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Instead of the episode we had planned to share today, a meditation from Tenzin Chogkyi as part of her beautiful conversation on Joy, we’re postponing that release by a week. In its place, I’m sharing a meditation I led just a couple of days ago with our Train a Happy Mind community.

This meditation was recorded the day after the United States launched a new bombing campaign in Iran. In response, I wanted to reflect on the roots of violence, both in our world and in our minds, and to offer a path toward peace that I’ve learned from my Tibetan Buddhist teachers.

Scott Snibbe: After a while I decided to try not to respond too much to current events in these sessions because we always get derailed from the sequence of trying to learn the stages of the path. But I think I would rather do something different today, and address directly the fact that the United States just bombed Iran and we started another violent chapter in this decades long pattern.

I was really crushed when I saw the news. I just wanted to talk a little bit about that and lead a meditation on trying to end war and cultivate peace. I remember I was in college when the Gulf War began. You might say, which one? When the first Gulf War began in 1990. I was in college. I was 20-years-old and my high school girlfriend was visiting me. I hadn’t seen her in years. She came down and we had dinner and kind of reconnected and I apologized for being a jerk sometimes, things like that—she slept over just on the couch.

Then that morning, we got up, we went out to breakfast and then saw that we had started this war in the Middle East, and we were completely shocked. We just didn’t know what to say at all because we thought war was outmoded. She and I happened to be born right when the Vietnam War ended. So in her whole life, up to age 20, we didn’t see America enter a war. It was easy to think that the time was over. If you grew up and America had never been in a war, it felt like war was old-fashioned and out of date. But as we see, unfortunately, it may be old-fashioned, but it’s not out of date.

If you grew up and America had never been in a war, it felt like war was old-fashioned and out of date. But as we see, unfortunately, it may be old-fashioned, but it’s not out of date.

I don’t know how many of you know who Donald Rumsfeld was. He was our Secretary of Defense, at one time, and I remember him gleefully singing “bomb Iran” to the tune of this Beach Boy song I mentioned in an earlier episode. It’s funny because I was talking about Brian Wilson and then just a couple days later they announced his death, but he wrote a song called Barbara Ann, a cute harmony song I was playing for my daughter the other day.

But these men, Donald Rumsfeld, they would sing bomb around, they’d say “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran.” You have to admit it’s slightly funny—but not really when you start to think about what they’re saying, people like him had been trying to find some excuse to bomb Iran for decades. But we didn’t have the reason, we didn’t have a political justification for it.

But when these announcements, sadly, it’s happened a few more times in life when different wars began. I look at my emotional response, and you may have a similar one, which is that I do feel a little bit of a surge of excitement when you see, Ooh, we dropped these powerful bombs and maybe we destroyed the nuclear program.

I look at my own mind and I see, Why do I feel that way? I think it’s just thanks to all the conditioning, like all the war movies that we’ve seen, all the Marvel films, in all in all these movies, there’s this rousing classical music that comes as the planes go off, as the spaceships go off, as the boats go off with these heroes who are gonna finally defeat the enemy.

You feel the same thing. We’ve been conditioned to feel really excited when people go off to war. But we don’t get the same result in real life that we have in those movies because what follows is grief, real people dying. No matter how much we disagree with their actions, the people that were killed yesterday, they’re human beings.

No matter how much we disagree with their actions, the people that were killed yesterday, they’re human beings.

The Dalai Lama’s thoughts on war

They’re somebody’s parent. They’re somebody’s child, they’re somebody’s teacher, they’re somebody’s friend. I did a little research preparing for this morning to see what the Dalai Lama said about being drawn to war like this. I found a great talk that he gave, and I had never heard this or read this before.

Even the Dalai Lama admitted being drawn to war as a child. He said, The soldiers’ uniforms looked so smart and beautiful. But that is exactly how the seduction begins. Children start playing games that will one day lead them into trouble. He’s always so gentle when he talks about people who commit some of the worst things but of course he grew beyond this illusion. He saw that what soldiers did wasn’t so seductive when you look into it.

