When the Way is lost
Righteousness and justice appear to give direction
Knowledge and shrewdness follow
Ensuring great hypocrisy.
When harmonious relationships dissolve
Laws manifest to limit our homes.
As a nation falls to chaos
Yoked loyalty and patriotism become the norm.

- The Universe

I am so smart I know what is wrong with the world. Everybody asks during and after our wars, and the continuing terrorist attacks all over the globe, “What’s gone wrong?”

What has gone wrong is that too many people, including high school kids and heads of state, are obeying the Code of Hammurabi, a King of Babylonia who lived nearly four thousand years ago. And you can find his code echoed in the Old Testament, too. Are you ready for this?

“An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

A categorical imperative for all who live in obedience to the Code of Hammurabi, which includes heroes of every cowboy show and gangster show you ever saw, is this: Every injury, real or imagined, shall be avenged. Somebody’s going to be really sorry.

When Jesus Christ was nailed to a cross, he said, “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.” What kind of a man was that? Any real man, obeying the Code of Hammurabi, would have said, “Kill them, Dad, and all their friends and relatives, and make their deaths slow and painful.”

His greatest legacy to us, in my humble opinion, consists of only twelve words. They are the antidote to the poison of the Code of Hammurabi, a formula almost as compact as Albert Einstein’s “E = mc2.”
 
But I say with all my American ancestors, “If what Jesus said was good, and so much of it was absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?”

If Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being.

I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.

Revenge provokes revenge which provokes revenge which provokes revenge — forming an unbroken chain of death and destruction linking nations of today to barbarous tribes of thousands and thousands of years ago.

We may never dissuade leaders of our nation or any other nation from responding vengefully, violently, to every insult or injury. In this, the Age of Television, they will continue to find irresistible the temptation to become entertainers, to compete with movies by blowing up bridges and police stations and factories and so on…

But in our personal lives, our inner lives, at least, we can learn to live without the sick excitement, without the kick of having scores to settle with this particular person, or that bunch of people, or that particular institution or race or nation. And we can then reasonably ask forgiveness for our trespasses, since we forgive those who trespass against us. And we can teach our children and then our grandchildren to do the same — so that they, too, can never be a threat to anyone.

- A collection of perspectives by Kurt Vonnegut, an American writer and humorist known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm...and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.

- E.M Forster, English author

These wars and these breakouts are really big bells of mindfulness for humanity and for all of us who are present today. And my encouragement - and I reflected on this a lot to ask myself what I can do - is to transform the seed of discrimination in me, to transform the fear and violence in me. That is my responsibility. And this is our responsibility.

- Brother Phap Huu, Plum Village

People who surrender all their blocks and conflicts experience a free flow of energy.

It is a mistake to confuse excitement or arousal with the vital flow of simply being. Stimulants and emotional adventures arouse people, but such arousal does not enhance one's energies. On the contrary, excitement spends energy and exhausts vitality.

Think of excitement as tension that comes when stimulation meets resistance. The exciting experience ends when the stimulation stops or when the person wears out.

But the vitality of being is a continuous flow. It meets no resistance and goes on and on without stress.

Excitement is rooted in passing desires. Vital energy springs from the eternal.

- The Universe

It's already yours.

- The Universe

No one saves us but ourselves
No one can and no one may
We ourselves must walk the path

- Buddha

The only thing worthy of you is compassion –
invincible, limitless, unconditional.
Hatred will never let you face
the beast in man.

One day, when you face this beast alone
with your courage intact, your eyes kind,
untroubled
(even as no one sees them),
out of your smile
will bloom a flower.

And those who love you
will behold you
across ten thousand worlds of birth and dying.
Alone again,
I will go on with bent head,
knowing that love has become eternal.
On the long, rough road
the sun and moon will continue to shine.

- Thích Nhất Hạnh, a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, prolific author, poet and teacher, who founded the Plum Village Tradition, historically recognized as the main inspiration for engaged Buddhism.

The wise person, learning how things happen, lives according to the principal.

Without this understanding one might dismiss the single principal of how things happen as total nonsense. After all, they say, any principal that does not get you love or money or power must be useless. A silent mind is a dumb mind. Selflessness is no way to get ahead. Virtue is for fools. Kindness is weakness. And so on.

This is a problem: because the wise person's only allegiance is to how things happen, people who do not see how things happen naturally think the wise person's behavior has no basis in reality. Also, the wise person's silence and manner of being are disturbing. Because the wise person's motives are obscure, the wise person is hard to figure out.

The problem comes back to the fact the principal is not a thing and cannot be defined. That does not make sense to some people.

It is not easy to understand a person whose foundation is invisible.