Peace and conflict
4 teachings in the library are about this.
- Teaching & Meditation for the International Day of Peace 2025 David Oromith · 38 minutes · recorded September 21, 2025
David marks the International Day of Peace, a day for committing to peace above our differences. The loving kindness practice comes first, and we widen from ourselves to a loved one, a stranger and someone we are in conflict with, then to all beings in the words of the Metta Sutta. The talk sets the Dalai Lama on inner peace coming first, and closes on Wangari Maathai's hummingbird carrying drops of water to a forest fire, doing the best it can.
- Being of Benefit: Aspiring Bodhisattvas in a Complex World (Part Two) David Oromith · 82 minutes · recorded May 7, 2025
This second session opens with a gentle practice in which we breathe space and compassion around whatever despair, anger or fear arises when facing the world's crises. David then maps the Eightfold Path onto engaged action, from authentic view and speech through to effort, and reads several of Thich Nhat Hanh's precepts on non-attachment to views, speech and livelihood. Questions cover the ethics of the arms trade during the war in Ukraine and how to pass on values to children without imposing them.
- How to Bridge Divides in a Polarised World David Oromith · 7 minutes · recorded April 6, 2025
How tightly we hold the label of which side we are on. David tells the story of a man who turned up to every dispute wearing the colours and emblems of both sides, and told a boy that we all wear masks but are the same beneath. He talks about how a fair point gets rejected because of who made it, and how the side we are on keeps changing anyway. Teaching only, with no practice in it, ending on the question that breaks the barrier down: is there something you can admire in the other person?
- Aversion in Response to Tragedy David Oromith · 35 minutes · recorded February 27, 2022
In the meditation we return to relaxation, noticing what changes in the body with each in and out breath, counting for focus, and closing with gratitude for this life. Responding to the war in Ukraine, David talks about telling anger apart from compassion, both arising from seeing suffering. He explains that anger's object is someone to hurt while compassion's object is those in pain, and that only compassion is genuinely active and helpful.
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- Anger and aversion 143
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- The three marks of existence 1