THE PRACTICAL POWER OF PEACE

You ever met a person who is so gentle, so warm, that he or she is almost familiar to you? That was my first experience of my friend John. I met him on my very first trip to the States. He is a fine orator and had just successfully battled cancer and gotten the “all clear”. He had then dedicated his life to talking about his experience, and giving others hope. For six years since he overcame cancer, he has been doing just that, all over the US. You can therefore imagine my surprise when I read a curious note on his Facebook page saying something like “three treatments down, fifty one to go” or some crazy number like that. I couldn’t even reply to the post, I called straight away. I don’t even think I said ‘hello’. “What’s this about ‘treatments’, then?” He told me the news and what procedures he was scheduled to undertake. In typical, warrior-babe mode, I started talking about him fortifying himself for the battle ahead. But he had such a different take on it. Rather than think of it as a battle, he is working on accepting that the cancer is back, loving himself and accepting that his body is feeding the cancer, not fighting the cancer but ‘allowing’, acknowledging and even, being relaxed about it to such levels that the cancer, would be free to leave him. His five pronged approach is so simple, yet so complete; including prayer, eating right, thinking right, faith and getting the right treatment. I was gobsmacked. I know this guy well. He was in the US armed forces. I could understand him waging war against the cancer. I expected us to talk strategy, approach, combat plans, tactics. I could not get my head round him being at peace with it. When I put the phone down, I knew I had just spoken with a master, and had received a valuable lesson. I was just so dazed, I just had to allow this one to sink. It’s taken me four days since we spoke to begin to truly understand what he is saying, and even now, I’ve gotta say, John, I’m still shaking my head in wonder. Physiologically, it makes complete sense. When we are in ‘fight’ mode, our body tenses up, our adrenaline levels surge and everything within us shuts down to redirect as much energy and resources towards the battle. Likewise, that which we are battling fortifies itself to ensure it is not annihilated. Psychologically it means that the focus is not on the cancer, how big it is getting, what the doctors are saying etc. It is on the healing and so the brain can direct resources within the bodyto be deployed to where they are needed for healing rather than for battle. Yet, not to fight seems insane, frankly it almost seems to be a cop-out. Or is it? A relatively young yogi, Paramahamsa Nithyananda [please forgive the spelling], tells a story of a time he was meditating in the woods. He had his eyes open but was not ‘running any thoughts’ through his head – you know the type of meaningless chatter that often rages while we go about life. He was in complete silence within and without, totally enjoying his surroundings. He noticed a large snake lying rather close to him but so deep was he in his meditation that for a while, he did not pay any attention to it. For that while, neither did the snake pay him any attention. By and by, he came out of his meditation and thought to himself, “That’s a snake, it could harm me.” He recounts how, in that moment, the snake roused itself and he had the distinct impression that the snake had realised, “That’s a man, 'it' could harm me.” He calmed down and thought to get up and step away from the snake slowly – not an altogether unwise thing to do. [Eh, I confess that this is the bit in the script where I’d be running for dear life, or looking around for a big stick so kudos to you, Para.] Slowly, the snake uncoiled itself and slithered away from him a little bit. In that moment, he had a great insight. For as long as he did not consider the snake to be a danger to him, the snake did not consider him to be a danger to him. The moment the thought came to his mind ‘Snake – danger’, the thought came to the snake, ‘Man – danger’. He uses this story to illustrate the principle of ‘ahimsa’ - non-violence. From what I understand, it works like this. If you project non violence, non threat and peace, you will invite... exactly non-violence, peace in your life. John, I think I get it. The greatest strategy you could ‘deploy’ ‘against’ the cancer, is to project non-violence towards it, to acknowledge it and then ‘step away’ from it. For then, in the absence of battle, the cancer has nothing to fight within you. It needs to go find a different war ground in another body. WOW!!! This has got me thinking about Gandhi and his use of that principle to end the colonialism in his country or Martin Luther King Junior to end segregation in the US. Now I am by no means an expert on Indian or American history but if I apply the same principle – non violent protests, the downing of tools, the peaceful demonstrations – the reason they were so effective was that the ‘enemy’ could not justify the use of force against a people who retaliated with peace. It isn’t that the proponents of peaceful dissent took on a laissez faire, everything goes, attitude. They just figured out really early that violence could only beget violence. The state or the colonisers would have won any armed resistance – they were much more powerful and had more sophisticated weapons. What they could not battle was peace. It isn’t that other things did not contribute towards the downfall of these oppressive regimes. It is that the practice of peace in dissent was the glue that brought all the other contributing factors together and made it so that no other outcome was possible but that which was achieved – freedom, emancipation. So then I think about all the things I battle within and without. How they appear to persist, even grow in my presence. How weary I am of that battle. Well, maybe I’m the contributor to their growth. Mother Theresa once said that she would never participate in an anti-war protest, but a peace protest? “Any day.” I always wondered what the distinction was. I’m beginning to understand now that the distinction is focus. Whatever I put my mind to, reflects back onto me. Just like the yogi and the snake, it does not mean that for a while the thing will not be there. It just will not harm me. And being the eternal dreamer, one day maybe I will so inculcate that principle that I will be able to honestly say, “No weapon formed against me can prosper”. I can lie like the proverbial lamb, next to the lion, heck, be in a den of lions and not a hair on my head shall be harmed. For no weapon, no enemy can be effective against peace. John, Namaste. For you have taught me a new one. Ahimsa – the principle of peace. (c) Renee Ngamau