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Responding to War in the Middle East - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 29, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Responding to War in the Middle East

Good morning, and thank you, Martha, and thank you, Jill, for all your help with these potlucks. I feel they are an important part of our community life. For those of you who like to share in the community life of IMC, staying and hanging out is a wonderful way to do so.

As I think some of you know, ever since the Hamas invasion of Israel, my public talks have been a response to that in some way or another, and I will continue that today. But I would like to offer a preface to it all. It may be important to understand that I do so as a Buddhist teacher grounded in Buddhist values as I understand them, and as someone who does not live with the urgency of the lethal violence that is happening in the present. If I were living with that urgency, I would probably teach differently, if I were teaching at all.

Coming here to speak about this today, I have certainly become alarmed by what is happening in the Middle East. But I am also alarmed by how divisiveness is spreading around the globe, and how people who were friends or neutral with each other are now seen as enemies because of the strong divide between opinions. It becomes about who is right and who is wrong, who is on my side, and if you are not on my side, then clearly you are against my side. To not take sides is often seen by both parties as taking sides for the other. It can be difficult to speak up and offer an opinion that is not what people would like to hear, because it maybe gives birth to more divisiveness and more anger.

So, I will start with a clear Buddhist grounding on the topic of violence, quarrels, and disputes, and then say a few things that directly concern what is happening in the Middle East. We will see what happens then.

The Greatest Good

I will begin with what, for me, is one of the most valued and important teachings from the Buddha—maybe in the top five. I don't want to put those top five in a hierarchy of which is the most important, but this is one of the teachings that I am most inspired by and try to live my life by. It concerns who is a wise person. A wise person of great wisdom does not intend for their own affliction, for the affliction of others, or for the affliction of both self and others. Rather, a wise person thinks only of their own welfare, the welfare of others, the welfare of both, and the welfare of the whole world. It is in this way that a wise person is of great wisdom.

So there is wisdom, and there is great wisdom. Earlier this week in my morning teaching, I talked about the Buddhist teaching regarding what is beautiful and what is more beautiful than beautiful. What is beautiful is living an ethical life; what is more beautiful is encouraging and prompting others to live an ethical life—of not killing, not stealing. We want to live in the world actively responding to it, but from a Buddhist point of view, it is not a response that will set up more divisiveness. It is a response that wants to address the unethical issues of our world. It means not being silent, not demonizing anyone, but figuring out this seemingly impossible task to help promote an ethical life.

From a Buddhist point of view, living an ethical life is how we can live the best life; the greatest good comes for ourselves when we live an ethical life. That standard of the Buddha is very high—how much we are going to live a life that doesn't cause harm. Whether we think that is unreasonable is a question we all have to face, but here, one lives concerned for the welfare of everyone.

We ourselves are not excluded. Sometimes, with teachings of altruism, you are supposed to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of others. There is no such idea in Buddhism. We are as important as anybody else. In fact, our own welfare is sometimes emphasized in Buddhism as a paramount thing that we should be concerned with. When we are truly well, we are in the best position to support other people to be well. If we are spiritually ill or underdeveloped, we have so much less to offer to support, help, recognize, and encourage others.

But it is not limited to oneself, which could be selfish. We must also be concerned for the welfare of others, and then this wonderful concept: concern for the welfare of both. For me, that concern for the welfare of both has to do with who we are as a community—the "us"—and then for the welfare of the whole world. It is a life that thinks it is possible to look for the greatest good for everyone involved. That is not an easy thing to do.

One of the places I was involved where that was a challenge was when I chaired an Ethics Committee for about 15 years. I was the primary responder to all kinds of ethical complaints. There was a whole range of things that came up, but there was usually a conflict between two people: the complainer, and the person they were complaining about (the victim and the perpetrator, occasionally, in some people's vocabulary).

The approach that I took was: given what happened, without denying if something unethical or bad happened, without papering over it, how do we address all the issues that need to be addressed and consider what is the greatest good for everybody involved? For people who were the victims, that was a hard thing to hear sometimes. Part of the discussions was to help the victim understand that this was possible—that we were concerned about their greatest good and really wanted to take care of them, but there was no need to ignore the well-being of the person who caused the problem. In fact, taking care of them took care of the whole situation better.

Sometimes, for the person who was complained against, we had to convince them that there were consequences they had to live by. They had to change or go through some kind of process. Sometimes they protested, saying, "This is ridiculous, I don't need to do this, this isn't right." But we convinced them that while that might feel true to them, the whole community needed them to do it. The greater good came from this process, and it wasn't really very harmful to them; it just took time.

