Is peace something like enlightenment?
Ghid
Explorer
Christians want to find peace. Every Sunday at mass, Catholics offer each other the sign of peace; and at the end of mass, the priest tells the saints to go in peace. I have known three men, a Chaldean, and a Palestinian, and a Samaritan who must have found peace. I wonder if that is something like enlightenment.
In the early years after my adoption and immigration to the United States, my grandfather, or I might say, the man whom I would someday accept as my grandfather, worked as my babysitter. He is not a stay-at-home kind of person, so I spent time in his truck as we went on his errands. He is not a pilot, but he had friends who worked in aviation, so we sometimes ate at a small airfield while he talked to (he calls it “chews the fat with”) his friends in aviation.
Near the airfield, three of Gramp’s friends had a barber shop near where Gramps got haircuts. The three barbers were a Chaldean, a Palestinian, and a Samaritan. In the course of time, I learned about Chaldea, Palestine, and Samaria. The Chaldean was Christian. The Palestinian was a Muslim. The Samaritan is a kind of Jew. These three men were friends, and they had a business together. They lived in exile just like I live in exile. Somehow they had made peace with that idea. I decided that I would make peace with that idea.
None of these men knew about the Dharma, and I wonder it maybe they had a kind of intuitive understanding.
Comments
@ Ghid
I would submit to you that "exile" transcends the boundaries of any land or tribe.
The human condition is the experience of our innate exile from existence.
The Dharma can be whatever points out the delusive underpinning of that experience.
Enlightenment is the transcendence of that delusion.
So is peace something like enlightenment?.......Well.the words "peace & enlightenment" remain too hotly divisive for any language or ego to corral but in this particular moment I'd say Yes & No.
Yes! When comparing suffering's cause to the cessation of those causes, enlightenment offers peace over our habituated adversarial conditioning's.
&
No! in that even a peace brought about through the cessation of suffering's cause should not separate itself from the wider chaos of existence that is not at peace.
The Dharma is what it is no matter what us lowly little subjects of the Dharma call it
Dharma is the 'law' by which all things behave the way they behave and do what they do -- it is not specifically 'buddhist' or specific to any other human belief system, as much as the humans might insist 
. Dharma is like saying "the way things are".
Here's my understanding about peace and love and their relationship to 'enlightenment', whatever that is. The clearer you and I are, the more able peace and love are to manifest themselves clearly in our lives. In other words, the less me me me ego crap that is clouding our perception, the 'easier' it is for peace and love to 'shine through' as it were.
Maybe it's like peace is a byproduct of enlightenment. The clearer we are by the efforts of our practice, the greater the presence of peace in our lives.
It seems to me that to be enlightened you need peace. But having peace does not necessarily mean you are enlightened. To me, peace isn't necessarily everyone getting along. It is a quality I nurture in myself so that I can be ok and gracious when dealing with storms in life. Peace isn't something out there. A lot of people want peace for the Israel/Gaza conflict. But peace isn't something you put on paper when people agree to stop lobbing bombs. It starts with the hearts of the people who live there. Not lobbing bombs is preferred, but it doesn't mean peace is present.
A square is a rectangle but a rectangle isn't always a square.
Wow, thank you all very very much.
Well, enlightenment would imply being at peace with yourself and the world.
Whether the world is at peace with you, that's another question.
But from that standpoint, it no longer matters.