Fairly dicey times here on Planet Earth. What direction are we headed in? In the introduction to Prayers for World Peace, which Geshe Kelsang gave us way back in 2001, he says:
World peace is very important; we cannot ignore this. Once something happens, it will be too late. As you know, this world is now very delicate; it is almost as delicate as the life of a single person. The world situation is so fragile because there are so many disagreements. Political leaders are ready to fight; every country is gathering weapons and preparing to fight, and are challenging each other.
Arguably, most of the problems we’re seeing in the world today originate from a lack of vision. From being preoccupied with just our own needs and wants. From not thinking about the bigger picture, which is our being one large human (and animal) family in which every member wants and needs to be happy and free from suffering. From not recognizing that everybody’s the same, and instead othering and diminishing anybody who doesn’t look like us or who doesn’t live in our neighborhood. We think we have a global perspective, perhaps, what with all these windows we now have onto the whole world; but our emotional intelligence doesn’t seem to extend far beyond our own noses.
Have you ever watched an armadillo trundling along? They’re adorable, right, but they’re also utterly oblivious to everything going on around them, and I do not know how they’ve survived this long. I was watching one with a group of friends in Florida – we were stood right over him for ages as he was immersed in his little old thing, nosing around clueless, snuffling painstakingly (I can only guess) for something to make him happy. I was wondering if this is how the Buddhas view us. They’re here and they’d love to help us realize our vast potential for enlightenment, but we’re simply so encased in our crusty shell of self-grasping and self-cherishing that we cannot see beyond our own pointy nose. And we’re not having the deepest or most epic life as a result. 
Gen-la Sangden, the brand new Deputy Spiritual Director of the New Kadampa Tradition, was giving some great teachings on compassion in London recently – I thought it was a master class in modern Buddhism. One thing she said is that we talk about the world as if it were an external entity – it’s floating around full of problems existing from their own side, and we just happen to be living in it.
But where did all these problems actually come from?
Where could they have come from but from the minds of the inhabitants?
So where in turn is world peace going to come from? I got to thinking about how we demand peace using guns, wanting everyone else to shut up and behave – I can of course carry on doing my thing and following all my desires, as can my family or my nation, but I need the rest of you lot to behave better and make some sacrifices because we need world peace. In other words, we’d like other people to change without having to take a good look at how we need to change.
There’s also the sense that peace doesn’t come from within but from without, and can be brought about even by war. Big oxymoron, if you think about it – how can peace come from war?
So Genla Sangden was saying that we think peace comes from out there somewhere – but where? Is it on the moon, is that why we’re trying so hard to get back there?! Maybe I’ll go there and bring some of that peace back here.
The overview effect
Funny, right, but I was thinking that there is an element of sense in looking for peace on the moon insofar as all the astronauts who recently returned from the Artemis expedition—sling-shotting around the dark side of the moon and back to Planet Earth—now have a different peace-inducing perspective. And in general, apparently, there’s a common cognitive shift amongst astronauts called the “overview effect”, which is pretty much the opposite of the armadillo perspective. When you look back at Earth from all those miles away, you realize that everybody there shares more in common than we realize. That we’re not inherently separated out in our own little worlds. That we’re all interconnected.
Trust us, you look amazing, you look beautiful,” Victor Glover said on April 2. “And from up here, you also look like one thing. Homo sapiens, all of us, no matter where you’re from or what you look like, we’re all one people.
Of course you don’t see any divisions at all from up there, you don’t see any boundaries, you don’t see any countries, you don’t see any walls. You see a Blue Marble, and you know that somehow that’s home, and that it is very fragile. We’re all bobbing around this vast cosmos on a small, spinning ball, and we’re all doing this together. There is no escape route. No one really thinks any of us are going to escape to the moon, do they?! This is the only home we have. We are family. And, according to astronauts and Buddha for starters, the only reasonable response to this is love. We have to love each other. 
As we get close to the nearest point to the Moon and the farthest point from Earth and continue to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, I would like to remind you of one of the most important mysteries on Earth, and that’s love,” Glover said on April 6. “And to all of you down there on Earth and around Earth, we love you, from the moon.
Instead of trying to blow up our own building, we could use this advice from an earlier astronaut, Alexei Leonov from Voskhod 2:
The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic.
So when we train in love and compassion in Buddhism, that’s really what we’re doing. We’re developing a big and wise perspective by seeing beyond our own pointy armadillo nose to thinking about everybody. To quote another earlier astronaut:
Your vision is not limited by what your eye can see, but by what your mind can imagine. —Ellison Onizuka
We are well capable of understanding or imagining that everybody needs to be happy and free, and in fact that our own happiness and freedom really does depend on everyone else being happy and free. (More about that here: The illusion of separation.) If we’re always putting our own selfish interests first, sooner or later that is going to backfire – it always has and it always will. Trying to shoot our way to world peace, for example, will backfire. Trying even to argue our way to world peace, or hate our way to world peace, will backfire.
I sometimes think of this cartoon of a sinking boat in a stormy sea – the two people on the sinking end are frantically scooping out the water, while the two people at the other end are sitting back comfortably and saying to each other:
I’m sure glad the hole’s not our end.
Honestly, the only rational response to this existential predicament we seem to find ourselves in has got to be loving kindness and compassion. Doesn’t it?! We have to open our heart to include everybody, to get over ourselves. Love and compassion are what make life meaningful. And they are also, truth be told, what make life bearable.
Over to you, comments gratefully received.
