Expressions of gratitude create in others an eagerness to reciprocate. When we become more fully aware that our success is due in large measure to the loyalty, helpfulness, and encouragement we have received from others, our desire grows to pass on similar gifts. Gratitude spurs us on to prove ourselves worthy of what others have done for us. The spirit of gratitude is a powerful energizer.
~ from THE ART OF CREATIVE THINKING by Wilfred Peterson
He looked at me, standing up on the back of the room near the door, so tense, so close to tears, I was ready to open it and run out. "You held up your truth. Now go on holding up your truth. You want world peace right now. So don't be so optimistic, you might become complacent. You must take care of your aspiration to compassion. Just WANT to make these changes, just take it on with joy. If it doesn't matter to us how long it takes for world peace, we can have it right now, with complete joy."
If we learn anything from the peace that is in us, it is that it represents the highest good to which no only persons but whole people can be called, and we cannot be content with our own serenity and, at the same time, indifferent to the swirls of anger that threaten to rend the fabric of society all around us. To do so would be to make of ourselves hypocrites, content to save ourselves and lose the world.
The Way is everything. It's not a particular direction or a special way of doing something; it's a circle with no outside and no inside, just the pulsating of life everywhere. It excludes nothing. Therefore, as peacemakers working in the world, we exclude nothing. We'll pick and choose according to what's appropriate for us at a certain place and a certain moment. But we won't be attached to what we choose, for everything is the Way.
The quality of life is in our own hands. But shaping it takes a spirituality of balance. "We should be peaceful in our words and deeds and in our way of life," Angela Foligno wrote. It was ancient spirituality, tried and true. And I understood it in a new way. I wrote,
"It's so true. Peace is a choice. If I didn't worry, didn't fear, didn't react negatively to things, I wouldn't be disturbed by them."
Be completely empty. Be perfectly serene. The ten thousand things arise together; in their arising is their return. Now they flower, and flowering sink homeward, returning to the root. The return to the root is peace. Peace: to accept what must be, to know what endures. In that knowledge is wisdom.
Over the months, I kept on sending Boss a daily supply of tobacco, always wrapped in a page of BEING PEACE. One page at a time he came to like Thich Nhat Han. Every now and then, Boss even tried his best to meditate, but he was never able to stay awake early in the morning.
After eighteen months Bosshog is released from the grip of San Quentin and from the dependence on me for tobacco and BEING PEACE. Before he walked off the tier, he stood in front of my cell and together we recited what had become Boss's mantra whenever he was about to blow his top:
"Man, man ... If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace."