Usually, when this process went well and didn't get interrupted in the middle, everyone came out happy. Even more importantly, the wider community began to trust the Ethics Committee. When the Ethics Committee called someone up, rather than having their heart sink, my hope was that they would smile and think, "Oh great, someone is concerned for my greater good. This might not be easy, but it's going to be a good process to go through." Conflict doesn't have to be a win-lose situation; it can be a win-win for everyone involved, but it takes a lot more time to achieve that.

This teaching—that the wise person considers the good of everyone involved—speaks to a heart that is not going to live divisively. It is a heart that will not see anyone as an enemy, but will look upon everyone with the best place in our heart as we gaze upon the world. I will come back to that.

Related to this is a teaching that I don't know if it's in the top five of the Buddha's teachings, but it is up there pretty high for me. It is particularly valuable at this time. I think I've read it these last couple of weeks:

"Hatred never ends through hatred. By non-hate alone does it end. This is an ancient truth."¹

Sometimes this quote is read, "Hatred never ends through hatred. By love alone does it end." To me, "non-hate" is more inspiring because it feels more attainable, and so I will settle for non-hatred. In the ancient language, a negative word like "non-hatred" often implies a positive. What is nice about this is that the positive encompasses a wider range than just love. Maybe love is not exactly what is called for; maybe generosity or something else is called for.

Then there is the same discussion regarding abuse:

"'He abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me.' For those carrying on like this, hatred does not end. 'He abused me, attacked me, defeated me, robbed me.' For those not carrying on like this, hatred ends."

People who have been abused, attacked, defeated, or robbed can feel like they are justified to hate. In fact, hate might seem like a necessary means by which we defend ourselves, care for ourselves, or bring justice to the world. I don't feel capable of arguing against that when someone has been harmed. That feels too uncomfortable; it feels almost disrespectful, like putting salt in a wound that is quite deep.

However, hatred does not end this way—by criticizing others, by yelling at them. The idea here is not to simply deny that someone was abused or attacked in some simple way, but this quote is criticizing the blaming and the attacking.

Finally, there are four verses in this set, and the final one is perhaps supposed to get our attention to change how we live our lives:

"Many do not realize we here must die. For those who realize this, quarrels end."

I don't know how that strikes you. Sometimes quarrels have ended when people realize that the blood of those who die is more valuable than oil, more valuable than a lot of the things we are trying to preserve.

The Genesis of Conflict

The Buddha addressed the issue of quarrels and disputes. For years, I read these teachings where he addressed it in detail, and they felt kind of flat to me; they didn't inspire me until recently. There are teachings where he talks about the conditions that lead to quarrels. It's a series of layers, where the first layer sets the conditions for the next, more activated layer, and that sets the condition for the next, until finally we are so activated that we are fighting with each other.

The immediate precondition for quarrels is a word that challenges a lot of people when they hear it—so if you are challenged, you are in good company. That word is "cherishing." Cherishing is a condition for conflict. Now, is cherishing a necessary condition for conflict? Is cherishing wrong or bad? We don't have to see it as wrong or bad, but the way cherishing is done sometimes leads to all kinds of problems.

A powerful representative example some of you might know is from The Lord of the Rings: Gollum cherishing the ring, his "precious." If that is what cherishing is, we are all in trouble! Of course, that is not how we all cherish things. Maybe there is innocent, harmless cherishing. But there is a way of leaning into what we cherish where we want to hold onto it, keep it to ourselves, and not share it with anyone. Attachment comes with it. When there is attachment built into cherishing, we become defensive, acquisitive, and avaricious. Before quarrels, there is something that we are cherishing: an opinion, an idea, a thing, a place, or a possession.

The precondition for cherishing is having some kind of desire. Here we go, these Buddhists always making desire into a problem! It isn't that all desires are a problem, but there has to be some desire for us to want to cherish something. Some of us will occasionally, accidentally, have a problematic desire—none of you, of course. [Laughter]

The precondition for desire is pleasantness and unpleasantness, or liking and not liking. We have something we like or don't like, and then we desire more of it, desire to have it, or desire to push it away. Is it wrong to do that? No, of course not. But it has to be there first in order for us to have a desire.

The bottom layer, the precondition for liking and not liking, is simple sense contact. Just simply being in the world, going about your own business—feeling the wind against your skin, seeing the clouds in the sky, tasting your food. Most basic sense contact is not necessarily a problem.

But if sense contact produces a liking that we become attached to, and that attached liking produces a desire for more, that produces a cherishing which has attachment built into it. What happens is that we are getting increasingly activated. There is more agitation, higher-order thinking, processing, wanting, and motivation operating in the mind. All of this becomes increasingly stressful, even though it might seem pleasant all along.

