How to really achieve World Peace

Now I have been tough on certain Nobel Prize Winners in the past, and implied that I am perfectly willing to do as much for world peace as they have, but for less money. However, in all seriousness, I do know at least one thing about Peace and that is basically it is generally not a good idea to start a fight if you can avoid doing so.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, one of the five moral commandments (“Yama”) for every Yogi is Ahimsa – “non violence.” What Patanjali actually says is:

When non-violence in speech, though and action is established, one’s agressive nature in relinquished and others abandon hostility in one’s presence.

Now there is a famous saying, Roman in origin but made most famous by Metallica – “To secure peace is to prepare for war.” But the meaning of Patanjali says the opposite – to secure peace one must be peaceful. Indeed it does not take someone versed in ancient Yogic philosophy to realise that if you do not want to be challenged to a fight, it is probably not a good idea to go through life with a chip on your shoulder.

I say all this because I note in the news that Israel soldiers claimed that the deaths of the arabs on the so-called Freedom Flotilla was “self-defence.” Now of all the possible justifications for the controversy regarding the Flotilla, this must surely be the lamest. It was the Israeli soldiers who rappelled on to the ships. They were not obliged to board, they went looking for trouble, and of course they found it.