Tao 31/Day 191 “Peace is his highest value…His enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.”

This is a violent universe, physically and humanly speaking.  From the earliest Big Bang to the latest star-collapse, from millions of degrees Fahrenheit to absolute zero, extreme violence – by our standards — is the norm.  The titanic eruptions that still blast out of the depths of this microscopic cul-de-sac we call Earth seem absolutely tame in comparison to what the Hubble telescope et. al. has allowed us to observe elsewhere.  – Likewise the violence enacted to sustain what we call ‘life’ on this planet.  Whatever its ‘original origination point’ (which itself is a ‘western’ concept), life as we know it is maintained, destroyed, and renewed by feeding on itself.  To paraphrase Joseph Campbell, “Life lives on life, and one of the primary requirements of a properly functioning mythology is to bring the human psyche in accord with this unalterable, terrible fact.”  – Small wonder then that violence seems practically programmed into our human DNA.  When we tap in to our most violent impulses, self-preserving, self-serving or otherwise, we’re doing little more than mirroring the universe that we see when we look outside ourselves.  — But when we look, as the Tao te Ching suggests, ‘inside’ ourselves, we find values that have to do with more than just the physical laws of nature as they are currently known.  Somehow, when we get still enough for long enough, there arises a sense that this stillness is more real than the violent movement of the physical world, and that the connectivity we feel is a deeper reality than all our seeming separateness.  Whether this is ever proved ‘true’ or not in any absolute scientific sense, it has prevailed in our human imagination long enough to foster values that place violence toward the bottom rather than the top of our species’ spiritual-mental-emotional food chain.  — So what’s all this got to do with running around a lake on yet another cold and dreary winter’s afternoon?  At first blush, I don’t know.  There’s nothing to suggest this particular meditation in the thin sheets of ice now covering broad sections of the water, nor in the surrounding bare branches and brown grasses and grey skies.  I suppose the best I can come up with is simply, “Tis the season”.  Whatever the reason, I find myself asking, “What is MY highest value?”  The Tao te Ching states that, for a master, the answer to that question is ‘peace”.   But, whatever value I choose, the lines at the top of this page also suggest that recognizing the same value in other people – particularly my ‘enemies’ – is a sure way to manifest that value myself.  In other words, if peace is my highest value, realizing that my enemy is a human being like myself (that values peace) will lead in fact to actual peace.  Focusing on similarities rather than differences produces the realization of values that remain elusive when differences are prioritized.  – An inspiration now floods me as I race toward the finish of this latest trip around the magic path.  It’s a simple idea of ‘running with the Tao for peace around the world’.  It seems preposterous, yet totally in keeping with my highest values.  I’m running, and meditating, and writing – alone for the time being – for peace.  Whether anyone feels initially opposed to or in favor of such an idea is irrelevant, as is my own hesitation to frame these activities in such a light.  The world around me may have no current use for such an enterprise, but that doesn’t make such a world an ‘enemy’.  This human world is made up of human beings just like me.  And if that is really true, they want peace, too…Badly…Maybe even bad enough to one day make a run for it…all the way around the world.  Peace on Earth!