Even the Dalai Lama admitted being drawn to war as a child… but of course he grew beyond this illusion.

When I first saw him speak, many of you know, I wrote about this in the book. The Dalai Lama said something I’ll never forget, and that made me really deeply respect him. He said, If you kill one Chinese person, you make a hundred Chinese enemies.

Iranian people

I’m not sure many people have heard anything like that in their life, but it’s very logical and very true. My wife’s grandfather is Iranian. He lived to 104. He’s a very influential, relatively peaceful human being. He was the ambassador to Canada from Iran, and a great scholar, an engineer, scientist, father obviously of my mother-in-law. My cousin is Iranian, half Iranian, my aunt’s fully Iranian. My daughters is one eighth Iranian. I guess.

The Iranians I know don’t like to say Iranian. They like to say Persian because that is the millennia’s long culture that they have created. Iran is a more recent nation created but the culture is thousands of years old. My wife’s been to Iran. I have pictures of her visiting there. All very peaceful and gentle, the people as far as I have heard, from anybody I know who’s been there, the people, they’re warm, they’re loving, they’re humble.

If you admire an object in an Iranian’s home, you say, What a nice vase they give it to you. My wife has a vase like that, she said, Oh, what a nice vase, they give it to you. It’s part of the culture that if someone says they like something, you have to give it to them. Very, very sweet. Maybe most of them long for democracy and freedom. They’re not particularly happy with their leadership. It’s not the Iranian people that are a problem. It’s a small number of powerful extremists who somehow bubble up to the most powerful positions in our world today.

They’re not particularly happy with their leadership. It’s not the Iranian people that are the problem. It’s a small number of powerful extremists who somehow bubble up to the most powerful positions in our world today.

That happens in many countries, including sometimes our own. From the Buddhist perspective, war is not a path to peace. It should be kind of obvious, it’s an old, outmoded idea. Another quote from the Dalai Lama, he says, In the contemporary, deeply interdependent world, war is outdated and illogical.

From the Buddhist perspective, war is not a path to peace.

It really is illogical. It doesn’t make sense. What did we just accomplish with this bombing? I went and looked at many different sources. Maybe we set back Iran’s nuclear program by a year or two possibly but they may have some sites, some secret sites underground.

What does war accomplish?

Some experts say they’re still just months away from making a nuclear bomb. So what do we accomplish? What are the risks of the escalation and retaliation, or inflaming a bigger war in the Middle East? Is it really worth it to do something like that? It’s also worth noting—I try to say all of this without any political slant because this is just about a universal respect for human life.

It’s worth noting that Israel has the nuclear weapons program. They’re said to have dozens of weapons and it’s widely known, but it’s never been officially acknowledged, never sanctioned. I come from Jewish background, I think some of you know. If we’re generally concerned about nuclear proliferation, why do we tolerate one Middle Eastern country’s unsanctioned nuclear program and not the other one?

The double standards, they don’t promote peace and they make our own nation look cynical, that we’re not really standing for nuclear non-proliferation. These kind of double standards, they inflame distrust, resentment, ultimately more conflict. We had a working agreement, it took a long time, but we had a working agreement with Iran—a treaty. And it takes years to negotiate. Diplomacy takes time, but it saves lives and it works.

It seems kind of boring and frustrating, but it’s not, it doesn’t kill people, or destroy property and the planet. There’s many reasons that deal fell apart, but in the end, it was our own country that walked away from the diplomatic solution. Force hasn’t solved this and problems like it in the past, and it won’t solve it now.

Lately I’ve been thinking about all the wars that America fought since World War II and just wondering, did any of them achieve their goals? How many soldiers and civilians died needlessly, losing their lives to cycles of violence that didn’t resolve anything? Only listening, negotiating, compassion can address the problems the world faces today, because those are the tools that build understanding instead of destruction.

