Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the September - October 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Ellwood, Robert S.. "Theosophy on War and Peace." Quest  91.5 (SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2003):164-170.

By Robert S. Ellwood

Both of the principal founders of the Theosophical Society in 1875, the Russian emigre Helena P. Blavatsky and the New York lawyer and journalist Henry Steel Olcott, had some background in military matters. Blavatsky's father had been a career officer in the army of the czar, and Olcott had served the Union during the Civil War as an investigator of fraudulent suppliers, and also in the investigation of Lincoln's assassination, acquiring the more or less the honorary title of Colonel.

But despite this exposure, the issue of a coherent Theosophical view on the morality and legitimacy of war does not seem to have presented itself forcefully to Blavatsky and Olcott. The latter does not appear to touch on it at all, and Helena Blavatsky refers to war only in passing and as a matter of course as the vast mythologies of The Secret Doctrine unfold, revealing conflicts between various primordial races.

Blavatsky's The Key to Theosophy (1889) contains much indictment of the wrongs of society, stating as humanity's due "full recognition of equal rights and privileges for all, and without distinction of race, color, social position, or birth," and stating unequivocally that "the whole present system of politics is built on the oblivion of such rights, and the most fierce assertion of national selfishness." But this important late work also affirms that Theosophy is not a political organization, and states that political reforms cannot be achieved before "we have effected a reform in human nature." Work to influence public opinion is therefore important. Individual Theosophists may pursue their own reformist agendas, even if superficially different; by creating good karma and because of the solidarity of the human race, they will all work together for good in the end. War is not explicitly cited as an evil, unlike the evils of extremes of wealth and poverty; this is no doubt characteristic of the Anglo-American perspective of 1889. The late Victorian decades of relative peace obscured the war issue somewhat, but the horrors of the industrial revolution's fetid urban slums, and the social injustice they betokened, were all too apparent.

With those ills, however, came the zeal of the late Victorian reformers, many of them women. No one was more characteristic of the type than Annie Besant (1847-1933). Once freed from her lot as an unhappy wife of an Anglican parson, she plunged into the frontlines of reform, working closely with the radical freethinker Charles Bradlaugh. She was heavily and very controversially involved in labor organization, dissemination of birth control information, the London School Board, the socialist Fabian Society, and much else. In 1889, after reviewing The Secret Doctrine, she moved away from atheistic free thought and joined the Theosophical Society, bringing to this new enthusiasm the social as well as intellectual passion that had animated her earlier commitments. While Theosophy had from the beginning tended to attract people of liberal inclination, it was Annie Besant more than any other single individual who made it a vehicle for what Catherine Wessinger has called "progressive messianism." This viewpoint embraced, Wessinger believes, a millennialist belief in coming world perfection attained with superhuman help, in the persons of the Theosophical Masters and particularly the World Teacher, but achieved gradually rather than with apocalyptic suddenness. In Besant's vision, the messianic process would bring to fruition all the worthy causes for which she had labored with somewhat less hope, at least on the spiritual side, in her pre-Theosophical days. She was in a good position to try to implement the vision after becoming International President of the (Adyar) Theosophical Society in 1907, an office she held till her death in 1933.

The issue of world peace and of finding a way to make war obsolete came more to the fore of public consciousness during Besant's early Theosophical years in the 1890s and the Edwardian period. These years saw of the founding of the Nobel Peace Prize, the much-publicized Hague Conference on Peace in 1899, and the establishment of the World Court in that Dutch city. Attention to peace issues on the part of reformers grew as the world situation leading up to the First World War became more tense. That conflict was to sorely test the progressivist mood of the century's first decade, at the same time pushing it into new dimensions.

In this situation Annie Besant wrote about war and peace on several occasions. In general the concept of dramatic world evolution, in which war might have a necessary part, took precedence for her over strict pacifism. This perspective was only enhanced by her Theosophical regard for the Hindu classics, in which—at least on the level of ordinary exoteric understanding—war played as central a part as in the comparable epics of Homer. Thus in her preface to a retelling of the Ramayana for Indian students, she writes of its climactic war by Rama and his monkey allies to rescue Sita from the demon Ravana in terms of the long sweep of evolution, saying, "In order that this evolution may take place, two things are necessary—two forces that apparently work the one against the other... The force that pushes against evolution is as necessary for it as the one which pushes it onwards." In this unavoidable conflict it may be a requisite for an avatar like Rama to appear, as an "ideal king and warrior," to exemplify the "manly virtues," for "No nation can be great which lets slip out of its character these strong and virile virtues, and we must rebuild them in India's sons."

The circumstances when these qualities might be called for were spelled out clearly in Besant's introduction to another of India's great classics, the Mahabharata, within which the Bhagavad Gita is set. Of this epic of epochal war between rival contenders for the throne of an ancient kingdom, she writes:

Sometimes a whole nation goes wrong. Then the Gods place in its way a great war, or a famine, or a plague. The nation is gone wrong and must be driven right, or has gone wrong and must suffer, so as not to go wrong again. And the Great War, the story of which we are going to study, was brought about by the Gods, because it was necessary for the evolution of the nation.

This passage, undoubtedly written with the then-recent Great War of 1914-18 in mind, reaffirms still more clearly that war can be of evolutionary and even character-building benefit.

