Winter Solstice. Peace on Earth.

Today the Sun is still. Solstice. Peace on Earth.


I lifted the following straight off an email that was forwarded from the father of a dear friend of mine:

Wishing you a wonderful, merry Christmas, a bright, happy Hanukkah, and most of all, peace.

Peace - a very nice word. Easy to say, nice to envision, yet seemingly almost impossible to achieve. Which means that something must be missing in how we think about it.
Perhaps Albert Einstein knew something - "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved through understanding."

Buddhists would say that at its core, peace comes from the recognition that we don't exist as separate selves; from the willingness to see others as not so different, but made of the same substance. Mother Teresa: "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." The same idea is there in the Hebrew "shalom," which means not only peace, but wholeness, where no part is missing or damaged.

Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, often says that the first act of peace is for each side to recognize that the other side also suffers - possibly as a result of our own actions, or by our inaction, or as a result of misperceptions or lack of understanding - and out of that compassion, for each to have the desire for the other side to suffer less.

To do that, it helps for us first to be in touch with all the things in our own lives that we have a reason to be grateful for. "If, in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work."

So, wishing you peace - not just a cheerful, happy, syrupy sentiment - but true peace.

via John Field Shaw, from his friend who credits John Hussman of the Hussman Fund