New Year Newsbyte 2024

This is the world of an ever onward going scenario, Samsara, where history repeats its dramas, with the same basic plot, over and over again, driven by the usual suspects – acquisitiveness, aversion (fear and hatred) and delusion.

There is always a lull, a respite, after the fighting. New ideas emerge. New organisations to keep the peace are confirmed by all involved. Peace reigns. Commerce flourishes. A generalised atmosphere of safety allows happiness to arise. The people are content. And then …

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy
And his dark secret love
                   Does thy life destroy.   William Blake

There are lots of interpretations of this enigmatic poem. I take the rose to be humankind and the bed of crimson joy the potential that is destroyed by the worm of delusion. The dark secret love is the delusion manifest as a crimped individual self that surrounds itself with barriers but has within its confines a tunnel vision of love centred on the ‘sovereign self’ or the proletariat or the nation or race or religion. It supports itself with likeminded other tunnel visioned selves that prove ‘I am right and everyone else is wrong’.

It is the glory of the European Union that after centuries of killing each other, culminating in two massive wars, that 35 odd nations have settled into a co-abiding that makes war between them difficult to imagine. It took especially the courage of the main protagonists, Germany and France, to lead to the post-war cooperation. It is based on the Élysée Treaty, which was signed by  Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer  on 22 January 1963 – 18 years after the end of WWII!

Elsewhere other conflicts continue [i] or new ones emerge, most of all in the European mind, the invasion of Ukraine and the war in Israel-Palestine. At what point do adversaries realise that violence only feeds violence? Surely it is when they realise that there will be no end to the conflict. Wars do come to an end, but at what enormous cost!

Hatred and violence are never overcome by hatred and violence.
It is appeased only by goodwill and love.
This is an ancient law.  Dhp. 5

Each side will have its own reasons and if we stand where they are, we are able to let go of the bias of the western media. It allows us to see that each side has good reasons which makes the conflict, in their own eyes, worthy of the sacrifice. This does not justify the violence but allows us not to take sides and argue for mediation and compromise.

We lack great leadership that stands above the fray, which is not cowed by the ‘electorate’ nor seduced by vested interests.  This is my deepest despair for us all. Commentators aplenty. Politicians by the thousands. But no international figure with an over arching vision to inspire us.

But then my despair may be set on a false premise. Perhaps the world has to burn whether by war or climate crisis, perhaps there has to be a universal catastrophe before desperation declares there must be a better way!  This was true for Europe.
As in some of our own personal dramas, when everything falls apart, there comes the choice between hopelessness or renewal.

So, we should live in hope. Not expectation! But a hope based on our essential nature, Satipanya, the Buddha Within. The Dhamma will prevail! Wisdom will overcome delusion because that is the inner trajectory of every sentient being. The Buddha tells us that it is Dukkha itself (unsatisfactoriness, suffering) that makes us seek the end of Dukkha.