In 1940, as another great conflict was underway, the Theosophical Publishing House in Adyar produced a slim volume in the "Besant Spirit Series" called The High Purpose of War. Containing an enthusiastic foreword by George S. Arundale, it offers a collection of passages on this theme culled from her lectures and writings, mainly of course, from the World War I era. She continued:

We, who are servants of the White Brotherhood, who regard Love as the supreme Virtue, and who seek to enter into the Coming Age of Brotherhood and Co-operation, we can but follow the Guardians of Humanity, and work for the triumph of the Allied Powers who represent Right as against Might, and Humanity as against Savagery. The Theosophical Society, the society of the Divine Wisdom, founded by members of the White Brotherhood and Their Messenger in the world, must throw itself on the side which embodies the Divine Will for evolution, the side on which are fighting the super-men of the Day.

A contemporary, and rival, of Annie Besant in Theosophical circles was the American, Katherine Tingley (1847-1929). Like Besant, she was active in social work before coming to Theosophy, and was also a Spiritualist. She founded a Society of Mercy in 1887 to visit hospitals and prisons, supporting it with dramatic recitals and Spiritualistic readings. She established the Martha Washington Home for the Aged in 1889, and a Do-Good Mission in New York in 1891. Her Spiritualistic and social concerns led to her meeting with William Q. Judge, head of the American Section of the Theosophical Society, in 1894. She became a Theosophist, convinced that its worldview placed both her spiritual and humanitarian commitments on a deep footing, and quickly became a close confidante of Judge.

Tingley was therefore prepared to play a leading role in dramatic Theosophical events that were about to unfold. In 1895, at Judge's urging, the American Section declared its independence from the international Theosophical Society headquartered at Adyar, Madras, India, under the presidency of Henry Steel Olcott, and with which Besant was affiliated. Judge died in 1896 and within a couple of years Tingley had risen to the Presidency of the separated American section, though Annie Besant, on a whirlwind tour, won back a number of U.S. lodges.

At the same time, Tingley was nursing another dream, the idea of a utopian Theosophical community, in which the arts, education, and labor would combine to create a new vision of human life. With the help of wealthy Theosophical patrons, the dream took shape. In 1897 land was bought on the Point Loma peninsula in San Diego, and by the turn of the century Katherine Tingley and many of her followers were settled in Lomaland, as the community was called, surrounded by imposing edifices with leaded glass domes and Egyptian gates. The Raja Yoga Academy, in which the community's children and youth were schooled, was particularly impressive because of its futuristic educational principles. She closed her remaining lodges, urging their leaders to join the new community.

Tingley was passionately concerned with peace, as with many social issues. As she once recalled, this opposition was grounded in childhood memories of the dreadful and unforgettable expressions she saw on the faces of Civil War casualties; after that she could never again credence those who spoke of the "honor" and "glory" to be attained on the battlefield. In 1913 she organized and attended an international Theosophical Peace Congress in Sweden, held June 22-29. On the way back, she attended the Twentieth World Peace Conference in The Hague August 18-23. More peace meetings were convened at Point Loma. Once war had erupted in all its horror, Tingley and the Lomaland community swung into action with a "Sacred Peace Day for the Nations" on September 28, 1914, which as a day of prayer for peace drew endorsements from President Wilson and several governors;  in San Diego there was a Peace Parade, "a great procession of protest" against the slaughter commencing across the Atlantic.

In her writings on peace, Tingley emphasized a special role for America. It was to be the "Spiritual Mecca of the World," "The Cradle of the Sixth Sub-race" which would carry humankind to a higher level, and "The Torch-Bearer of Peace." But she recognized that the present United States was an imperfect vessel for this lofty destiny, "its duties were only half done," and there was much to regret in its past wars and injustices. The case might have been better "if our great America had from the beginning realized that Brotherhood is a fact of Nature."

For Tingley, this was a key fact, reiterated repeatedly: Brotherhood is a fact of nature. War is based on essentially false premises, promoted by the "pernicious propaganda" of the news media, whereas peace is based on the fundamental fact of "that Divinity which now stands in the background of human consciousness." More than Besant, for all her reformist zeal, and the cause of Indian self-rule to which she was by now giving herself even at the cost of brief imprisonment, Tingley together with Lomaland stood for and sought to exemplify what might be called a utopian, rather than evolutionary (in the Besant sense), Theosophical millennialism.

The position was well put by a disciple of hers, Montague A. Machell, in connection with the 1913 Peace Congress in Sweden:

I believe it is because Theosophy teaches and has taught the doctrine of human solidarity throughout the ages, because it holds that all men are brothers and are bound into one great family by bonds infinitely stronger and more lasting than those of mere nationality, it is because of this that the Theosophical Leader is calling this International Theosophical Peace Congress... [For] Theosophy is another name for the Wisdom-Religion, that religion which is coeval with man himself and anterior even to the earth upon which he dwells. . .

This sentiment may well have been based on lines from Helena Blavatsky's Key to Theosophy: "All men have spiritually and physically the same origin, which is the fundamental teaching of Theosophy. As mankind is essentially of one and the same essence, and that essence is one—infinite, uncreate and eternal, whether we call it God or Nature—nothing, therefore, can affect one nation or man without affecting all other nations and all other men." (That Blavatskeian dictum was, ironically, imprinted on the bulletin of a Peace-Day Celebration of the International Theosophical Peace Society, held in the Isis Theatre at Point Loma, on May 18, 1914, only a little more than two months before Europe would be awash with the carnage Katherine Tingley and her Theosophists had so strived to avert.)

