/publication/17

Author: Walpola Rahula
Publisher: Grove Press (1974)

What is applicable to the individual is applicable to the nation or the state.  If hatred can be appeased by love and kindness on the individual scale, surely it can be realized on the national and international scale, too.  Even in the case of a single person, to meet hatred with kindness one must have tremendous courage, boldness, faith, and confidence in moral force. May it not be even more so with regard to international affairs?  If by the expression 'not practical' you mean 'not easy,' you are right.  Definitely it is not easy. Yet it should be tried.  You may say it is risky trying it - surely it cannot be more risky than trying a nuclear war.


Do not be led by reports, or tradition or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, nor by mere logic or inference, nor by considering appearances, nor by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, nor by the idea: 'this is our teacher.'  But when you know for yourself that certain things are unwholesome, and wrong, and bad, then give them up.  And when you know for yourself that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them.


If the whole of existence is relative, conditioned, and interdependent, how can will alone be free?


The tortoise told his friend the fish that he (the tortoise) just returned to the lake after a walk on the land. 'Of course,' the fish said, 'You mean swimming.'  The tortoise tried to explain that one couldn't swim on the land, that it was solid and that one walked on it.  But the fish insisted that there could be nothing like it, that it must be liquid like his lake, with waves, and that one must be able to dive and swim there.'\n\n Moral: Words are symbols representing things and ideas known to us.  Ignorant people get stuck in words like an elephant in the mud.