Peace on Earth: Protect The Fabric Of Daily Life

By DAISAKU IKEDA

Citizens everywhere today are demanding that their leaders make choices to advance the cause of peace. What is disturbing is the grotesque imbalance between our powers of destruction and our failing ethical capacity for empathy and self-restraint.

However, I firmly believe that we possess immense, untapped resources that can help establish a creative, dynamic harmony that is peaceful. The key to this is a new ethic of co-existence, one that encourages appreciation of our interconnection, the awareness that what impacts any one member of the human family impacts us all. This in turn requires that we re-focus on individual human beings, that we establish a 'life-sized' approach.

When we are presented with the realities of other people's lives, feelings of connection and empathy naturally arise. This is why war and violence always start with efforts to dehumanise the 'enemy'. This is why the media in any country will portray 'our' suffering in detail, while minimising or ignoring the misery inflicted on the anonymous mass that is 'them'.

Imagine you are travelling to enemy lands, and follow in your mind the lives of those on the other side of the TV screen. You will find that people there are no different from you. Like you, me and most others, they too seek the ordinary joys of fellowship and love, celebrate the vibrant growth of children, pray that their parents may enjoy security and health. This is reality, the fabric of ordinary life. Post-war, buildings may be re-built, but the wounds and scars of violence never really heal.

Genuine leadership must be based on a solid commitment to protecting the precious fabric of daily life. The ordinary citizens of the world are raising their voice, insisting that all decisions - whether political, military or economic - be made with this human reality firmly in view. The common cause of human happiness is the strongest basis for human solidarity. In a world of intimate interconnection, solidarity cannot be limited to just one group or nation. It must embrace all the people everywhere.

This is not empty idealism. The very real differences of culture and worldview need not separate us in some insurmountable way. A 'life-sized' approach is also cosmic in its outlook. When we truly focus on individual human beings, we can see each person as manifesting unique aspect of a universe of human possibility - and doing so in an invaluable and irreplaceable manner.

Peace will not come from passive waiting. It must be worked for with energy and focus. Dialogue is an important way to enable peace initiatives achieve their goal. Dialogue and communication - whatever the immediate outcome - is in itself an act of faith in humanity. We must ceaselessly work to strengthen and confirm such a faith. The struggle to understand and be understood requires that each of us return to the deepest source of our humanity, despite differences of history, culture or creed. For, it is there and in the quiet aspirations of daily life that we will find answers to the daunting challenges that face us.

(The writer is president, Soka Gakkai International)

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See also: Peace of Mind, Peace on Earth, Life and Beyond, Love and Happiness, Body Mind and Soul)