But, though undoubtedly very few Theosophists saw the world struggles of the twentieth century with any sentiment other than initial, visceral revulsion, there were alternative ways to interpret them and all wars in light of the Ancient Wisdom, as we have noted already in the writings of Annie Besant, just as there may be a latent tension between Blavatsky's practical ethics of The Key to Theosophy and the grand mytho-historical role conflict plays in The Secret Doctrine when rivalries between the godlike fore-parents of humanity were under consideration.These are what might be called Tingley's ethical unity theme and the Besantian "evolutionary" Bhagavad Gita theme, one emphasizing that peace only enacts the fundamental reality of natural and cosmic oneness, the other the possible spiritual dharma or duty evoked by conflict necessary to evolutionary change. To put it another way, it is the strain between ontological reality and evolutionary necessity, a tension evoked by very basic but unreconciled precepts of Theosophy's dynamic monism, predictably coming to a head in the issue of war. The conundrum can be viewed in further detail and possible resolution in positions taken in the next Theosophical generation.

It was during the period between the World Wars, and during the Second World War, that Theosophy, or perhaps one should say Theosophists, attained greater prominence than before or since in the political life of several nations large and small. These persons were by no means entirely motivated by Theosophy in their political decisions, and their attitudes and actions in regard to war and peace issues are often contradictory one to another. Nonetheless I believe that by examining their careers one can discover certain fundamental presuppositions that can in turn be related to Theosophy in the age of progressive messianism.

George Lansbury (1859-1940) was a long-time M.P. and prominent figure in the British Labor Party, serving as editor of the Labor national paper, the Daily Herald. In 1931 he became leader of the Laborite parliamentary opposition, at the time of the erstwhile Labor Prime Minister, Ramsey MacDonald's, controversial formation of a "National Government" coalition to confront the crisis of the Great Depression. Lansbury, an outspoken socialist since the 1890s, rallied those Laborites unwilling to support the coalition, and had that party then attained power would have become Prime Minister himself. He was also an uncompromising pacifist who had opposed World War I, and was a founder of the Fellowship of Reconciliation to aid conscientious objectors.

In 1935 he resigned his leadership position in parliament because he could not concur with his party's support of sanctions against Mussolini's Italy over the invasion of Ethiopia. While he had little sympathy for the fascist dictatorship, he believed that economic sanctions were simply war under another name. (It should be added there is reason to think that Lansbury's resignation on this matter of principle may have been partly arranged by powers within the Labor party who felt the times demanded fresh leadership.) In the remaining years of his life, the former parliamentary leader worked assiduously for peace in a darkening Europe by visiting numerous capitals and conferring with leaders.

Lansbury was a decided Christian, an active member of the Church of England who based his pacifism on Christian principles and was generally so identified. The press always called him a Christian pacifist; few sources other than Theosophical identify him as a Theosophist. With some justice, for the Christian pacifist position has rarely been put more forcefully than in a passage like this by Lansbury:

Jesus and his disciples handed on the blessed truth that love of God through love of mankind is the law of life. By this statement of fact, he once for all destroyed the terrible doctrine that out of violence and slaughter connected with war, and out of the competitive struggle for wealth, the best character traits are developed. It is not possible to gather figs from thistles or develop love from violence and destruction. We cannot show our reverence and love of God through crushing our enemy in the dust or forcing our business competitor into bankruptcy.

At the same time, Lansbury was a Theosophist. He tells us in his autobiography, My Life:

I joined the Theosophical Society in 1914, just after the outbreak of war. This was owing to Dr. Besant asking me to become a member of a committee of workmen to whom, under Sir Edwin Lutyens as architect, she had entrusted the erection of the Theosophical headquarters in Tavistock Square . . . but I had never thought of joining the Society till I came into close contact with the men and women on whose behalf we were carrying out this piece of work at Tavistock Square. I was asked to lecture for the society on Socialism and on Labor questions, and I also attended theosophical lectures. As a result of some talks with David Graham Pole I found myself able to accept the only condition of membership imposed by the Society, which is that all who join shall work together to establish a universal society based on Brotherhood. The Society has no other tests, theological or otherwise. . . I do not claim any more consistency for members of this society than for others, but I have personally received from my association with them more help, more encouragement to live my own life and express my own opinions and develop my own thinking than from any set of people with whom I have come in contact... It may be said I am prejudiced because of the great help I have received from some members of this Society in my political work, and especially in connection with the Daily Herald. It may be so, but. . . I am content to record my grateful thanks and appreciation of the friendship of. . . members of the Theosophical Society and Order of the Star."

It is clear that Lansbury as Theosophist was pre-eminently a result of the fact that, in the days of Annie Besant's leadership, the Society attracted the sort of people who were sympathetic to his concerns for pacifism and social justice, willing to talk with him about them, to listen to his lectures, and to give him much-appreciated practical support in his high-minded ventures. As indicated, most books and articles refer to him only as an Anglican and Christian pacifist, and in his own writing and speaking he gave far more attention to Christianity than Theosophy. Yet, perhaps in light of Theosophy's claim to represent a wisdom behind all religions, as well as its claim to espouse complete freedom of thought—a value very important to Lansbury—he saw no contradiction in the commitments. It is clear from the above passage that he valued what he believed the Theosophical Society represented, as well as his Theosophical associates, very highly.

