Photo Credit: Mike Swigunski
This training was given at the Boundless Love Project’s weekly group meditation (now virtual due to the pandemic) on 8.4.2020. We make it available here in audio, video, or article format for your convenience. This talk is part of The Wisdom of Peace Pilgrim training series.
BEFORE YOU START: If you have the book, Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Times in Her Own Words, get that as well. (If you don’t have her book, please order a free copy of it here). Thank you.
Meditation
We invite you to listen to listen to a guided meditation of your choice before the talk.
Audio Version
Video Version
Article Version: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
This week will be the 75th anniversary of the United States detonating nuclear weapons over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The first nuclear weapon was detonated above Hiroshima on August 6th 1945, and the second over Nagasaki, three days later on August 9.
Tonight, through readings, meditations, and prayer we will pause and reflect on nuclear weapons, war, peace, and beloved community. We will hear the words of Peace Pilgrim, Martin Luther King, Jr., and former South African President F.W. de Klerk who dismantled South Africa's nuclear weapons. We will reflect on the fact that currently only nine countries in the world possess nuclear weapons, while 122 countries voted in the United Nations to ban nuclear weapons. May we reflect and contemplate on these manners out of love for ourselves and all life, and that we may be more loving, peaceful, kind, and skillful moving forward.
To start, I want to take a minute to speak of the consequences to human life caused by the bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you do not consent to hearing this, I invite you to cover your ears for a minute. I will wave you back in like this when I am finished. (For those reading this, who do not consent to hearing this, please skip the next paragraph.)
The two bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed upwards of 226,000 people and many uncounted animals, domestic and wild. Of the people killed, most were civilians. All of these people and animals wanted to live in peace and safety. Half were killed immediately by the explosions, while most of the other half died slowly over the next four months from burns, radiation poisoning, and injuries, and the resulting illness and malnutrition caused by the massive devastation to the health care and food supply infrastructure.
The United States remains the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons in combat. Today, the US retains the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world, second only to Russia.
A Short Meditation
Allowing all Thoughts and Feelings to Be
Let's do a short meditation.
Getting comfortable, silently name or label any emotions that arose due to the information I shared with you: sadness, anger, apathy, guilt, shame, or anything else.
Whatever emotions arose, know they arose due to impersonal conditioning. Their arising is lawful. They belong. Allow them to be as they are.
Gently now reflect on any thoughts that arose in response to the information I shared with you.
Whatever thoughts arose, know they arose due to impersonal conditioning. Their arising is lawful. They belong. Allow them to be as they are.
Mindful Pause
Now we take a mindful pause. Placing our full awareness on the sensations of breath, we breathe in through our nose, deep into our belly for two, three, four, five.
Now exhale for two three four five.
Rest the awareness on the breath. Do not engage with any other thoughts, feelings, or sensations. Compassionately keep all of your attention on the sensations of breath to allow the mind and body to be calm and settled.
Experiencing, witnessing, or perpetrating violence creates trauma in bodies that can be passed down from generation to generation. These traumas make us fearful, defensive, and more likely to attack, causing us to perpetuate a never-ending cycle of violence.
Offering Loving-Kindness to All Who Suffer Trauma
In an effort to break this cycle of violence, we offer loving-kindness to the victims, survivors, perpetrators, and witnesses of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
May all who died, wherever they may be now, may you and your relations know unconditional peace, compassion, and love and be healed of any remaining wounds.
May all who survived, and had to live with the carnage, death, and destruction, may you and your relations know unconditional peace, compassion, and love and be healed of any remaining wounds.
May all who participated in the bombing, either by helping design and build the bombs, by giving the order to drop the bombs, by carrying out the orders to bomb, by offering moral support and encouragement for the bombings, or in any other way helped, supported, or abetted in this bombing...
May all who participated, may you and your relations know unconditional peace, compassion, and love and be healed of any remaining wounds.
May all who opposed the bombing, but witnessed it or learned about it, helpless to do anything to stop it or take it back, some knowing that this act of violence was done in their name...
May all who witnessed it, may you and your relations know unconditional peace, compassion, and love and be healed of any remaining wounds.
Finally, may all people, all animals, and all life forms everywhere, excluding none, may you and your relations know unconditional peace, compassion, and love, and be healed of any remaining wounds.
