PETER: I realize I was pushing the envelope to dare to try and talk about how to actualize peace on earth on a spiritual mailing list. Your ruling does add substance to my point that peace on earth is not on the spiritual agenda, a bit ‘less interesting’ than the main event. I have yet to see it mentioned in any spiritual teaching for all religious belief is concerned either with ‘the peace that passeth all understanding’, ‘inner’ peace or ‘Resting In Peace’, after death.

MODERATOR: Keep reading. It’s definitely out there. See Mahayana Buddhism, Sufism, the writings of Swami Vivekananda, and more recently, the works of my own teacher, Andrew Cohen, which speak extensively about this subject. Visit www.andrewcohen.org for more info.

PETER: If you want to make a point of substance and worth, it is of no use to wave your arms and say it’s somewhere ‘out there’. Please provide some evidence to substantiate your claims for saying one thing while doing another – stifling a discussion about peace on earth – does somewhat weaken your stance. However, looking briefly in the directions you indicated I find – (...)

As for Sufism, again one needs to go back to the fundamental principles of the teachings otherwise fashionable fuzziness and spiritual slipperiness can easily fog the investigation –

[quote]: ‘The path (tariqah) begins with repentance. A mystical guide (shaykh, pir) accepts the seeker as disciple (murid), orders him to follow strict ascetic practices, and suggests certain formulas for meditation. It is said that the disciple should be in the hands of the master ‘like a corpse in the hand of the washer.’ The master teaches him constant struggle (the real ‘Holy War’) against the lower soul, often represented as a black dog, which should, however, not be killed but merely tamed and used in the way of God. The mystic dwells in a number of spiritual stations (maqam ), which are described in varying sequence, and, after the initial repentance, comprise abstinence, renunciation, and poverty – according to Muhammad’s saying, ‘Poverty is my pride’; poverty was sometimes interpreted as having no interest in anything apart from God, the Rich One, but the concrete meaning of poverty prevailed, which is why the mystic is often denoted as ‘poor,’ fakir or dervish. Patience and gratitude belong to higher stations of the path, and consent is the loving acceptance of every affliction.’ Encyclopedia Britannica

Constant struggle against the lower soul, the ‘black dog’, indicates the ancient idea of evil and darkness as the cause of human malice and sorrow and in no way acknowledges the modern understanding of genetically-encoded instinctual animal passions in humans. The path of constant struggle, repentance, abstinence, renunciation, poverty, patience, gratitude and acceptance of one’s lot in life clearly leads to God and nowhere do I find any mention in Sufism of peace on earth, in this lifetime, as this flesh and blood body only.

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