Yet differences with Besant are apparent. At his death, early in the war he had tried so hard to prevent, the Christian Century spoke of him as "a saint in politics," and commented that while many might have considered his Christian pacifist efforts "a waste of energy and a revelation of pitiable naïveté," "we (Christian Century) believe no life devoted to any great aim as completely as Lansbury's was devoted to peace is ever thrown away." At the same time, George S. Arundale, editor of The Theosophist, published in Adyar, and International President of the (Adyar) Theosophical Society spoke of Lansbury as, "Fundamentally a Theosophist all his life," for he "was saturated with the brotherhood spirit." Arundale added that "war as a factor in evolution, though it has a constructive place in my philosophy, had no place in his—he was uncompromisingly for peace. While Dr Besant, in the war of 1914-1918, was supporting the Allies in the true warrior spirit, Mr Lansbury was opposing it in the spirit of the pacifist. . .Mr Lansbury was one of the greatest pacifists of his epoch. . . a genuine Theosophist."

Both sides, the unity and the evolutionary necessity, the Tingley/ Lansbury and the Besant/ Arundalesides, can be discerned in the case of the third man under review, the sometime Theosophist Henry Agard Wallace (1888-1965), New Deal Secretary of Agriculture and Vice President of the United States 1941-45. As a wartime ranking official in a belligerent power, he had to come to terms with the moral questions, and like Arundale see potential for epochal good in the conflict, though his inner disposition was undoubtedly much closer to that of his fellow-politician/idealist, Lansbury. Like Tingley, he was very much in the American idealist/utopian/reformist tradition; like Besant and Arundale, he was in a position of some responsibility in the time of a war both hellish and of immense moral consequence. In the end, his view of the Second World War was almost apocalyptic, though perhaps less in Arundale's style than as a way of reaching Tingley's utopian vision. It was the final crisis which could usher in virtual fulfillment of a millennial human dream, the era of the Common Man.

Religion and spirituality were always important to the shy, gawky, Wallace, who incidentally was also a sometime vegetarian, a teetotaler and rather ascetic, like Lansbury. Wallace was well known for his interest in "mysticism" and "occultism," particularly when they afforded a vision of the unity out of diversity for which he pined, that value so important to Theosophy but potentially at odds with evolutionary struggle.

Arthur Schlesinger, in The Coming of the New Deal, provides an insightful overview of this side of the New Deal Secretary of Agriculture and later Vice-President. Schlesinger suggests that what particularly appealed to Wallace, "was the hope that the vision of spiritual unity might enable him to join together the two halves of his own personality. For as both scientist and mystic, both politician and prophet, both opportunist and idealist, Wallace was split down the middle. This interior division produced not creative tension but a wavering and torment of dissociation which he sought constantly to exorcise by mysticism or to bridge by rhetoric." (p.33) Part of that process may have been his membership in the Theosophical Society. Wallace joined the Society in Des Moines, Iowa, on June 6, 1925, when he was editor (1921-33) of his family's farm journal, Wallaces' Farmer, and resigned on or before November 23, 1935, when he was Secretary of Agriculture. He was also active in the Liberal Catholic Church in Des Moines between 1925 and 1929.

As early as 1912, Wallace had met the Irish poet, mystic and agrarian reformer George Russell ("AE"), who was strongly influenced by Theosophy. His interests were shared by Wallace, and in 1930 the two mystical agronomists began corresponding. Through Russell, Wallace, now editor of Wallaces' Farmer, established links with others of similar bent. One correspondent was Charles Roos, a poet and Theosophist who was involved with the Temple of the People in Halcyon, California, a communalist off shoot of Theosophy. Wallace and Roos exchanged ideas on finding a new "religious... expression for the American people," a need which at that time he felt acutely. In November 1931 Wallace began a correspondence course with the Temple; its leader, William Dower, was able to inform Wallace that the future Vice-President had "a splendid knowledge" of Theosophical fundamentals. One imagines he must also have been aware of Katherine Tingley and her other Theosophical community on Point Loma.

In 1932, however, Wallace's religious experimentalism was caught up by a "flap" over a talk he gave to a group of ministers in Des Moines, in which he reportedly opined that the world needed a"new religion." This remark produced a predictable flurry of criticism from the orthodox, and may have led Wallace to realize that his universalist and esoteric spiritual interests could have unfavorable political consequences. Mark L. Kleinman notes that after this event "his Theosophical spiritualism receded into the deep background of his public thought," to be replaced by relatively more conventionally Christian expressions of his religiosity.

Nonetheless, the values that had earlier led to the Theosophical quest remained to animate many of Wallace's public positions from the background. The cabinet secretary was particularly intrigued with the ideas of unity out of diversity and of coming eschatological events that might hasten the advent of unity in world history. . . the unity and fateful evolution sides. He was fascinated by symbolism; the Great Seal of the United States, with its phrase E pluribus unum held his attention, and even more the reverse side, with its incomplete pyramid and the words Novus ordo seclorum; he induced Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau to put the reverse on the new dollar bill in 1935 by telling him that Novus ordo was Latin for New Deal!

There were others. Among Theosophical statesmen of the same period was Rex Mason, wartime Minister of Justice in New Zealand. Among those said to have been influenced by Theosophy, though not members of the T.S., were Mohandas K. Gandhi, for whom the Bhagavad Gita was only allegorical of the general struggle against evil, in which none of us can rightly be non?combatants but which is most truly fought by non-violent means; and Augusto Sandino, the Nicaraguan mystic revolutionary.

We may note that, the theme of progressive messianism or millennialism seems to interpret twentieth century Theosophical attitudes toward war quite well, though with a split between the present-unity-emphasizing utopians and pacifists, and the evolutionary-necessity mystic warriors. All Theosophists engaged in the public affairs of our troubled century have professed a kind of idealism, a potent vision of the better world informed by justice and undergirded by spiritual realities. But their visions have also been shaped by a sense that we are living in eschatological or apocalyptic times, a time perhaps like that of the great battle of the Bhagavad Gita.

