social solidarity.

The Means to Realizing these Goals

Peace. Peace is not only the goal of our efforts but also a means for reaching that goal. Peace belongs to the means because in order to establish peace, we must be peaceful ourselves. If our minds are agitated by anger and resentment, our efforts to promote peace are more likely to create more conflict and perhaps ignite more violence. An angry mind is not a reliable instrument for promoting peace. But when our minds are peaceful, our bodily actions will be peaceful, and we will convey an ambiance of love, care, and mercy, which will help to establish peaceful relations.

Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi lives and teaches at Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel, New York. He is a translator of texts from the Pali canon and the cofounder of Buddhist Global Relief.

Peace: How Realistic Is It?

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Below is an excerpt from a Tricycle article written in 2003.

Small Expectations, Small Joys

Dr. Stephen Fulder, a peace activist in Israel, sees a world conditioned to believe in war.

In Israel you live under the constant threat of terror attack. How do you cope with the fear and avoid reactivity? The terror here has been going on for twenty or thirty years, in different ways, whether it’s the threat of war or the constant military response to terror attacks. Everyone here is a soldier, everyone carries a gun, and there’s a general sense of underlying alarm. So this is not new, and in the dharma community we do work with it, and we do address it in retreat, and people do practice to cultivate equanimity in the face of insecurity. However, what the dharma community finds difficult is the low-level anxiety that creeps in under their guard; it’s constantly picked up. Those who don’t practice intensively really feel that it slowly and surely eats away at their joy of life and their relationships, and it is something that changes, very slightly, the color of the mind. This anxiety is our real problem. It very commonly emerges in retreats.

As a peace activist, how do you respond to somebody who says, “Listen, we’re under attack. Violence is our only effective response, and any other method is unrealistic.” Violent response fuels a very clear cycle of reactivity. Such a response is not only ineffective, damaging to both sides, it also prolongs conflict. We have to protect life, but this is not done by becoming more oppressive of another community. Indeed, if you ask whether we’d physically restrain a suicide bomber in order to stop him from blowing up a bus, I think everybody would say sure. But would you bomb a community of Palestinians in order to prevent it? I would say that’s a disaster, and it mustn’t be done. Other ways have not been exhausted. People in the peace movement in Israel talk about pursuing other strategies, but often nobody’s listening. Both Israel and Palestine are like two runaway buses. The public is locked into reactivity on a national level. Out of despair, people say, “Oh, there’s no other way, only violence works.” That simply isn’t true, it’s merely conditioning.

You say nobody is listening. Is that disheartening? What motivates you to continue, then? We’re in this for the long term. It’s not disheartening, because there are always a few people who listen. I have no way of predicting, forcing, or expecting results. We’re really throwing our bread on the water and continuing on. You will despair if you expect results or major change. There are forces here that are so much bigger than we are. But there’s hope. I’ll give you an example: We had three years of intensive dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. We used to bring Israelis over to the Palestinian communities and sit in dialogue for several days together. This was a very difficult project, but it went on year after year, and major changes happened to people who participated. Along came the second Intifada [Palestinian uprising], and it seemed to wipe the whole thing out. The same Palestinians we were talking to went back to the streets, and Israelis who were more peace-oriented were suddenly taking an aggressive stance. But there was also an irreversible change in some people, and they went on to become the strongest peace activists now working in the Israeli and Palestinian communities. So results do happen, but we cannot predict where they will happen or how. Things have to take their course. So that’s our response: to reduce expectations, to keep going, and to look for small joys, small flowerings of wisdom along the way.

When you say all options have not been exhausted, is there one in particular that you can point to that has not been given a sufficient chance to work? Yes: the option of listening. There is a tremendous amount of political demagoguery on both sides, whipping up anger and hate. There’s very little intentional work at the level of government or NGOs to create more dialogue between people. And dialogue is crucial here, because the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians do want peace, but people aren’t listening to each other’s stories, or creating a forum where these stories are properly heard. So dialogue and listening, at the level of media or political discourse on both sides, haven’t been explored.

Given the complexity of this conflict, and the mistrust on both sides, how realistic is peace, and how do you respond to those who insist that it isn’t? My response would be that peace is everywhere, you just have to notice it. It’s extremely realistic to know that people are in relationship with each other and that we affect each other’s fate. There’s a total intimacy between our two communities: we live on the same land, use the same water, speak more or less the same language, share the same food. We are like two brothers. So on a local level, interrelation, connection, and peace have already been there. And the Buddhist way is helping us to see that conflict comes only out of despair, out of resignation, out of a negative cast of mind, out of fear and hate. And you see this very, very clearly in the Middle East. Without the fear and hate, slowly these two communities can come together. The minute fear and hate arise, we are far apart again. This has been happening for fifty years. The Buddhist message cleans the psychological landscape of fear and hate, and peace simply happens by itself. People suddenly notice that they no longer need to fight.

See the full article from Tricycle here: tricycle.org/magazine/peace-how-realistic-it/

Concentration, Discipline & Freedom

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Two sources connecting to one another. See Lynn J Kelly‘s and Jocko Willink‘s quotes and references for more information below.


The Buddha’s Advice to Laypeople
Steadying the mind by Lynn J Kelly

The perfection or pāramī of concentration is also one of the factors of the Buddha’s 8-fold path. It’s an element of practice that many find challenging or frustrating, but it is essential to making solid progress towards liberation.

