To make peace alive in us is to actively cultivate understanding, love, and compassion, even in the face of misperception and conflict. Practicing peace, especially in time of war, requires courage.

In 1946, during the France-Indochina war, I was a novice monk at the Tu Hieu Temple in Hue, in central Vietnam. At the time, the city of Hue was occupied by the French army. One day, two French soldiers arrived in our temple. While one stayed in the jeep outside the temple gate, the other came in carrying a gun, and demanded all our rice. We had only one sack of rice for all the monks, and he wanted to take it. The soldier was about 20, and hungry. He looked thin and pale, as if he had malaria, which I also had at the time. I had to obey his order to carry our heavy bag of rice to the jeep. It was a long distance, and as I staggered under the bag's precious weight, anger and unhappiness rose up in me. They were leaving our community without food. Later, to my relief, I learned that one of the older monks had buried a large container of rice deep in the temple grounds.

Many times over the years I have meditated on this French soldier. I have seen that, in his teens, he had to leave his parents, brothers, sisters, and friends to travel across the world to Vietnam, where he faced the horrors of killing my countrymen or being killed. I have often wondered whether he survived and returned home to his parents. Very likely he did not. The France-Indochina war lasted many years, ending with the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Accord in 1954. After looking deeply, I came to realize that the Vietnamese were not the only victims of the war; the French soldiers were victims as well. With this insight, I no longer had any anger toward the young soldier. Compassion for him was born in me, and I only wished him well.

I did not know the French soldier's name and he did not know mine, but when we met we were already enemies. Under different circumstances, we could have become close friends, even loving each other as brothers. It was only the war that separated us and brought violence between us.

This is the nature of war. It turns us into enemies. All who suffer through these conflicts are victims. Coming from such devastation and suffering, having experienced the France-Indochina War and the Vietnam War, I have the deep aspiration to prevent war from ever happening again.

The spiritual teachings of all traditions help us cultivate the seeds of compassion, nonviolence, inclusiveness, and reconciliation. They show us the way out of fear and conflict. Hatred cannot be stopped by hatred. Violence should not be responded to with violence. The only way out of violence and conflict is for us to embrace the practice of peace, to think and act with compassion, love, and understanding.

Turning Arrows into Flowers

Violence is never far away. We see the seeds of violence in our everyday thoughts, speech, and actions. The daily wars that occur within our thoughts and our families have everything to do with the wars fought between peoples and nations throughout the world. The conviction that we know the truth and that those who do not share our beliefs are wrong has caused much harm. When we believe something to be absolute truth, we are caught in our own views. If we believe, for instance, that Buddhism is the only way to happiness, we may be practicing a kind of violence by discriminating against and excluding those who follow other spiritual paths.

If we look around we will recognize war's many faces: religious intolerance, ethnic hatred, child neglect, racial discrimination, and exploitation of the world's resources. But we also know that the seeds of peace, understanding, and love are there, and that they will grow if we cultivate them.

The night before his enlightenment, the Buddha was attacked by Mara, the Tempter, the Evil One. Mara and his army of demons shot thousands of arrows at the Buddha, but as the arrows neared him, they turned into flowers and fell harmlessly to his feet.

This is a powerful image. We can all practice understanding and compassion so that we can receive the violent words and actions aimed at us and transform them into flowers.

We begin by recognizing that, in the depths of our consciousness, we have the seeds of both compassion and violence. We become aware that our mind is like a garden that contains all kinds of seeds: seeds of understanding, seeds of forgiveness, seeds of mindfulness, and also seeds of ignorance, fear, and hatred. We realize that at any moment, we can behave with violence or compassion, depending on the strength of these seeds within us.

When the seeds of anger, violence, and fear are watered in us several times a day, they will grow stronger. Then we cannot be happy or accept ourselves; we suffer and make those around us suffer. Yet when we know how to cultivate the seeds of love, compassion, and understanding in us every day, those seeds will become stronger, and the seeds of violence and hatred will become weaker and weaker.

True peace is always possible. Yet it requires strength and practice, particularly in times of great difficulty. To some, peace and nonviolence are synonymous with passivity and weakness. In truth, practicing peace and nonviolence is far from passive. To practice peace, to make peace alive in us, is to actively cultivate understanding, love, and compassion, even in the face of misperception and conflict. Practicing peace, especially in times of war, requires courage.

-- Adapted from Creating True Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh. Copyright© 2003 by The Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh. Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., N.Y.

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