Thus, for some, war was an instrument of on rushing destiny, and the ripening karma of individuals. For others, its ways are so incompatible with those of the Kingdom of God that it could hardly serveas means to that glorious end. What all had in common was a dramatic view of history in which actions and choices on the world stage were important. They were in fact to be the deeds of heroes, worthy of Rama or Krishna, and ought to be made out of a heroic commitment to accelerating human evolution, in which mutation into human perfection was not an impossible dream.

VOLUME 91, NUMBER 5

Contents

Paying Attention
By Betty Bland

The Buddhist Vision of Peace
By Glenn H. Mullin

Theosophy on War and Peace
By Robert S. Ellwood

Violence of War
By Sri Krishna Prem

Walking without Crutches
By Radha Burnier

Originally printed in the September - October 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Mullin, Glenn H. "The Buddhist Vision of Peace." Quest  91.5 (SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2003):176-179, 184. 

By Glenn H. Mullin

During the lifetime of the Buddha there lived a murderer called Angulimala, or "Thumb Necklace." He was known by this name because from each of his victims he removed a thumb, which he wore on a string around his neck.

The Buddha heard of Angulimala and decided to attempt to bring him to the path of peace. At the time it was rumored that Angulimala had robbed and killed almost a thousand people, and that his necklace was made of 999 human thumbs.

In order to meet Angulimala face-to-face, the Buddha set off alone and on foot through the forest where the deadly criminal was believed to be in hiding. Angulimala saw the Buddha approach. He sprang out from behind him, club in hand, and attempted a strike. The Buddha, however, had anticipated the move, and deftly side-stepped the blow. The attack continued at length; but the Buddha remained fearless, keeping his eyes fixed on his attacker and remaining constantly out of reach.

Eventually Angulimala became so exhausted that he fell to the ground. The Buddha sat beside him, placed his arm lovingly over his shoulder, and spoke consolingly to him. The distraught criminal began to weep violently, for never before had anyone shown him such love or forgiveness. They sat like this for several hours, Angulimala's body shaking with uncontrollable sobs.

This experience of compassion completely transformed Angulimala. He asked the Buddha to ordain him as a monk and to allow him to live with the Sangha community. The Buddha accepted. Angulimala took up the practices of meditation and self-purification, and eventually attained sainthood.

One of the most popular Tibetan folk heroes is the eleventh century yogi Milarepa. Numerous episodes from his life are quoted as evidence of the powers of love.

One day a hunter and his dog were out chasing deer. In its attempt to escape, the deer happened to wander into the meadow where Milarepa sat in meditation. Beholding his profound sense of calmness and his aura of kindness, the exhausted animal came and lay down beside him in the hope of finding refuge. A few moments later the hunting dog appeared on the scene, and it too lay down beside Milarepa.

Finally the hunter arrived. At first he was determined to kill his prey, but after a short period in the presence of Milarepa he was so moved by the sage's saintliness that he vowed to give up forever the cruel habit of killing wild animals. He asked to be accepted as a disciple, and in fact himself later became a famous yogi.

Another popular Buddhist figure is the Third Dalai Lama, who lived during the sixteenth century. Even as a young man the fame of his learning and saintliness had spread throughout Asia. News of his greatness reached the ears of Altan Khan, warlord chieftain of the terrible Tumed Mongols. Altan was intrigued by what he had heard of this marvelous teacher and therefore invited him to come and instruct the peoples of Mongolia. The Third Dalai Lama arrived in 1578.

His wisdom, compassion, and presence impressed the great Khan, who asked his people to turn away from the path of war and hatred, and instead to cultivate the way of peaceful co-existence. This singular event marked the end of the age of terror that the Mongols had wreaked upon their neighbors, from Korea and Japan in the east to Europe in the west. From that time onward the Mongolians have followed the spiritual legacy laid down for them by the Third Dalai Lama.

The basic intent behind all of the Buddhist anecdotes of this nature is to point out that peace in one's environment is brought about not by subduing the outside world, but by subduing one's own mind. Stated simply, the ultimate contribution an individual can make to the cause of peace and harmony begins at home. If I can become more peaceful, loving and saintly, this will immediately cause these qualities to spread into my immediate environment. The result is a chain reaction that forever spreads outward.

Conversely, if I do not cultivate a peaceful, loving, and compassionate nature within myself, then I cannot really contribute to peace in society as a whole. No matter what public statements I make or what physical demonstrations I engage in, nothing done in the name of peace has any meaning as long as my own character remains violent and intolerant.

Numerous techniques for developing a peaceful and loving mind have been preserved and developed in the various Buddhist traditions. An important writer on the subject in classical India was Shantideva, whose eighth century work A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way, or Bodhisattva-charya-avatara, is as popular with Buddhist teachers today as it was at the time of its composition some twelve hundred years ago.

In this text Shantideva comments, "It is impossible to cover the entire world with leather, but by covering one's feet with sandals the same effect is created. Likewise, it is impossible to bring this world into harmony by destroying all harmful beings that exist; but by covering one's mind with the gentleness of loving patience the whole world becomes harmonious."

From the Mahayana point of view we need to make this contribution to world harmony not only because it is a sensible and desirable thing for ourselves personally, but because it is our spiritual obligation.

This theme is approached from a number of angles.

