War and Peace

Thoughts by Rashid about our current times

War is horrendous and painful and deeply affects us all, whether we are personally involved or merely a distant bystander.

War brings up our fears and our anger so we polarise into hating one side and calling the other side the good guys. We choose black or white when life is made up of all shades of grey.

I have turned to Osho for help with the wars that right now alarm the world, remembering of course, that he gives us no creed or dogma and often conflicting views. As I understand his words, war and peace are twin limbs of life. Mankind cannot live and has never lived without them. They are part of our so-called identity.

As a young sailor I fought in a brief war over the Suez Canal. In the sixties I marched against the Vietnam War and later in the seventies we, the younger generations, celebrated a new era of love and peace, ironically backed by the strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction.

As early as 1970 Osho made it clear that this era of peace was our delusion. Speaking in Mount Abu, he described the warlike hawks as having only one leg and we peacenik doves are also one legged.

Once I understood that war and peace are seemingly inevitable traits of our human existence, I now needed to see that wanting one state rather than the other was setting myself up for disappointment, misery and frustration.

As I understand Osho, this does not mean that we condone violence and brutality, it means we step back from identification: yet if we have to fight, we fight.

Now let us turn to a more difficult theme; that of Krishna advising Arjuna to fight and kill his relatives.

As a meditator of some years now I begin to grasp that everything that comes into form will dissolve from form and that it is our bodies and minds that die. As this understanding grows through meditation I see there remains an essence or awareness or soul that is both timeless and universal. Krishna tells Arjuna that death is a fiction or as Osho calls it ‘someone else’s opinion of you.’

To contrast this I have a memory too of Osho saying that being a sannyasin means living at peace with oneself and nature and a true meditator will not kill.

I put these understandings out with some hesitation, just the assurance that they have helped me find a more nuanced and symmetrical view of the shocking narrative of our current wars.

Artwork by the author from the series, Not Knowing – the Most Intimate