As we go along, the focus of attention becomes narrower. If you are sitting quietly in meditation, just allowing all sense experiences to come and go and move through you, it can be deeply relaxing. But as soon as you find something you like, your attention tightens up and focuses on the liking. If you want more of it, your attention gets even more focused around the desire. If you cherish it, you become even more focused and tight around this thing.

Then you get into a dispute. Some of us are capable of getting into arguments, disputes, and conflicts while minding our own business, sitting in meditation. No one has to be around you, and suddenly it's, "She said, he said, they said... how could it be that way?" I am a little bit embarrassed to say that I've sat in meditation and made up conflict that didn't exist! I thought someone said something they shouldn't have said, and then I went and checked and they didn't even say it, but I had gotten all worked up.

This is the process of getting worked up. When I understood these lists of the conditional genesis of conflict, I got excited. This is interesting, because if you can go backwards from a highly activated state, progressively relax, go through these layers, and come to a place where we are no longer activated, agitated, or contracted in our awareness—back to the simplicity of sense contact. This is not to disengage from the world. Something much more important can happen.

Once we get "defused," once we become totally disarmed in the mind from all the things that lead up to conflict, it is possible—if we know how—to access a profound place of knowing, understanding, and contemplation. A profound place of deep feelings can well up from within that are not reactive to what the world is throwing at us.

When we react to things, that is when we have anger, hostility, and when our conceit gets afraid. But the premise in Buddhism is that we have tremendous sources within us of wisdom, love, care, and harmony-making instincts to live in cooperation with others in the world, not to divide the world. This comes from a profound place within that is not in a reactive mode.

When we go through the genesis of conflict as practitioners and deactivate ourselves, we come to a very simple place, just here in the present moment with our experience. That is the place where we can ask ourselves: "From here, how do I want to live? How do I want to respond to my friend who I got angry with?" Now that I am settled and not angry, the issue hasn't gone away, but how can I address this so it involves the greater good for both of us? I am hurt, I am afraid; maybe my friend is as well. Let's not make it worse. Is there some way we can talk? Maybe before we talk, I'll send my friend a gift, bake some cookies, and just do something that bridges the divide.

Pursuing Peace in the Middle East

Then we get to the difficult topic that is probably not suited to address the emotional needs of some of the people involved in this deep, deep issue in the Middle East. But how I have been orienting myself in reading and studying about this is to not get fixated on military strategies—reading up about what needs to happen, why it needs to happen, what a "just war" is, and all these very painful things people are involved in.

Rather, I have been focused on those groups of people who are trying to look for the greatest good for everyone involved—the ones who are trying not to create more division, but to create cooperation and a sense of unification among people who are normally divided.

For this, some people say it is very important to consider that in the Middle East, Hamas does not represent all Palestinians, and the Israeli government does not represent all Israelis or all Jewish Israelis. If we don't make that distinction, the level of divisiveness and blame that gets spread is really difficult. There are people who are actually coming together cooperatively from both sides, and this is what excites me.

One organization that I got most excited by is called the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom.² Those are the two words for peace in Arabic and Hebrew. They write on their website:

"As a Sisterhood of Jewish and Muslim women, we hold multiple truths at any given moment. It is possible for us to acknowledge that murdering civilians is a war crime, and firing missiles at civilians is also a war crime. It is possible for us to pray for the safe release of the 150 Israeli captives (when this was written) and pray for the safety of the besieged people of Gaza. It is possible for us to recognize that Palestinians are not Hamas and Israeli citizens are not their government. It is possible for us to grieve for our own dead and grieve for all those lost in this horrible cycle of violence, and be reminded that violence will always be met with more violence.

At the same time, we have to choose compassion, which literally means suffering together and wishing to alleviate suffering. We must have compassion for all those who lost their family members, all those who are in captivity, and those seeking shelter from heavy artillery. Equally important is the feeling of compassion for each other and for our own tears, shock, pain, and fears. We truly are all suffering together at this moment. This is what it means to be human. This is what it means to possess moral clarity."

It is a beautiful statement. A co-founder of the group, a woman named Sheryl Olitzky, wrote about what inspired her to help start this organization. The Talmud³ asks, "Who is a hero?" and answers, "One who makes one's enemy into a friend." Isn't that something? That's a hero. The rabbis communicated that it is possible to change people's attitudes, and that it is desirable to strive to do so. Sheryl wrote, "I knew I had to change attitudes."