The costs of war are so extraordinary. The Manhattan project, it was something like 10% of the gross domestic product of the United States, that it cost extraordinary cost at the time while we were putting money into all the conventional weapons of World War II. Today nuclear programs, they take trillions of dollars globally. If you think about that money that could go to healthcare, education, housing, retirement, all these real problems people have—just lost to making weapons that are very expensive, and then cause even more destruction and loss of life and property.

We talk about why is social security going bankrupt or something like that. This is one of the reasons that even in one of the richest nations on earth is because we spend so much money on weapons. When I look at some of our leaders, they do seem like sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists, people that are more interested in their reputation or their gain than human life. You may or may not have ever met anybody like this, people like this are outliers. They say like, One in a hundred people is a sociopath.

The culture of war

There’s a lot, actually. It means you will, and you probably have encountered them in life, but there aren’t that many of them. Most humans just want to be safe, eat dinner with their families, love, find joy, meaning, no matter how much each of us think about it, no matter how much we dislike someone, how much they’ve hurt us, most of us can’t even imagine insulting them to their face.

Even that’s kind of beyond the scope of our behavior we’d accept from ourselves, much less dropping a bomb on them. Who are these people who are making these decisions that harm millions of people? How are they raised? How did their parents treat them? What violence did they experience? What movies did they watch as young kids making heroes out of murderers?

Even Han Solo in the first Star Wars—Han Solo shot first, they were just showing that version of Star Wars in the very first version of Star Wars that some of us saw. I got to see it with my parents, in 1977. I remember Han Solo shot first, and George Lucas changed that. So he shot in self-defense and so many people are angry about that and they’re cheering when Han Solo shot first, and they showed that version of Star Wars last week in London.

What if they’d cultivated compassion, reconciliation, listening? What if they watched shows about the Dalai Lama and the truth and reconciliation and Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr.? What if we saw a hundred thousand movies about people like that?

We often think that our own anger is small, that’s harmless or it’s even natural healthy to let it out. But if we had those same levers in front of us, if we had the power of those in power with the control over bombs and armies, our anger might cause a lot more harm. This is why statistics say it’s dangerous to keep a handgun at home. Because most of the deaths from guns come during sudden arguments between loved ones, when their anger overtakes their reason, if you have a gun lying around.

I remember actually seeing Donald Rumsfeld on tv. I don’t know how I saw it because I didn’t watch TV much, but I think I was in like the pizza place or something that had on campus. I remember seeing Donald Rumsfeld on TV when he was appointed Secretary of Defense 25 years ago. He gave his speech, and I remember thinking really clearly, he seems like one of those angry dads, like when I was growing up, because some of my friends had really angry dads. My dad wasn’t that angry. Well, he’s here, actually, he’s listening.

But I remember some of my friends had very angry dads and I thought, Wow, he’s like an angry dad. Then, a few months later, what’s he doing? If you put an angry dad in charge of the US military, they kill millions of people. Again, I was looking this up this morning when I was doing research for this, what is the cost of those wars that began in 1990, the War on Terror, as they call it, over 400,000 civilians died. They say over a million people total, including the combatants.

That’s through direct violence, and then if you include deaths due to starvation, lack of healthcare, unsanitary conditions, things like that, they say the toll rises to 4 million dead. I got this study from Brown University, where I went to school, they did this study called The Cost of War Project, where every year they update the cost of the war on terror. It’s also trillions of dollars, like $8 trillion.

Personal transformation is real, and it can go either way. You can transform yourself toward violence. You can go from an angry dad to killing a million people, or you can steer yourself toward nonviolence. Because each act of kindness and patience, listening, particularly listening, it contributes to a more peaceful world.

Personal transformation is real, and it can go either way. You can transform yourself toward violence.

Every time we forgive, every time we give the benefit of the doubt, every time we just let anger pass through us, the anger just pass through me. Whenever we recognize anger as a delusion instead of feeding it. Some of you remember what my teacher said to me a couple years ago. Anger doesn’t feel good, right?