Firstly, although the world may be somewhat of a harsh environment, we owe our very existence to it. Someone else gave birth to us; the food that we eat is grown and brought to us through the kindness of others; the clothes we wear in order to protect ourselves from the elements come to us through the kindness of others; the houses we live in and the materials from which they are made entail the services of others. It may be argued that these services are not necessarily done out of a conscious act of kindness; the Buddhist answer is that an unconscious kindness should nevertheless be appreciated for whatever benefits it has given to us.

A second contemplation looks at our responsibility from the viewpoint of reincarnation. Here it is posited that, although any one-world system will have its beginning and end, existence itself is beginningless. Therefore we have had countless previous lives.

Moreover, our relationships with others is not something constant; those who are strangers or even enemies in this life may well have been friends, relatives, and even parents to us in some previous life. Over the trillions of trillions of past lives there is no living being with whom we have not at one time or another had a friendly relationship, and who has not at one time or another shown kindness to us. Consequently there is no living being to whom we do not owe a debt of kindness.

In addition, all beings unconsciously want to be loved and to receive kindness. It is only out of the forces of delusion that anyone acts with cruelty and unpleasantness. Harmful beings are as if driven by the inner blinding negative forces of the three root delusions: attachment, hatred, and ignorance. These forces control them and render them powerless.

It is our responsibility to remain calm in the face of adversity, kind in the face of unkindness. We must attempt to diffuse rather than to further intensify their delusions.

Shantideva gives the example, "If someone attacks you with a stick, why become angry at the person when in fact it is the stick that causes you the pain? If you argue that it is the person that propels the stick, remember that the person is in turn propelled by delusion. So the real enemy is only delusion, and it is only this that needs to be destroyed. . . And how is delusion destroyed in the world? Only by first destroying it from within one's own mindstream."

From the Buddhist perspective, the ultimate solution to the world's problems is nothing more and nothing less than our own enlightenment. And it is precisely this—the wish to achieve full enlightenment in order to contribute to the well-being of the world—that constitutes the basis of the Bodhisattva path.

The importance of the mind and its attitudes are constantly stressed in the Buddhist tradition.

Shantideva writes, "What is generosity? It is not the act of giving nor of dispelling poverty;otherwise, as the omniscient beings of the past have attained the perfection of generosity there would no longer be any poverty on earth. The perfection of generosity is the possession of a generous mind, an attitude that wishes to share with others and to see them separated from need."

Buddha once said, "The mind is like a horse; the body and speech are like the cart. Wherever the horse goes, the cart will automatically follow."

Thus by cultivating a peaceful mind endowed with love, kindness, and compassion, our every deed of body and speech becomes a contribution to peace.

SIX CAUSES AND ONE EFFECT

One of the principal meditation techniques used to cultivate this type of attitude is that known as "the six causes and one effect," a method transmitted by Maitreya Buddha to Asanga (about 3^rd century) and later refined by Shantideva. The method is given this name because the six causal meditational steps prepare the mind for the experience of the resultant Bodhisattva aspiration.

This meditation begins with the preliminary of developing a sense of equanimity towards all beings. One thinks about the three types of living beings those who have brought us happiness or pleasure ("friends"), those who have brought us difficulties or suffering ("enemies"), and those who have done neither ("strangers"). One then contemplates how even in this lifetime friends become enemies or strangers, strangers become friends or enemies, and so forth, and that over our stream of millions of lifetimes our relationship with others is constantly changing. Therefore friends, enemies and strangers should all be held in equal respect.

This preliminary—that of developing a sense of equanimity toward others—is a very useful daily exercise. In terms of generating a mind of peace and harmony it is an indispensable step, and is likened to preparing the field in which we shall plant the seeds of the enlightened attitude. When it has been firmly established as a daily habit one can proceed with the actual "six causes and one effect."

The first of the six causes is to contemplate how in one of our billions of previous lifetimes each living being has been a mother to us. This step is called "recognizing all beings as a mother." They have also been friends, brothers and sisters, enemies and so forth; but here it is the mother image that is emphasized because of the exceptional nature of motherhood and the emotional tone it encompasses.

The second cause is to contemplate the many ways in which a mother shows kindness to a child, not only giving it life but also protecting and caring for it at great personal sacrifice.

Next is the cause called "the aspiration to repay kindness." If each being has at one time or another been a mother to me and has brought me all the benefits that a mother instinctively does, my debt to each living being is immeasurable. I should try to repay this debt.

This leads to the fourth and fifth "causes." How does one repay their kindness? By always treating them with love and compassion. Here love means the aspiration to see them have happiness and its causes, and compassion means the aspiration to see them be free from suffering and its causes.

This leads to the sixth "cause," that of a sense of universal responsibility. One must think, "May I personally take responsibility for the happiness of others, and help them in any way that I can to remain free from suffering."

At this point a very strong question arises, "But do I have the wisdom, skill, and power to contribute significantly to universal happiness and freedom from sufferings? And if not, who does?"

The obvious answer is that one's ability to contribute in this way is dependent upon the level of one's enlightenment. Therefore the aspiration arises, "May I achieve full enlightenment in order to be able to fulfill love and compassion, and to be of maximum benefit to the world."

This is the type of contemplation to be pursued daily by the Mahayana Buddhist in order to maintain attitudes conducive to peace and harmony.

There is a Tibetan proverb that states, "Before accomplishing self-progress you cannot accomplish other-progress." The meaning is that first one makes one's own spiritual base firm; only then can one make a real social contribution.

Conversely, once one's own spiritual balance has been established one's energies naturally become a contribution to the well-being of others. One's every thought becomes meaningful, every word helpful to others, and every bodily action of universal benefit.

