The Art of Living in Peace

 Title:   The Art of Living in Peace  - Prerequisites for a Peace Educator (Workshop)

As presented at the "Education for Peace Conference 2000"

University of Tromso, Norway, May 2000

For peace educators to be able to pass on the Art of Living in Peace to other people,

whether children, teenagers or adults, they must fulfil an essential preliminary condition; they themselves must be an example of what they teach. One could say that their very being, by radiating qualities such as affection, gentleness, patience, openness to the needs of others, the ability to put themselves in somebody else's shoes, and so on, would render all other forms of instruction unnecessary.

The essential question, then, is to know how to find such educators or, if they are few and far between, which seems to be the case, how to train and prepare them.

In the first case, it is a matter of choice - of recruitment and selection. In the second case, it is a matter of training.

In fact the qualities necessary in a peace educator are very similar to those of outstanding individuals, the great masters, examples of whom exist in all cultures - men and women who have integrated wisdom and love into their everyday existence and who have dedicated their lives of the service of these values.

This presentation will be about the old and new paradigms in education; concept of education, concept of student, nervous system, field of action, educative agent, concept of evolution, type of training - orientation of values, methods of education.

The modules of the program " The Art of Living in Peace" is developed by the International Holistic University of Brasilia and Mr Pierre Weil. 

It is based on the words by Federico Mayor, Previous Director General of UNESCO;

"Since wars begin in the minds of men, its in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed"  at the Yamoussoukro Conference on Peace in the Minds of Men, Unesco, September 6, 1988.

The Art of living in peace must be developed on three levels:

 Human: Inner ecology or the art of living in peace with oneself.

Social: Social ecology or the art of living in peace with others.

Environment: Planetary ecology or the art of living in peace with nature

On the agenda:

 The destruction of peace

 In order to know how to awaken and rebuild peace, nothing is more necessary than an in-depth understanding of the process that has led the human race to risk destroying life on the planet.

Direct methods of awakening peace

In each one of us slumber the functions or qualities of heart that are directly reponsible for maintaining inner and social peace. The spiritual traditions are unanimous on this point. We can summarise these qualities as follows:

Joy: We are made, as we have already mentioned, for a life of joy, especially the kind we experience when we see the joy of others.

Altruistic love:This can be defined as a feeling of wanting everybody's happiness and acting accordingly.

 Compassion: How can we live in peace knowing that suffering and poverty exist all around us? Compassion is precisely the feeling of wanting to heal these ills and of moving heaven and earth to achieve it.

 Universality: The universality of the above three feelings is very important; they apply to every living species without bias. If they were reality put inot practice by everybody towards everybody else, would there still be wars and conflicts?

These qualities can be awakened and developed in different ways. Some of these are shown at the workshop.

Book: Pierre Weil: The Art of Living in Peace,