That’s why we cultivate the antidotes to it. Kazu Haga, great guest on our podcast last year and this year too, he’s nonviolent. He says nonviolent movements are twice as successful as violent ones. And the ratio’s growing more. They’re more and more successful. I don’t know if some of you saw, they show, they published pictures of the situation room.

Nonviolent movements are twice as successful as violent ones.

They never show what’s on the screens, but they show the people looking at the screens. We may not be in that situation room, but we’re in our living rooms, in our classrooms, conference rooms at work, the zoom room. Here we are in the Zoom room. Every moment that we choose patience over rage, listening over shouting, it’s a small act that promotes peace.

Every moment that we choose patience over rage, listening over shouting, it’s a small act that promotes peace.

I’ve seen the Dalai Lama asked this question. It was really powerful. The first time I heard someone ask it in San Francisco, How do we end wars? He said, Make up with the people you have conflicts with in your immediate life. That was all he said. That’s the main cause.

But then, we’ll also do a meditation. Like we have to do something with all our feelings. Part of it is wishing, or aspiration. We reflect, we feel, we wish, not passively, but actively. Because aspiring to better behavior and a better world is a powerful practice that works to transform our minds and change the world. It does plant seeds, not in any airy fairy, supernatural way. It changes how we behave, how we listen, and then it ripples out to everybody we know. There were larger chains to millions of other people.

Aspiring to better behavior and a better world is a powerful practice that works to transform our minds and change the world.

It is meaningful to wish peace and stability for all people, especially those in war zones right now. We’ll do that in a more meditative way. Wishing for an idea, an end to the idea of nations as superior from one another, separate from one another, inferior. These are all delusions born of what we’d say, pride, feelings of superiority or inferiority is another delusion from the Buddhist perspective. You could just as easily imagine the Middle East as a kind of little Europe or United States where all these different people had their differences. We have our differences in the United States, but in general, we’re not killing one another.

We don’t have California stockpiling nuclear weapons against Washington State or something like that. You could easily imagine all the many differing opinions in the Middle East as part of one bigger country, or even a global community. It doesn’t have to be the way it is, they could still have your disagreements, but talk about them, have protests, yell on TV, instead of killing one another, and developing nuclear programs.

People everywhere would just want the same things—to love, to be loved, to live with purpose, to be free from suffering. Of course, wishing to dissolve the illusion of otherness, the seeing people as other. You see how it spirals, it starts out just thinking you’re a little different, little separate, little more important, little less important. Then eventually it slides to the point that you’re willing to kill someone else or drop bombs in their country because we want something different than they do.

People everywhere would just want the same things—to love, to be loved, to live with purpose, to be free from suffering.

Meditation on ending war and cultivating peace

Anyway, let’s do the meditation.

Get yourself into meditation posture.

Straighten your spine, cross your legs if you’re on the floor, or feet out, legs out and feet flat on the floor.

Right hand on top of the left with your thumbs touching.

Arms relaxed with a little space between your torso. Again, spine straight is the most important part. Head tilted down. Relax all the muscles in your face, your shoulders.

Mostly close your eyes if that’s comfortable, to let yourself go inward without falling asleep.

Touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth above your front top teeth.

Today, more than other days, maybe it’s quite palpable how fortunate we are to be safe to live in a place that isn’t a war zone. I can hear the little birds chirping outside right now. See the beautiful sunlight, how extraordinarily lucky we are to live safely.

But what do I want to do with this incredible opportunity? I have this gift of being safe, having some amount of resources and family, friends, work, if you have some or all of these, you’re very fortunate.

So what do we do with a life of some comfort and means?

Now the anyone listening now has already made that decision that for some part of it, I’m going to work to bring out my best qualities to figure out how to live the most meaningful, purposeful, powerful, happy, compassionate life I can. That’s not easy. There’s so many influences in the other direction to be selfish and aggressive and to crave and be impatient and judgmental.

So pat yourself on the back, literally or figuratively. It’s wonderful that you made it here. If you’re listening later on podcast or YouTube.