This is also what Buddhism is doing. This attitude that I am trying to offer here at IMC is not isolated to Buddhism; what she is calling from the Talmud is very similar. One who makes one's enemies into a friend—what a great thing. The mission of The Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom is based on shared values:

"...to build relationships between Muslim and Jewish women of all ages, to promote and advocate for human rights, and to end acts of hate for all human beings. We envision a world where Muslims and Jewish people live without hate, and where freedom, equality, and social justice are within reach for all of us."

There are two more organizations I want to read about. Another is a grassroots movement in Israel called Standing Together, which is mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and social and climate justice. They state:

"While the minority who benefit from the status quo of occupation and economic inequality seek to keep us divided, we know that we, the majority, have far more in common than that which sets us apart. When we stand together, we are strong enough to fundamentally alter the existing sociopolitical reality. The future that we want—peace and independence for Israelis and Palestinians, full equality for all citizens, and true social, economic, and environmental justice—is possible because where there is struggle, there is hope."

I love that recognition that this takes work; this is not an easy thing to do. One of the things I want to point out is that as difficult as creating peace this way is, it is probably a lot cheaper than all the money spent on arms. Does it take more time? I think it takes a lot more time than any given war. It is much more difficult, but then it creates the conditions for a lasting peace. War creates the conditions for more war, and that takes a lot of time.

I've seen in human interactions over and over again that if we don't take time to sit down and work out our differences and conflicts, it festers and lasts a long time. People think, "To sit down and talk and work out our differences is such an inefficient process. Who has time for that? We have a long to-do list." But unless you take that time, there is so much more processing that happens later, on and on. Being "inefficient" sometimes turns out to be the most efficient.

The last group I want to read about is an interesting group in Israel called Combatants for Peace. Founded in 2006, it is a nonprofit volunteer organization of ex-combatant Israelis and Palestinians—men and women who have laid down their weapons and rejected all means of violence.

"We are working together to end the occupation of Palestine, bring justice to the land, and demonstrate that Israelis and Palestinians can work and live together. We are a group of Palestinians and Israelis who have taken an active part in the cycle of violence in our region: Israeli soldiers serving in the Israeli Defense Force, and Palestinians as combatants fighting to free their country, Palestine, from the Israeli occupation. We, serving our people, raised weapons which we aimed at each other and saw each other only through gun sights. We have established Combatants for Peace on the basis of nonviolence principles."

Isn't that remarkable? Mahatma Gandhi was most enthusiastic about former soldiers who joined his nonviolent efforts in India, because he said being nonviolent takes a lot of strength and courage, and soldiers have it. So, I am impressed by these organizations.

There are other organizations doing this kind of work. For the most part, these efforts don't make the front page, but I think they should. I think they should be championed, supported, and brought forth.

To be concerned for the greater good of everybody involved, to find a way to process our own fear, trauma, hurt, and anger in healthy, appropriate ways, really brings out the best in each of us. To be in a place where we try not to cause harm, to live non-violently, and to promote the welfare, happiness, and well-being of everyone—that is the kind of world I would like to live in. Is it naive to do so? I don't care! [Laughter] This is the way I want to live. This is the world I want to live in. I don't want to contribute to the opposite; I want to contribute to this, and I don't see any other choice for me.

Q&A

Gil Fronsdal: So that was my effort to say a few things. I am a little bit reluctant, but also feel maybe it's wise to see if there are any comments or questions anybody has. Yes, please. Can you wait for the mic? Otherwise, I won't hear. Hold it like a rockstar. [Laughter]

Questioner 1: I was just wondering if you could repeat the name of that second group so I could remember it.

Gil Fronsdal: Oh, yes. Standing Together. Thank you. There is an organization called Stand Together that is in the United States, and then Standing Together is in Israel. Yes.

Questioner 2: It happened to be yesterday I heard a mediator say something along these lines that you reminded me of. When responding to someone who's angry, she said, "It sounds like you really care about something. I want to know what you care about."

Gil Fronsdal: Yes. That's wonderful.

Questioner 2: And then you kind of drop below, and eventually maybe you find some really great values that you share with them, but the application of it maybe has gone differently.

Gil Fronsdal: Thank you for listening, and thank you for being here. I hope this was close enough—I mean, I am talking to an audience who came to a Buddhist center to hear a Buddhist teacher, so I feel like I have some permission to do something unpopular if that's the case.

There is a potluck today, and everyone's welcome to stay whether you brought something or not. It's a wonderful way of being a community. If you would be willing to take five minutes before the official ending, turn to a couple of people next to you—look around and see who is there so that no one's left alone—say hello, and share any thoughts about this talk.