A Pure Land on Earth: Meditation purifies the mind, fills the world with love, and brings about world peace.

Summary of Content

The Buddhist approach to fostering peace grows out of wisdom cultivated in meditation and shared with others in a wide range of activities, among which teaching and exemplary behavior are paramount. Buddhism teaches us that the causes of conflict and war lie within ourselves; it also teaches us how to constructively temper our own tendency to generate conflict. Underlying this is the Buddhist idea that peace in society begins with peace within oneself This cultivated inner peace numerically expands from one person to the next until we can truly say that we both act and think locally as well as globally. Simply by sharing our inner peace on a one-on-one basis, we can have a staggering effect on global peace.

The meditative community is the peace program and the means we advocate and practice. It is not a community of individuals acting alone, but a community of meditators bonded by an attainable ideal. A good model is perhaps the Buddhist monastic community, or Sangha, which we call a Harmonious Society. The word harmonious encourages members to maintain a peaceful attitude toward others, to adjust their behavior to accommodate others, and to offer themselves for the benefit of others. Accepting the role of peacemaker is more direct than requiring that others wage peace. Following this harmonious model, a larger society can attempt to influence disharmonic elements in its midst through peaceful means.