Remarks by Abdul Aziz Said - November 2007

 Presented at the Fellowship of Peace Award Ceremony at the Gandhi Memorial Center

Beloved Friends,
 
Thank you for helping me work my way up the ladder of consciousness from my limitation to your abundance.
 
 
Prayer of Remembrance and Peace
 
Let us remember
the children, women, and men everywhere
who live with injustice and disease
as their constant companions.
 
We pray that our light be used to warm and give comfort to those places in the heart that have surrendered to hatred and despair, and bring clarity and peace to their hearts.
 
We pray for human dignity to rise from the spirit by remembering all of the men, women and children who have lived and continue to live with fear and horror as present and constant companions.
 
We pray for the military and civilian men, women and children
 who themselves are struggling with the fear and ugliness
of man’s inhumanity to man.
 
Let us celebrate all the people
helping make the world
a community of justice and peace.




Let us do what we can
that all creatures
may enjoy the beauty
and riches of our planet.
 
Let us connect our hearts and energies with the world and its being
 so that those poor souls who are caught up in the storm of violence may know peace.
 
 
Alternative Peace Strategy
Peace by Relationship
 
 
It is time to put a human face on peace. Our time honored strategies of peace are not working. They are starved of emotional content. Traditional strategies of peace through Unity, Religion and Laws have failed through twisting and corruption.
 
 
Unity – when twisted and corrupted leads to empire:
·         A forced conformity of sameness rather than the celebration of differences and diversity.
·         Moreover, this kind of distorted unity is driven by fear and coercion rather than by self-confidence and wonderment
·         The kind of hegemony seen in the world today is illustrative of this point.
Religion – when twisted and corrupted leads to exclusivity:
·         Closed religion which is exclusive and also driven by fear of differences.
·         Closed religion preaches total ownership of the truth when, in reality, we all possess parts of the truth and need each other to discover truth’s totality.
·         Closed religion can never appreciate the infinite because it has a limited worldview.
Laws – when twisted and corrupted lead to servitude:
·         They stifle the spirit rather than protecting the weak and silent.
·         Laws are subject to interpretation and can be used to suppress rather than empower.
·         Subjective cultural influences need to be taken into consideration; one country’s laws can be another country’s taboos.
*                         *                              *
These strategies for peace are fundamentally flawed. They fail to acknowledge our connectedness — consciousness, our spirituality.
·         Our spirituality, our transnational consciousness, embraces our oneness, common humanity, and interdependence. Gandhi said “Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency.” We all need one another.
·         We have moved from a context of humanity as fragments of the whole, to a new context of humanity as a whole.
*                         *                              *
Yes, we need an Alternative Peace Strategy which, at its core, is Peace by Relationship.         
 
Peace by Relationship is not predicated upon dogma or a set of rules; peace cannot be legislated.
 
·         When we discover our individual authenticity – when we know who we are, we recognize the genuine uniqueness of others.
·         Peace by Relationship requires a spiritual conception of love. Gandhi said “When you want to find truth as God, the only inevitable means is love.”
·         Love is a dynamic force which flows through us rather than a state we possess. To receive it we have to give it to others. Love is our ecological function as humans. It demands that our actions stem from our inner acceptance of others.
*                      *                              *
·         A peaceful relationship grows between peaceful individuals and groups of individuals. We become peaceful by knowing, and then honoring who we are.
·         Self knowledge (or self awareness) is the essence of spiritual growth which is necessary to bring about a lasting and positive peace. Gandhi said, “The aim of life is to know the self. This realization of self, or self-knowledge, is not possible until one has achieved unity with all living beings.”
·         Being self aware revolves around minding the heart; we must harmonize the mind with the heart in order to become whole and reach our full potential.
*                      *              *
·         When we become more self aware, we notice the clutter within our minds. This leads to an emptying of our overly active minds and rejecting passivity.
·         This process leads to growth and overcoming fear and anxiety.
·         Such a process requires a great deal of humility – we are not finished products but constantly improving, and we cannot go through this process of becoming self aware in isolation.
·         Becoming more self aware does not mean isolating ourselves from others but rather leads us to recognize our need for others, our relationships on the journey, and the importance of community and connectedness.
*                              *                              *
·         For educators, an alternative peace strategy requires pedagogies that focus directly, dynamically, and creatively on contemporary global issues, and that provide young people with genuine experiences of cross-cultural encounter and dialogue.
·         Dialogue is based on achieving new forms of knowing so that we see others in increasingly humanizing contexts, allowing us to look together towards a common future.  Dialogue becomes a way of knowing that embraces the complexity of our world and enables learners to sift through multiple, competing truth claims to find patterns that connect them.  In dialogue, we establish a peace partnership. 
*                              *                              *
An Alternative Peace Strategy is:
·         Peace through inner experience and outer engagement, though transformation of consciousness.
·         Peace through a change in our perception and experience of the universe and ourselves, and of the relationship between them.
·         Peace through healing, through restoration of wholeness by “pulling ourselves together,” individually and collectively.
·         Peace through (and in) the realization that the whole of existence is reflected in the parts, and from the parts comes the ever-greater whole. The whole world needs the whole world.
*                      *                              *
Peace is a journey. It is a never ending journey. We are not alone on the journey. We are all connected. It is our connection to one another that opens us to thoughts, words and deeds guided by love.
When our thoughts reflect love,
our words are those of a lover
And our deeds are directed toward the Beloved.
We are peace.
When Peace emanates from us, Peace returns to us.
We become peaceful – a source and mirror of peace.
*                              *                              *
On January 30, 1948, Gandhi passed from existence in time to existence out of time. Gandhi is reborn every day.
- Abdul Aziz Said-