On Peacemaking
In the contemporary druidry tradition, prayers, invocations, and rituals for peace are sometimes called “peacemaking”.
For perhaps obvious reasons (look at the date of this blog post, for those reading in the far future), peace is on many peoples’ minds, and I want to share some ways in which I attempt to grasp at this in my practices.
“Making”?
Like all concepts, the term “peacemaking” has connotations both beneficial for practice, and connotations that point away from particular possible ways of thinking about peace.
Peace making emphasises the real, practical, lived effort: peace does not come ex nihilo, it has to be planted, grown, and cultivated by sentient beings. This is particularly the case for peace within networks and ecologies (human or otherwise).
However, it belies one point that I see from my own perspective: peace as a state of being is always and already there, even if not visible and felt by yourself. This is “internal” peace, but I use that word with the awkward awareness of the oddities of interbeing and interconnectedness, where such an internal-external distinction eventually falls down. This peace cannot be made, but it can be discovered.
Peace-practice
The two methods of peace-practice here involve essentially “emanating” peace, in a verbal and visualisation pratice (either partially visualised, fully visualised, or just “felt” — all are valid).
Druidic — Ritual
The druidry tradition peacemaking ritual, as available to the public in the link above, has a few separate steps, but I highlight the first one.
Turn to the four directions and saying:
May there be peace in the North,
May there be peace in the South,
May there be peace in the West,
May there be peace in the East,
May there be peace throughout the whole world.
The similarities of this to loving-kindess or metta meditation will be apparent to some readers already.
This is currently my primary animistic-druidic practice. I tend to open my day with this, even if I don’t then go into a full druidic practice that early in the day.
While saying these phrases, imagining the direction (and then the whole world) being bathed in peace is crucial. Whether that visualisation is done for non-dual “magical” reasons, or for the psycho-spiritual effects on the practitioner is a separate question, but feeling the peace in more than words is crucial for this.
This can either be, as it is in my morning practice, under a minute long — a shower of peacemaking and peace-discovery. However, the ritual can be slowed down and performed over a period as long as needed, to deepen the experience of peace.
Loving-kindness — Meditation
Loving-kindness meditation is a popular Buddhist (and secularised) practice in the West, if not as well-known as mindfulness meditation. See the link just there for details, but the general approach is to generate feelings of love, compassion, and kindness, and then direct that at yourself, other people, and then the whole world (variations on this exist).
Part of this practice is visualising the world experiencing and being bathed in peace, as with the druidic practice above. However the peace-invocation phrase tends to be repeated, and they can vary from practitioner to practitioner.
I have integrated an explicit invocation of peace as part of my loving-kindness practice. I like keeping my loving-kindness practice simple, having only a few phrases which I can truly enter into and send out, so I tend to only have two or three that I repeat. Currently, they are:
May all beings live in peace,
May all beings be safe,
May all beings be happy.
I chose “live in peace” to emphasise both the internal and external aspects of peace. To energise all beings to “feel” or “experience” peace is a highly meritous act, which should not be devalued; however the current “““state of the world”“” brings forward engaged concerns about outward peace in terms of military actions, society, politics, and the climate.
“Live” emphasises continual existence within, and “in” talks about the situation around the being. Peace becomes a container, not just a state of being. May all beings live in peaceful containers, where they can be safe and happy with ease.
南無阿弥陀仏
namu amida butsu.
Peace,
⭕