It’s not only okay to want to be happy, it’s literally the purpose of our lives to figure out the genuine causes of happiness. Our motivation is to do that, to bring out the true causes of happiness, the antidotes to all the different forms of suffering in our minds, and to do that for everybody we touch.

To recognize that words and actions are very powerful. Just a smile, a kind question, being quiet and really listening. You have no idea what great benefit that may have in the world, a few months or years later. That could be the cause of somebody not pressing a button to drop a bomb.

Choosing dialogue over conflict.

Motivation to wisely cultivate the causes of happy mind and a better world, better relationships, respect for all humanity.

Then it really helps if you can remember anybody who is further along that path than you are. Of course, I’m Buddhist, so I think of the Dalai Lama and my teachers. I’m here in my meditation room, so I have all my teachers. You’re supposed to have a picture of every teacher of yours on your altar. Now I have an annex. There’s like, I think at least 30.

You may have at least one spiritual teacher or a compassionate wise hero, or someone humble and compassionate in your life. My sister-in-law, who I just saw, who’s never heard say a bad word about anybody, always so compassionate, kind, generous.

Wherever they are, think of them or build them all together in front of you as a support, as refuge. Realize they weren’t just born that way, that they bucked the trend, they cultivated the causes of a happy, kind, compassionate, effective mind, actions life day by day, moment by moment. Action by action, word by word.

Often at odds with what society teaches us, and we’re doing the same, we’re doing just as they did.

There’s nothing better we could do within the next few minutes than try to deepen those neural pathways for kindness, compassion, dialogue, love, universal respect for life, and then bring your mind to your breath.

Today, I think we’ll meditate a little bit longer on the breath.

Making a determination

We mostly focus on analytical meditation, but stabilizing meditation is very powerful. If you can settle into it, one of the best ways to do that is actually to make a determination. Let’s just try three minutes. To make the determination I’m going to focus on my breath for three minutes, and if something else pops into my mind or I feel something in my body, I’ll just let it pass by.

No need to pull it close. No need to push it away. Return your mind to your breath.

Today, it might be nice to focus on the breath at the abdomen, kind of near your belly button going in and out.

So for three minutes, focus on the breath.

*three minutes go by*

Imagining peace

Now let’s meditate on the end of war.

We start by cultivating compassion for all those caught in violence, both the victims and the perpetrators.

It’s hard to know where to start because we’re so polarized, but certainly there are people that died in Iran yesterday. Even though the ones killed, may have been doing something that we disagree with or that was harmful. They had families, they have partners, children, parents. Most of us have networks of dozens, hundreds of people that know us, care about us. They’re just like us.

Many Iranian civilians, hundreds have been killed in the past couple weeks. Just innocent people out, going to buy milk and vegetables just like us.

Imagine yourself floating over Iran at first and just taking away all that suffering. All the people who grieving wailing, who lost their son, daughter, parent, friend, partner…

Wish that they’d be able to get over their grief.

Wish that those planning and perpetrating violence immediately set down their arms, their plans, move instead toward peace.

Do the same as you float over Israel. Imagine the vast majority, 99.9% probably of the country who just wants to go home. Eat some hummus and falafels and have a nice evening with their loved ones, live safely.

Nobody wants to be at war. Most of the soldiers don’t want to be at war. They’re all forced to. They have to join the army in Israel.

Nobody wants to be at war.

Feel compassion for those who lost loved ones in Israel too, that they get over their grief and anger and those scared and the military forced into combat, and especially wish that the leaders in both of these places realize that violence is illogical.

As the Dalai Lama says that sooner or later they have to find diplomatic solution to their problems. So why not do it now and save lives?

Imagine the other conflicts in the region and now with the Palestinian people, Lebanon, Syria, and so on.

Imagine that everybody gets a clear head.

Imagine a world where we still have differences. We still have disagreements, but we talk about them. We negotiate. We never fight. Everyone remains safe.

All that money we save goes towards healthcare and housing. Taking care of the elderly, the homeless.

