Deepak Chopra's passionate new book, Peace Is the Way, was inspired by a saying from Mahatma Gandhi: "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." In a world where every path to peace has proved futile, the one strategy that hasn't been tried is the way of peace itself. "We must not bring one war to an end, or thirty," Chopra tells us, "but the idea of war itself."How can this be done?By facing the truth that war is satisfying, and then substituting new satisfactions so that violence is no longer appealing. "War has become a habit. We reach for it the way a chain smoker reaches for a cigarette, promising to quit but somehow never kicking the habit." But Chopra tells us that peace has its own power, and our task now is to direct that power and multiply it one person at a time.…
"He is saying that we have to trust each other internationally: if you beat a country at war or if you humiliate them as Germany was after the First World War , they will come back at you. If you humiliate any population you will not engender peace, you will engender a resentment that will flare back at you. The only way to have enduring peace is to have the greatest sense of respect for each other. That means that you have to listen and you have to forego the monopoly of your own rightness. If you listen to the Arabs and Israelis talking there is only one thing that they share, and that is that they are both utterly and irrevocably right. This cannot be the case. And this situation is a parable, what is happening there, with this struggle around the most holy site on earth, it is a parable about exactly what this book is talking about. Well, I would say not think again, because thinking is not going to make any difference. I would say it is actually changing the way that you are that makes the difference. He also talks about how with other people, when relationships go wrong at work or at home, it is because we are not respecting each other, we are not listening to each other. The only basis for enduring relationships is to accept each other and within ourselves to accept our own limitations and make peace with ourselves. Getting blind drunk is a way of resolving one’s difficulties and is akin to nations going to war, or beating up your neighbour. Well, where there is hurt one has to make amends, and clarify the grounds for peace. Similarly with family or with friends or with organisations that one has damaged relations with, that continue to trouble one, one will not be free and it will continue to scratch away until one makes amends. As I’m sure you know, Tony Blair quoted the parable of the Good Samaritan as a justification for Kosovo and for Iraq : and if one is asked in by a majority in that country and if one is going to be doing good and helping that country itself stand back on its feet then it’s probably a good thing, but not if one is going in uninvited and if one then stays. So liberal intervention is a good thing if it’s in the interests of the people there … that’s probably how you resolve that one."
