WHY THERE IS NO PEACE.

AND WON'T BE.

It is impossible to have a peaceful society unless human thought - the ideology of society - from the greatest leader to the common person, is true. By ”true” is meant “in authentic and accurate relationship” with the Natural Law or “things as they (actually) are.” Natural Law is the system of laws or principles that are determined by nature and are thus universal, existing independently of human-made laws, ideas, and notions. In other words, things as they are. This means that rights and ethical principles are inherent in the natural world and can only be understood through reason and observation. Thus Natural Law may conflict with what is often called Positive Law, or statutes that have been laid down by a legislature, court, or other institution and can take whatever form the authors want. And this applies also to revealed religious law aka superstition.

When human society is out of consonance or agreement with Natural Law, the inevitable result is tension and conflict.

Ask yourself: what principles or laws lie at the center of almost all human society today? Perhaps the single, universal principle shared by all societies in the global West and East, North and South, is the accumulation of wealth and the extraction of natural resources. There may be relatively rare individual exceptions to this rule, but the national bodies and their citizens in overwhelming majority all compete for the largest share of resources and wealth. We may subscribe to a religious belief in one god or another, but the primary objects to which we actually devote ourselves are accumulation and extraction. Regardless of religious affiliation, money is our True God or object of devotion. It is the thing to which society devotes the great preponderance its time and energy; our object of devotion.

But what is the lesson of Nature? Let’s listen first to the voice of Thomas Paine on this subject.

“It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh a universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever-existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and THIS word of God reveals to man all that is necessary to know of God.”
Thomas Paine
AGE OF REASON

”Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the Scripture called the Creation.”
Thomas Paine
Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)

“It is by distortedly exalting some men, that others are distortedly debased, till the whole is out of nature.”
Thomas Paine
RIGHTS OF MAN, Part 1.3

”I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.”
Thomas Paine
AGE OF REASON

"​It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief
in a cruel God makes a cruel man."
"A Letter: Being an Answer to a Friend, on the publication of The Age of Reason"
(12 May 1797), published in an 1852 edition of The Age of Reason, p. 205

"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent than we called it the word of a demon than the word of God. It has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind."
Thomas Paine
AGE OF REASON

[Image credit: Christine Bichler]

Thomas Paine was a deist of course. He believed in a First Cause and a Supreme Being; emphatically NOT the god of the Bible, Torah, or Koran; that is, Abraham’s god. It is not, however, necessary to be a deist in order to read what he and others have called the “Bible of Nature.” Nor is it necessary to believe there was a First Cause. What if the universe and our perception of time itself are outside of “time” as we understand it? Doesn’t our concept of time evaporate outside of our solar system? What if we are simply unable to wrap our minds around the idea of infinity? What if the Supreme (State of) Being — the Law and Entity of all Phenomena — isn’t a “he?” But rather, an “it?” What if the god of deism is a final, last ditch effort at anthropomorphism (to make human-like)? What if people could become unified with that universal, wonderful Law ( or principle) and Entity of all Existence? What if THAT were the object of devotion rather than some Bronze Age, bloodthirsty demon with a penchant for human sacrifice and ritual theophagy (eating the god)? What if that were our object of devotion rather than wealth and extraction? What would that be like? Devotion to the Wonderful (Natural) Law and Entity of All Phenomena.

Thomas Paine was on the right track, but he was a man of his time and culture. He couldn’t QUITE step outside of the anthropomorphic idea of God as First Cause and Creator. Or perhaps he knew that his deepest thoughts on the matter would not have been understood or received in the church-dominated society of his time and simply spoke in terms he knew would be understood. Even in his own time some people suspected this and called him an atheist or pantheist because he rejected the hoary, angry, and blood-loving god of Abraham.

In the global East, Buddhism took that extra step. All gods, whatever their national or ethnic origin, are simply representations or symbols of human and natural attributes. The ONLY thing that is worthy of our devotion and study is … the only thing that actually exists: the Natural Law. Natural Law philosophy is what we call the tradition in the West. Buddhism is the largest stream of that tradition in the East. Perhaps all other frameworks or interpretations of existence are in whole or in part superstition and invention - Positive Law as opposed to Natural Law; mankind’s invention rather than Nature’s. That is the proposition, as I understand it, of Buddhism rightly understood. The qualification “rightly understood” because humans have a tendency to confuse and there are variations and traditions CALLED Buddhism that have wandered from the root tradition or original teaching.

Now those East/West/North/South distinctions have dissolved. We live in a global world and there is a desperate need to reconcile with our fellow humans and with Nature, with our planet.

Why is there no peace in the world? There can BE no peace until mankind returns to the One True and Wonderful Law (Sat Dharma in Sanskrit - MyoHo in Japanese - Natural Law in the West) and makes it the object of devotion and the source of our values and behavior towards ourselves and all living beings.

There is a great sage from 13th century Japan, a Buddha (enlightened human) who emphasized this principle of establishing or basing society on truth. In the Japanese language of the period, the principle is Rissho Ankoku: “Establish the True Teaching to Bring Peace to the Land.”

Herein is the reason why there is no peace and there will be no peace in the foreseeable future. We devote ourselves to unworthy, erroneous, and unnatural objects - wealth and devotion to false or bloodthirsty gods. Superstition and greed rule the land and its people, from the ruler down to the lowest man and woman. The result can only be disaster. If we hope for a better world … in this lifetime or any other …. then we must set aside these and ALL fake principles, devote ourselves to the Wonderful (Natural) Law, and teach it by example and precept to our families and fellow humans.