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The Daily Dharma – October 15, 2021

Photo by Hugh Han

Continuing from Peace is the Way . . .

At the outset of 2003 it was estimated that thirty military conflicts were being fought around the world. It’s a good day for all these wars to come to an end. But will they? And if they do, what will replace them?

To end war, you have to think of ending not just one conflict, and not just thirty. What we have to end is the idea of war, which has turned into the habit of war, and then into the numbing consistency of war. The last time the U.S. wasn’t on a war footing was December 6, 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor inflamed the U.S. into declaring war against Japan. Since then, America has accepted the need for a huge standing army, the growth of arms manufacturers and merchants into a massive part of the economy, thousands of troops stationed around the world, intensive research into new technologies of death, and a political climate in which it is suicide to come out against war. This whole situation, which reaches into every home, keeps us on a war footing even when there is no declared war to grab the headlines.

Deepak Chopra
from Peace is the Way