Ring bell
Peace Pilgrim Reading: The Way of Peace
Next we will do a reading from Peace Pilgrim's book. If you have your copy handy, feel free to turn to page 97 and read along, starting at the top of the page. Peace Pilgrim says:
THIS IS THE WAY OF PEACE: Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.
It is hard for people to understand that all war is bad and self-defeating. People in their immaturity attempt to overcome evil with more evil, and that multiplies the evil. Only good can overcome evil.
My simple peace message is adequate - really just the message that the way of peace is the way of love. Love is the greatest power on earth. It conquers all things. One in harmony with God's law of love has more strength than an army, for one need not subdue an adversary; an adversary can be transformed.
One day as I was walking along the highway I began to sing peace words to a familiar tune which I believe sums up the present world situation in a nutshell:
The world is feverishly working to build the things of war,
The world is preparing destruction of a kind unknown before.
I hear much cursing of enemies, and arguments increase,
But, oh, the world is longing, is yearning,
Is praying for peace - for peace!
The nuclear bomb says to us: "Make peace or perish!" We recognize that we can no longer think in terms of military victory, that a nuclear war would mean mutual annihilation. Many face this critical situation with apathy, some with frustration, but only a very few face it constructively.
There is such a great need for constructive peace action. We live at a crisis period in human affairs, and those of us who are living today face a very momentous decision: a choice between nuclear war of annihilation and a golden age of peace. All who are living today will help to make this choice, for the tide of world affairs now drifts in the direction of war and destruction. So all who do nothing in this crisis situation are choosing to let it drift. Those who wish to choose peace must act meaningfully for peace. And become a part of the stirring and awakening which has begun and is accelerating. And help to accelerate it sufficiently to turn the tide. In this crisis situation peace is certainly everybody's business! The time to work for peace is now.
Ultimate peace begins within; when we find peace within there will be no more conflict, no more occasion for war. If this is the peace you seek, purify your body by sensible living habits, purify your mind by expelling all negative thoughts, purify your motives by casting out any ideas of greed or self-striving and by seeking to serve your fellow human beings, purify your desires by eliminating all wishes for material possessions or self-glorification and by desiring to know and do God's will for you. Inspire others to do likewise.
Some will prefer to work on an interim peace - a setting up of mechanisms to resolve conflicts in a world where conflicts still exist - so that although there may still be psychological violence there will no longer be physical violence. If this is the peace you seek, work on a world scale for world disarmament and reconstruction, for a world government which will include all people, for world thinking: placing the welfare of the human family above the welfare of any nation. Work on a national scale for changing the function of the so-called Defense Department from destruction to construction. So much constructive work is needed among the less fortunate peoples in the world, and for the adjustment of our economy to a peacetime situation. Lots of problems to solve here. Get others to work with you.
Peace Pilgrim invites us all into the roll of peace-makers. Through self-purification and constructive service, we can all do our own part to create a world of peace.
Mindful Pause and Reflection
Let's take another mindful pause:
In what way do you feel called to be a peacemaker?
Where in your life can you bring more kindness, more compassion, more love, more healing, more peace?
Ring bell
Excerpts from The Atlantic Article: Why One President Gave Up His Country's Nukes
Next I share with you some excerpts from The Atlantic article called Why One President Gave Up His Country's Nukes by Uri Friedman:
Only four countries in history have surrendered their nuclear weapons: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and South Africa.... Had Ukraine and Kazakhstan kept the arsenals on their territory, they would have become the world’s third- and fourth-largest nuclear powers, respectively….
However, South Africa has dismantled nuclear weapons that it constructed and controlled.
Next, The Atlantic reporter Uri Friedman interviews former South African President F.W. de Klerk about nuclear weapons.
During the interview, De Klerk explains:
De Klerk: ...I first became aware of the existence of this [nuclear weapons] program—the full cabinet in South Africa never knew about it—when I became minister of mineral and energy affairs [in the early 1980s]. The bombs were in the making. I never felt comfortable with [the program], but I couldn’t stop it. By the end, when I became president, we had six completed nuclear weapons, and the seventh was halfway done. They were Hiroshima-type weapons.