Imagine the same now as you float over Ukraine and Russia. All those people who just want to go home, have a nice evening with their family, their loved ones. You send down a kind of blue healing light that helps everyone who lost somebody they loved get over their grief. That makes those planning and perpetrating violence immediately set down their arms and seek out nonviolent solutions to their problems.

Imagine changing the minds of the leaders to be compassionate, compassionate, caring, wise, kind. Imagine all the other conflicts in the world. There are some other conflicts just as bad or nearly as bad that we’re ignoring in the news right now.

Imagine everyone else suffering from violence, that they lay down their arms, that those who’ve suffered the loss of loved ones gradually get over their grief. And that the people, the very small minority of very aggressive, violent people driving these actions, that their minds are tamed.

Imagine a world at peace, still with disagreements, different religions, different perspectives, different points of view, but more like at least our country where we’re mostly not killing each other, even though we have big disagreements.

Imagine just that, at least an end to physical violence, to weapons of mass destruction. It’s fine, people still arguing a bit with each other, but at least not killing each other.

Then reflect a little bit on the seeds of war within ourselves, especially pride, feeling superior, or inferior, anger, seeing only the negative in somebody and wanting to harm them. We feel that even toward our partner, our loved one sometimes. It’s understandable that you might feel it towards strangers with weapons pointed toward your country vengeance.

We’ve been taught so many movies and show that vengeance works. It doesn’t.

We’ve been taught by so many movies and show that vengeance works. It doesn’t.

But see how we each have some of those seeds in ourselves. Some we can control better than others. And that the alternative is to plant the seeds of peace, which we each all have, and demonstrate. Patience is not returning harm. It doesn’t mean accepting harm. It means not returning it.

Listening, maybe the most important. Compassion, wanting to take away the suffering of everybody, even your so-called enemies.

Love. How do you love everybody? With the Buddhist definition of love, of wishing others to be happy. We just wish everyone to be happy, to have what they need because they certainly wouldn’t be fighting. Nobody wants to be in a war.

Reflect on whether what the Dalai Lama said is true, that if we wanna end wars, we should start by making up with those we have conflicts. And if it doesn’t feel safe to talk to someone, it doesn’t mean that at all. Making up means in your mind. So you may never talk to the person you have a conflict with, but you forgive them, you understand them.

Your mind eventually is no longer agitated when you think about them, what they did or said.

Could that be true? That the biggest cause of peace in the world is to make up with all the people we have conflicts with.

I wish that the leaders of all the nations, especially the ones at war, do this too, that their hearts soften, that their minds open, that they make decisions only that protect life.

Imagine that world.

Start to feel your way into the reality that war is not inevitable.

Takes a lot of effort to fight, especially when you look historically. There was so much room on earth and these little bands of people would go out of their way to prepare sometimes for years, gathering weapons, armor, and then go meet each other somewhere and kill each other. When there’s so much space.

It’s so much resources, more than enough for everybody. It didn’t make sense then either. War made no sense a thousand years ago, 10,000 years ago; it makes less sense now. Way less, given the weapons that we have.

War made no sense a thousand years ago, 10,000 years ago; it makes less sense now.

To feel into the reality that war is not inevitable. It’s not logical, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s a product of delusion, anger, pride, jealousy, craving, and ignorance.

And that peace begins inside just like we’re doing now.

Just one thought. May the world be at peace. May I make up with all my enemies.

We have no idea what effect that may have as it ripples out in our lives. Then what if we start thinking that way every day? At least once a day, may the world be at peace.

May I resolve all the conflicts in my own life.

At the very least, the the world moves a little bit, at the very least, a little bit in that direction through thoughts like these. So if you have a daily meditation practice, maybe add that sentence into it, may the world be at peace. May I resolve the conflicts in my own life.

And may our meditation today be a cause for peace in the world. May the wars in the Middle East end immediately. May those in Ukraine, Russia, end immediately where everyone go home and start rebuilding. Enjoy their families and relationships and friends. May all the wars and conflicts and violence all over the world and in some people’s homes also end immediately. May the world be at peace.

May the world be at peace.

Credits