Shantideva wrote, "The Bodhisattva spirit is like a magic elixir; when one possesses it everything that one touches turns to gold." The meaning is that when love and compassion are present, every encounter with others inspires peace and harmony.

The world is large and its problems many. However, history has proved again and again that a single individual can make a difference. This is true in both a negative and a positive sense: an evil person can bring great suffering and darkness to others; and an enlightened being can bring great happiness and enlightenment. If it is our wish to contribute to peace and happiness in the world not only in this lifetime but throughout the rosary of our future incarnations, it is important that we begin the pacifying by removing attachment, hatred, and ignorance from within our own mindstream, and by replacing these negative traits with qualities such as nonattachment, love, compassion, and wisdom.

Ours is the kaliyuga, "the dark age" in which aggression, violence, and strong delusion dominate the world atmosphere. The intensity of the times is like a great fire that either destroys or purifies those who dwell within it.

The choice is our own: to be destroyed by the world atmosphere, or to use it to our own advantage. By using it to our own advantage, enlightenment is more easily attained now than it is in less intense times.

Alternatively, if in this desperate age we do not take up the armor of love, compassion, kindness, and tolerance, then we easily become caught in the strong wind of the present world trend, and our life energies then automatically add to the negative atmosphere rather than contribute to peace and harmony.

As the Dalai Lama has said, "We all live on this planet together; whether or not we like it, we depend upon one another for our peace and happiness . . . .

"Technology has given us a lot of physical benefits, but it still has not brought about a world free of violence and hatred. It has not produced an atmosphere of peace and harmony. If anything, it has increased our ability to kill and has increased humanity's collective fear and suffering.

"Peace is an inner quality. We cannot talk about a peaceful world as long as the human spirit is dominated by hatred. Peace can only be achieved in human society when the individual human beings cultivate qualities such as love and compassion within themselves. Love is our only hope, our only tool for peace. If anything can save humanity in this time of crisis, it is only the power of love,compassion, and tolerance."

American Theosophist May 1987

Originally printed in the September - October 2003 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Prem, Sri Krishna. "Violence of War." Quest  91.5 (SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2003):180-183.

By Sri Krishna Prem

Wars are psychic events that have their birth in the souls of men. We like to put the blame for them upon the shoulders our favorite scapegoat, upon imperialism, nationalism, communism, or capitalism, whichever be our chosen bogey. Not any or all of these are really responsible, but we ourselves we harmless folk who like to think that we hate war and all its attendant horrors. We may have had no finger in the muddy waters of politics or finance, we may have written no articles or even letters tending to inflame national, racial, or communal passions, yet we are all sharers in the responsibility.

Every feeling of anger, hatred, envy, and revenge that we have indulged in the past years, no matter whom it was directed against and however "justified" it may seem to us to have been, has been a handful of gunpowder thrown on to the pile which must, sooner or later, explode as now it has done.

But it is not he or they who struck the match that is or are responsible for a world in flames, but we who have helped to swell the pile of powder. For what is it that we have done? The states of hatred, fear, etc., that have entered our hearts and there met with indulgence are, as always, intolerable guests. We hasten to project them outside ourselves, to affix them like posters upon any convenient wall. Doubtless there was something in the nature of the wall that made it a suitable vehicle for that particular poster, but, all the same, the poster came from us and was by us affixed.

Whether we look at the psychology of individuals, or at those aggregates of individuals which we call national states, the process is the same. That which we hate or fear in ourselves we project upon our neighbors. He who fears his own sex desires discerns impurity in all whom he meets; in the same way, nations that are filled with hatred, fear, and aggressive desire perceive the images of those passions burning luridly upon the ramparts of other nations, not realizing that it is they themselves who have lit and placed them there. Thus arises the myth of the peace loving nations and individuals, just because we project our own aggressive desires upon our neighbors and thus secure the illusion of personal cleanliness.

This is not to say that the responsibility of all nations is alike, any more than is that of all individuals. Some of us have sinned more deeply than others, but the assessment of such responsibility is never easy. It is more important and also profitable for us to remember that all hatred, fear, envy, and aggressive desire, by whomsoever and however "privately" entertained, has been the fuel which prepared and still maintains the blaze. Every time we feel a thrill of triumph at the destruction of "the enemy", we add to it, for each time we do so we are making others the scapegoats for the evil in ourselves. This is not mere philosophic talk; it is not even religion; it is sheer practical fact which any psychologist will confirm.

None of us, not the most determined conscientious objector, not the most isolationist of neutrals, can escape his share of responsibility. Indeed, it is often just those who do not partake in the actual physical fighting who do most with their thoughts to increase the conflict. Fighting men, after a few months of experience have been gained, are often to a surprising degree free from hatred, while those who sit in comfortable isolation only too frequently indulge their own baser excitements and passions by exulting in vicarious horrors, making a cinema show out of the agonies of others, fighting to the last drop of (others) blood, and fanning the flames of hatred and violence with the unseen wind of their own thoughts and feelings.

For there is that in all men which welcomes war; yes, welcomes it even to the point of willingness to undergo its sufferings. In almost all men there is much that social and religious convention will not in normal times permit to find expression. There is a caged beast in the hearts of most of us, a beast whose substance we should like to gratify, but cannot for fear of consequences. Usually he nourishes his subterranean life on the scraps of fantasy and daydream that filter down to the den where he sits, brooding on deeds of violence and cruelty by which he may be revenged for his confinement; and each time we indulge in fantasies of hatred or revenge those thoughts sink down and add to his ferocious energy. Sometimes we can feel him straining against the confining bars, but in normal times "God" and the policemen keep him down, so that only occasionally does he escape and the world is shocked by some deed of atrocious cruelty. When this occurs, society decides that that man's cage is too weak to hold its beast, and, fearing the example on others if one should be allowed to escape with impunity, hurriedly proceeds to destroy both man and beast.

