By John Sherman

Article first published in The Messenger.

The peace that we speak of has nothing whatsoever to do with war or peace. War, and the resistance to war, is constant. Atrocity is nothing new. Murder and bloodshed and the slaughter of innocents are nothing new. It's the same old story. Now there is such a huge weight of sorrow haunting us. This inescapable sorrow arises in the face of the endlessness of the human determination to do away with or to hold for one's own; the human determination to kill or to imprison, to know what's right and act on it, to know what's good and fight the bad. This is what happened on September 11th. Somebody knew what was right and acted on it. Now whole bunches of other somebodys know what is really right and are ready to act on that. And another group of somebodys has sprung up knowing that to do something violent against what has happened is wrong. But of course that's just a new war, the war between peace and war. Should we go kill them all? No we should not. We should have peace. No, we should not. We should go kill them all.

The invitation from my teacher Gangaji, from Papaji and Ramana, the invitation for that matter from Jesus Christ is to resist not, to be still, to let be what is. War, violence, terrorism, murder, the slaughter of the innocents, occur here. Nowhere else. They occur in the first thought, "That's wrong, that must be stopped." The beginning of the war is in that first movement to resist what you don't like about yourself. The war begins in the individual relationship with the incessant swirl of positive and negative emotion, of positive and negative ideas, of positive and negative activity that rages in your own mind. In the incessant self-referential determination to make sure that what happens here is right, is true, is good. That's the war. That's the war that flew those airplanes into those buildings. That's the war that drives the blood lust for the slaughter of more innocents. That's the war that is behind the arising of the war between peace and war. The war ends in the instant of recognition that it's all you.

Jesus said, "Resist not evil." I wonder why, of all the things that Jesus has said, this is never spoken of. It's too extreme, too radical. Peace is absolute. Peace is unconditional.

Now this is absolutely not to say that your behavior should conform to some standard of dispassion or unconcern. The invitation that Gangaji brings has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with anything in your behavior. It has nothing to do with anything in the world at all — changing, remaining the same, being replaced. It has to do with the ever-present possibility of stopping in this moment and discovering the truth of who you are, which is untouched and untouchable, which is the field and ground and the light in which terrorism and pacifism alike come and go. And when you see that, just for a second, you can never be fooled again completely. This is the peace that passes understanding. This is the peace in which the conflicts, the bloodshed, the horror, the beauty, the glory, the wonder of the world are equally welcome.

© 2003 John Sherman. All rights reserved.