Pacifism doesn’t work with ideologies of hatred

What a nasty, ugly thing that happened yesterday.

This was in stark contrast to the petty domestic squabble unfolding around me.

This morning I was babysitting a pair of rambunctious kids.

A fight broke out and the mediator had to step in.

It felt like a bit of a microcosm of the wider world this morning.

Except this anger is harmless – while yesterday’s events in Bondi were an expression of pure, organised evil.

The kids will grow out of it. However, the politics of the Middle East seem, unfortunately, eternal.

On a beautiful day, the TV became the battleground for the two siblings.

Step one, turn the TV off.

Same goes for adults on days like these.

I’ve been lucky enough to see the Dalai Llama speak on two different occasions, and a few choice words stuck with me.

It was something like, “War is the macro expression of anger”.

So we do what we can every day within our sphere of control to cultivate kindness and mutual respect for each other.

These kind of messages are lost on the children this morning, but one day they’ll grasp it.

At the geopolitical and societal level however, a different approach is needed.

We can’t hug these terrible problems away.

That type of blind pacifism is rightly perceived as weakness by those who do these despicable acts.

In the home setting, it takes maturity to be kind in difficult moments, as much as maintaining order requires a steely firmness at the appropriate junctures.

But while the kids fight, the adults manage to do it at greater scale with incredible ferociousness.

It’s the same base emotion, anger.

However in adults that never evolved from this emotion it can morph into an ideology of hatred.

In some places, that anger is actively encouraged so that it grows and manifests itself through violence.

I’m grateful for what we have here in this country, despite the horrendous events of yesterday.

I am also hopeful about the future, because it eats at you being a cynic.

With that said, I want the retribution and justice exacted for yesterday to be surgical, vicious and very lethal.

I don’t think it is cognitive dissonance to aspire to be Buddhist at the interpersonal level, while still acknowledging and working within the confines of a complex wider world.

The kids this morning don’t need to know about that world just yet.

And it is clear Zen mindsets aren’t a workable strategy when dealing with organised terror.

Hopefully the good guys that protect us in this country can dutifully carry out their mission to reduce the networks that carry out these acts to a nice, complete and permanent zero.

I’ll talk about markets tomorrow – it just didn’t feel right to do so today.