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From the Moon to Peace: Childlike Mindfulness and the Pact of Nonviolence
Today, an invitation to children for a three-month journey to Vietnam: three groups of ten, each staying for one month to share the practice of calm, understanding, and compassion, and to show that young people from the West actively aspire to mindfulness. In the evening, celebration of the Moon Festival: observing the tree and the little man in the Moon, the legend of Cuội, the lying woodcutter who became a healer thanks to a miraculous tree, exiled to the Moon after his wife offended the tree. The story continues with the tale of three astronauts stranded on the Moon and the Vietnamese buffalo boy who offers to return to Earth by resonating with the tree.
Central teaching on resolving conflict:
- Recognize your own suffering and that of the other (the First Noble Truth);
- Identify the roots: hatred, anger, fear, discrimination, despair, and wrong perceptions (the Second Noble Truth);
- Transform these negative energies;
- Introduce a spiritual dimension (recollection, anussati) to maintain right view;
- Let right view inspire right thinking, right speech, and right action.
Concrete practice: use right speech and deep listening to restore communication, eliminate wrong perceptions, and, starting from a pact of nonviolence (in a couple, between peoples or nations), build a “treaty” in which each person commits not to punish with violence but to inquire into the suffering of the other. Examples are given of applying this to personal conflicts and to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; there is a proposal to organize a “people’s peace conference” where we walk, breathe, and share the deep vision of peace before inviting political leaders to join.