Of course, we can concentrate when we’re focused on something we care about, whether it’s making a meal, or a playing a card game, or completing a project. Can we care about refining our minds as much as we care about anything else? Thanissaro Bhikkhu argues that in order to develop a solid mental base through concentration, we have to first commit to the Buddha’s path.

Read the full transcript of the talk this excerpt is taken from here: https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/Meditations9/Section0032.html

All too often it happens that when you sit down to concentrate on the breath, you stay with the breath for a little bit and then you’re off someplace else. You come back, you stay with it a little bit longer, but then you’re off again. This happens so many times that you begin to get discouraged. You think, “Maybe this concentration is no good,” so you throw it away. Instead, you should think that it’s like having a baby. You feed it. But then it cries. Then you have to change and wash the diapers. Then you have to feed it again. And it cries. But you don’t throw the baby away. You just realize that it needs extra work, continuous work. It’s the same with your concentration. …

Again, it’s like raising a child. In the beginning, you have to do everything for it: feed it, clothe it, clean it, comfort it. But after a while, the child begins to feed itself, clean itself, look after itself. You still have to watch over it. After all, it is your child and it’s still not an adult. But it’s not as difficult as in the first stage when it was a baby. So even though concentration may be difficult in the beginning, don’t think it’s going to always be that way. It’ll mature. But for it to mature, you have to give it what it needs. Give it your full attention. Be alert. Be mindful. Stick with it. Keep coming back, coming back. Keep encouraging yourself. And that’s how your feeble concentration becomes strong.

By training the mind to collect itself regularly, a number of benefits can accrue. First, experiencing a calm(er) mind is pleasant in itself. Every degree of tranquility that we access represents a commensurate degree of relief from agitation; when anxiety is completely absent, what comes in its place is a form of bliss. The other important purpose of cultivating concentration is that it supports the development of mindfulness as nothing else can. With a good balance of mindfulness and concentration, the inevitable result is growing wisdom; a clarity that can make our whole lives more livable and fruitful.

Steadying the mind
https://buddhasadvice.wordpress.com/2024/03/31/steadying-the-mind/#like-19354

From Jocko Willink’s book DISCIPLINE EQUALS FREEDOM – Field Manual

“Where does discipline come from? This is a simple answer. Discipline comes from within. Discipline is an internal force.”

http://www.amazon.com/s?k=discipline+equals+freedom+field+manual

Stop Worring About Results

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‘Let God Paint the Windows’

How meditation teacher Martin Aylward learned to stop worrying about the fruits of his actions and instead pay attention to the care with which he engaged in them. By Martin Aylward FEB 01, 2022

When I was 19 years old, I traveled to India with a one-way ticket and no luggage. At that point, I hadn’t learned how to be a human yet, let alone an adult human, and honestly, I didn’t really want to be a human—I wanted to be some kind of spiritual being. After completing my first ten-day meditation course in Dharamsala, I fell in love with meditation, and in a characteristically grandiose adolescent way, I decided to head off to the caves. After all, that was what yogis did (or so I believed). I walked out of Dharamsala straight up into the hills. I was terrified. I didn’t have any food or blankets, and I had no idea what I was doing, but I thought that was the whole point.

Luckily, I ran into an old sadhu, who asked me where I was going. I told him, “I’m off to the cave to meditate.” He rolled his eyes and said, “Why don’t you go across that valley and up that path? You’ll find this one Baba living there. He has a little place. Maybe you can stay with him.”

I went across the valley and up the path to ask the Baba if I could stay with him. He told me I could sleep there for three nights, and I ended up staying for most of the next three years. He never actually instructed me in meditation—he knew I had taken a meditation course, so he said I could keep practicing as I had been. In fact, he never tried to teach me anything at all, but I learned a lot just by being in his presence.

Mindfulness can sound like a technique, which is one reason I prefer to use the term “presence.” I learned about presence from Babaji by osmosis, simply witnessing the way he made tea, the way he moved a piece of firewood around, the way he undid the lid of a jar, or the way we washed pots together. It was like everything was worthy of attention. Everything was worthy of care. And in my scattered, adolescent mind full of overly complicated ideas about meditation, it was incredibly relieving and educational to be bringing my practice into the way I unscrewed the tea lid. On the one hand, I felt very clumsy and awkward next to Babaji, but on the other, I also felt like he was relentlessly kind and forgiving and generous-spirited to me, and that helped invite me to become attentive in a quiet way.

One day, when I was living with Babaji, I decided to repaint the ashram windows. I was very enthusiastic about it and worked eagerly. After the first day, Babaji said to me, “Your problem is you’re trying to paint the windows. Just stop. Just take care of the brushstrokes, and let God paint the windows. It’s not your responsibility. You just take care.” Then I started to notice the smell and the way the light caught the paint. I began to give myself to the process.

After four or five days of sanding and painting, as I stood back and saw the red shutters on the windows of the ashram, I was in awe. Sure enough, I had taken care of the brushstrokes, and God had painted the windows. Babaji taught me how to let go of worrying about the fruits of my actions and instead pay attention to the quality of care with which I engaged in them. This attention is just another word for love. You could say, “I’m giving attention to my breath,” or “I’m giving attention to painting the windows,” but it’s equally, “I’m learning how to love this in-breath, learning how to love this brushstroke.” The practice of attention is learning how to love.

Excerpted from “Coming Back to Embodiment,” an episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s podcast with James Shaheen and Sharon Salzberg.

Read an excerpt from Aylward’s recent book, Awake Where You Are, here.

Martin Aylward is a co-founding teacher of the Tapovan Dharma Community at Le Moulin de Chaves monastery in southwestern France.