If entire civilisations were wiped out in the past due to warfare despite the fact that the weapons these warring people possessed were of a very rudimentary nature, why wouldn’t human civilisation snuff itself out with the very sophisticated type of weaponry available on the planet today?
It seems that the experts are worried about other chimeras. As far as nuclear annihilation is concerned, they have their heads buried in the sand.
It’s because they believe that sophisticated humans have also conquered their minds. But take a look at the wars that are happening today, and it doesn’t appear that there is sophistication and compassion behind the human thinking that’s driving these conflicts.
Simply put, Greta Thunberg would not have been a role model revered by adults several times her age, if her cause had been nuclear disarmament.
People collectively seem to be smug that they won’t make any miscalculations that would lead to Armageddon. Older civilisations with arms no more sophisticated than swords and lances may have fought themselves towards annihilation, but we think we are too smart for any such fate with our over 12000 nuclear warheads.
ABERRATIONS
Is it all going to end well? And what is Sri Lanka, battling its own demons in the form of persistent economic issues, to do about it?
Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country and if it needed a Buddhist stanza to be read at San Francisco after World War II to prevent the Japanese from being crushed and given no chance at resurgence, perhaps the Buddhists should have an answer to the threat of annihilation that faces humankind through nuclear confrontation.
Ego driven considerations in the main seems to drive conflict and the desire for revenge, coupled by the inability to find any paths to accommodation.
Humanity, at this point in time, is facing the kind of danger probably never faced by humankind before because we have the weapons many times over to annihilate ourselves, but have little in terms of the psychological restraints to be able to avoid endless wars.
It can however be legitimately asked, who are we Sri Lankans to preach? Despite a culture steeped in Buddhism for thousands of years, it can be pointed out, didn’t your people endure a long running war that cost over 80, 000 lives?
Which Buddhist country does that? The answer is that many Buddhist countries have endured such wars. Cambodia, a predominantly Buddhist nation with 80 percent of the population being Theravada Buddhist, was not able to prevent a war and a genocide a few decades back in history.
But the wars could be considered aberrations. The Cambodians were able to turn the page on conflict rather speedily after the genocide, and is a rapidly developing economy today.
Elsewhere in the world, conflict festers. The Israel-Hamas war is a newer manifestation of a conflict that has been seemingly endless. Its driving parametres are territoriality and ethnic identity. These factors are usually driven by the egos of political leaders who thrive on the basis of promising to obtain this or that territorial advantage for their people.
It is not that there are no legitimate grievances. But often these are trumped up by those who aspire to resolve issues by violence alone.
LANDSCAPE
In South Asia it has long been held that violence begets violence. In the midst of conflict, with Gandhi being the best example, a desire for non-violence has always been voiced.
This spirit of non-violence should animate what Buddhists strive for in terms of achieving world peace. But today it seems that Buddhists by and large have abdicated that responsibility.
There are no Buddhist-initiated peace moves of any significance that can be witnessed in the global political landscape.
Buddhists possibly are detached, but the Buddhist doctrine of detachment didn’t necessarily prevent disciples from being pro-active in striving towards peace for all, which is also a cornerstone of Buddhist teachings.
What if before San Francisco and while the World War was in full spate, a Sri Lankan Buddhist was able to utter those same words, “hatred ceases not by hatred but by love”.
Probably the trajectory of world events may have been different. But strangely even during the height of the two World Wars, there was never an instant threat of destruction that hung over humanity as it does today.
Of course a nuclear bomb was used to devastating effect over Japan at the end of World War II. But today’s nuclear arsenals could render the damage done in Hiroshima and Nagasaki totally insignificant.
Buddhist soft-power over global conflict has never been more necessary. But Buddhist intellectuals as all other reasoning beings are, seem to be totally oblivious to the prospect of Armageddon.
Some may say Armageddon or the prospects of it are never considered in the Buddhist canon. They shouldn’t be so sure. Buddhist teachings do encompass a wide range of issues and self-destruction of humankind may have been addressed somewhere in the diverse cornucopia of teachings.
But anyhow that’s beside the point. Buddhists strive for peace and compassion, and making all living beings happy. But latterly Buddhists have been showing up only after the fact.
San Francisco is a distant and dim memory now to many people, but the wars of the world in Ukraine, in Gaza and so on have exacerbated the threat of nuclear annihilation.
An over-reaction? Hardly, because some of the actors in the aforementioned contexts have more than once mentioned the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons.
Some may call it sabre rattling, and others may call it nuclear deterrence, but be that as it may, with every mention of the possible use of nuclear weapons we may be one step closer to nuclear annihilation.
The world’s peace movements are asleep. In the 60s during the eras of the charmed flower children, at least there were those ubiquitous peace signs around and everybody including the Maharishi wanted to avert nuclear war.
But today thanks to social media the young are more aggressive possibly than those demographics that are older, this fact being evidenced by the aggressive polarisations taking place around the issues in Gaza for instance, which have led to so much acrimony between separate student groups, leading sometimes to violence.
MOMENTUM
The case against violence in other words, seems bleak. Those who are practitioners of non-violence such as Buddhists all over the world, though they are by no means the only proponents of pacifism, are drawn inward.
Buddhist nations together can make a difference if they resolve to do something about wars and conflict, rather than appear on the scene only after the fact. Even Gandhi though a Hindu was steeped in the Buddhist ethos, which anyway shares the same Vedic roots with the Hindu approach to existence.
Gandhi’s non-violence was exemplary, and he was able to in fact resolve conflict without recourse to war. All this has now been forgotten in an era that is shamelessly animated by the sound of persistent and ever more strident war drums.
Humanity’s current best hope seems to be to say may none of these wars touch us. That seems to be the fondest hope, which is a rather resigned and even pathetic response to the violent events that have become part of the modern fabric of life.
All religionists should strive for world peace but sadly it is sometimes religion and ethnicity that are the drivers of war rather than the drivers of peace. Buddhism too has been used by war-mongers in various parts of the world to give momentum to various violent confrontations in the past.
But this is nowhere remotely near what Buddhism teaches. Fortunately, there are no wars in the world today that have been caused by Buddhists. At best, the Buddhists are withdrawn and resigned to their meditative lives, if they are true Buddhists that is.
It is time some of them came out of their cocoons and made sure that they contribute to world peace, as Buddhists are among some of the world’s people uniquely equipped to achieving peace in a planet staring down at possible Armageddon.
