Embodying Peace

 In reading about conflict and conflict resolution strategies, I am lead to feel that Buddhism has a lot to offer this discussion. More than just meditation, Buddhist philosophies encompass how people can be peaceful at all moments, especially knowing that their lives and everything in it is ever passing, all the time. What does this have to do with peace? I think that the true insight into this very simple matter of time passing can foster a profound peace in itself.
  During the group meditation tonight, there were moments when I wasn't able to stay with my method, and my mind felt dull and tired from the day's activities. But when someone in the sharing session started to talk about how she wasn't sure why some of her breaths were deeper than others, I started to reflect on this notion of trying to make things 'normal', and how people continually struggle to get things 'right' in their lives, whether it's the normal breath, the normal partner, the normal job, and so on. As soon as we establish in practice what constitutes 'normal' and 'natural', we already cordon off something which we consider to be artificial. It's somewhat ironic that in the struggle to attain normalcy, we create something 'other' that is supposedly not the norm or away from it. But as I noted in the sharing tonight, whenever a person notices what is happening in them and simply chooses to be present with it without rejecting it or really indulging it either, the phenomena (whatever it is) just goes away eventually. It never has a staying power at all. And there isn't even something to be sorry about that it happened the way it did.
   The peaceful moment is not something that is generated from a return from something else, or a moving toward something. It is more like seeing every experience as a kind of frame. I don't change anything in that frame, but it's important that I know every moment what is in the frame itself. The framing represents the awareness and clarity to know what is and isn't in the picture. The transparency of the picture itself (or perhaps one should say the blank screen) represents the stillness of everything. There isn't a need to change anything in that screen, and at the same time there isn't anything substantial in the screen itself. So this meditative process is to know what's arising and to see it exactly as it is, letting go of our attempts to fit it into a preconceived ideal of what it's supposed to be.