Friedman: Why did you have misgivings about the program?
De Klerk: I felt that it’s meaningless to use such a bomb in what was essentially a bush war—that it was unspeakable to think that we could destroy a city in one of our neighboring countries in any way whatsoever. From the beginning, in my personal opinion, I regarded it as a rope around our neck.
Friedman: In what sense?
De Klerk: In the sense you have something which you never intend to use, really, which is unspeakable to use, which would be morally indefensible to use….
Friedman: To those who say, ‘Once countries get nuclear weapons, they’re never going to give them up. We just have to live with a nuclear weapons-armed North Korea,’ what would you say?
De Klerk: I would say the solution lies in those [nuclear-weapons powers] who, even if [they have nuclear weapons] legitimately in terms of the [nuclear nonproliferation treaty], coming forth and showing their willingness, in a reasoned way, to diminish their stocks and to commit to an end goal of getting rid of it all—to lead by example.
Efforts to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
At the beginning of 2020, only nine countries possessed nuclear weapons. On July 7, 2017, 122 countries voted to adopt the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which seeks to legally ban nuclear weapons in the same way that chemical and biological weapons have been banned.
Since then, fifty-three countries have signed the treaty. By signing the treaty, they agree to never “[d]evelop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” They also vow to not assist other countries with such efforts, nor will they “[a]llow any stationing, installation or deployment of any nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices in its territory or at any place under its jurisdiction or control.”
Mindful Pause and Reflection
Let's take another mindful pause.
As your body and mind settle, and you rest in inner peace, I will ask a few questions. Notice, what, if any, response your inner wisdom offers to the questions, and remember, your answers may arise in ways other than words.
What does the global beloved community that your heart wishes to see expressed in the world look like?
How do people treat each other? ...relate to each other? ...support and help one another? How do people treat domestic animals? …wildlife? …and the environment?
In the global beloved community your heart wishes to see in the world, does war exist?
In the global beloved community your heart wishes to see in the world, do nuclear weapons exist?
Building and maintaining nuclear weapons costs the U.S. trillions of dollars and countless hours of labor. Imagine all the good that could be done if that money, labor, and time was reinvested elsewhere.
In what way do you feel called to be a peacemaker? How can you promote peace in your relationships to your own thoughts, feelings, sensations, and body? …in your relationships with friends, family members, neighbors, colleagues, strangers, and so-called enemies? …in your work, service, and volunteering? …in who you vote for and what you support? …in the actions you
Gently notice your heart's answers to these questions. Let these answers inform how you live and move in the world.
Ring bell
Call to Action
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, an outspoken opponent of war and nuclear weapons, once said, “What will be the ultimate value of having established social justice in a context where all people, Negro and White, are merely free to face destruction by Strontium-90 or atomic war?”
If you feel so moved, I invite you all to pray every day this week for world peace and for global nuclear disarmament.
Also, on Thursday, August 6th, at 7 pm Central Time, Campaign Nonviolence will be holding a one-hour, online Vigil for Hiroshima and Nagasaki that I invite all who are interested to attend. You can lean more about the vigil and watch it live from this webpage: https://paceebene.org/hiroshimaday2020.
Closing Words
I close with a prayer for peace created by the Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Please direct it to the all-loving, all-merciful, higher power of your understanding :
You have given us life, intelligence and the beautify of creation, O God. Your good gifts were given so we might be stewards of all that is alive. In our arrogance we have unleashed fearful forces that destroy. We have brought down fierce fire from the sky. Your children [and creatures] have been burned, your gentle green earth scorched. Fear rules now, not Love. We have given in to evils, lesser and greater. In your mercy, help us turn from destruction, from bombs and barricades. Lead us to life again, to affirmation of all goodness, to international disarmament, and to transform the nuclear nightmare into the peace you have proposed. Hear our prayer, O God, and guide us in your ways. Amen.
• • • •
Thank you for reading this article. Please join us at our virtual meetings every Tuesday at 6:15 pm (Central Standard Time). Visit our events page for more details on joining us. And, if you haven’t already, be sure to order a free copy of Peace Pilgrim’s book, Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Times in Her Own Words, and bring it with you to our virtual meeting. Thank you.
Wishing you boundless love, peace, wisdom, and joy!