It is necessary to add that the beast is not destroyed by the killing of the body which was its cage. Unseen by men it roams about, freed of its cage of flesh, free also to enter in the heart of any man who will give it temporary shelter and to urge him to the vile deeds that it loves. If men in general became aware of the extent to which this happens, they would not be so eager to kill those who commit ghastly crimes—nor their personal enemies either. This is what happens in normal times. But in times of war all is different. "Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war" is no mere poetic metaphor. The hell-hounds from within are loosed. All that was "sinful" and forbidden before is now encouraged in the service of the State. Hatred, violence, ferocity, cruelty, as well as every variety of deceitful cunning, all these become virtues in those who direct them against "the enemy". Even those whose States are not at war feel the contagion and, taking sides in the struggle, indulge their beasts in imagination.

Thus do the periods of war and peace succeed one another through the weary centuries of history. It is not intended to deny that in certain circumstances the open and outer violence of armed resistance may not be the lesser of two evils, for in the present state of humanity the alternative is too often a violence of thought and feeling, an obsessive brooding over hatred and revenge that is far worse than outward fighting. But never will violence bring violence to an end. As long as we nourish the brutes within our hearts with the desire-laden thoughts that are their lifeblood, so long will they break out from time to time, and so long will periodical wars be inevitable.

The only way to real peace is the taming of those inner beasts. We who have created them, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, must weaken them by giving them no food, must re- absorb them into our conscious selves from which in horror we have banished them, and finally must transmute their very substance by the alchemy of spirit. And that is yoga: only in yoga is peace.

The world is just one's thought; with effort then it should be cleansed by each one of us. As is one's thought, so one becomes; this is the eternal secret (Maitri Upanishad). Those who care for peace and hate war must keep more vigilant guard over their thoughts and fantasies than in normal times. Every exulting thought at news of the destruction of the "enemy" (as though man had any enemy but the one in his own bosom), every indulgence in depression at "our own" disasters, every throb of excitement at the deeds of war in general is a betrayal of humanity's cause. Those who enjoy a physical isolation from the fighting are in possession of an opportunity that is a sacred trust. If they fail to make use of it to bring about peace in that part of the world-psyche with which they are in actual contact, namely, their own hearts, above all, if they actively misuse that opportunity by loosing their beasts in sympathetic fantasy, then they are secret traitors to humanity. As such, they will be caught within the web of karma that they are spinning, a web that will unerringly bring it about that, in the next conflict that breaks out, it will be on them that the great burden of suffering will fall. Of all such it may be said that he who takes the sword in thought and fantasy shall perish by the sword in actual fact.

This is the great responsibility that falls upon all, and especially upon all who by their remoteness from the physical struggle are given the opportunity of wrestling with their passions in some degree of detachment, and so actually lessening the flames of hatred and evil in this world.

None can escape, for all life is one. As soon should the little finger think to escape the burning fever which has gripped the body, as any to escape the interlinkedness of all life. Neutral or conscientious objector, householder or world-renouncing sannyasi, none can escape his share of responsibility for a state of things that his own thoughts have helped to bring about; for neither geographical remoteness, nor governmental decree of neutrality, nor yet personal refusal to bear arms can isolate the part from the whole in which it is rooted.

It is in the inner worlds of desire that wars originate, and from those inner worlds that they are maintained. What we see as wars upon this physical plane are but the shadows of those inner struggles, a ghastly phantom show, boding forth events that have already taken pace in the inner world, dead ash marking the destructive path of the forest fire, the troubled and unalterable wake of a ship whose prow is cleaving the waters far ahead.

In war or peace we live in a world of shadows cast by events that we term "future", because, unseen by us as they really happen, we only know them when we come across their wake upon this plane.

Sri Krishna's words, pronounced before the Kurukshetra battle, "by Me already have they all been slain", refer not to any remorseless, divine predestination, but to this very fact, and they are as true of those whose bodies will perish in the coming year as they were of those who fought in that war of long ago.

Until we understand and face this basic fact, wars are inevitable, and struggling in the wake of troubled waters that ourselves have made, fighting with shadows that ourselves have cast, we shall continue to cry out against a hostile and malignant Fate, or if of a more submissive nature, to pray to God to save us from its grip. But prayers and out cries alike are useless: "Not in the middle regions of the air, nor in the ocean depths; not in the mountain caves, nor anywhere on earth is there a spot where man can escape the fruit of his evil deeds." In the inner worlds we have made war: in those same inner worlds we must make peace, for "Mind is the forerunner of all things, by mind are all things made. He who with desire-polluted mind thinks or acts evil, him sorrow follows as the wheel the foot of the ox." (Dhammapada)

Sri Krishna Prem (1898-1965), was born Ronald Nixon. As a young man, he was fascinated by Buddhism and  the Pali language. In 1924, he accepted the post of Reader in English at Lucknow University in India and later accepted initiation into the Vaishnava religion and was considered the first westerner to ever become a Vaishnava.  He later founded a Hindu ashram, with his guru Yashoda Mai, in the foothills of the Himalayas. His works include, The Yoga of the Kathopanishad, The Yoga of the Bhagavad Gita, and Intiation into Yoga.