Love As Antidote to War

Writing today in The Times of India, Deepak Chopra reminds us of Gandhi's views on war and peace, which now seem somewhat radical:

"More than 50 years ago, Mahatma Gandhi offered a startling truth: 'There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.' To a country bogged down in the morass of war, this could be a beacon of hope.

The history of peace movements in the USA has been divisive and bitter. Thirty years after the Vietnam peace movement sputtered out, it is still considered political suicide for a presidential candidate to actually promote peace.

Senator Kerry, who has an anti-war background, is desperately trying to disguise that fact. President Bush, who has a background of shirking war, is just as desperately trying to cloak that fact by being a hawk... Both candidates have failed to offer peace as an option, since they agree on a central tenet, that war is the way to peace (if not this particular war against Iraq, then a general war on terrorism).

Such a viewpoint, if carried out, can only lead to more violence. Gandhi was correct when he pointed out that lasting peace is achieved only when a nation realises that peace is the way, in and of itself...

It may be too late, but could one of these candidates, presumably Kerry, begin to hold out the satisfactions of peace? These were real enough before 9/11, although we took them for granted. In peace one breathes easily...

It's time to be honest with ourselves. We have not given the way of peace a fair chance. The way of peace requires a genuine commitment to everything that is the opposite of war. Gandhi's most cherished value was ahimsa, which isn't simply non-violence.

Ahimsa is reverence for life and a vision of human beings put here on this earth to explore their spiritual birthright, excluding no one, making no one your enemy. The way of peace can lead to nobility of soul. The way of war, as we are learning with sinking hearts, can only lead to the grim degradation of our most cherished values.