Swami Chaitanya Keerti
In the 2000, with the beginning of a new millennium, the thinkers and the poets of the world were hoping that human beings will evolve to
usher in a new era of a new kind of humanity on earth, which will bring an end to all wars, and conflicts between nations, religions,
races and genders. Around that time, a Millennium World Peace Summit was organised in New York. Nobel Peace laureate from Northern Ireland Betty Williams, Mahatma Gandhi’s grand-daughter Ela Gandhi, eminent primatologist Jane Goodall and Vashti Mckenzie from the African
Methodist Episcopal Church attended a special session which waspresided over by Mrs Indu Jain of the Times of India group.
During the summit, Betty Williams is reported to have pointed out that war was essentially man’s work. She said to men: “Now move over. Women will ensure peace.”
Stressing that practising non-violence is not for the faint-hearted, she said it required exemplary courage. It is really true that most of
the wars, almost all the wars, have been fought by men. The world is always busy in wars because we have been appreciating male qualities
and condemning feminine qualities in people. Anyone who is disinterested in fighting is labelled as effeminate. And if a boy
starts weeping we ask him: Why are you crying like a girl? Be a man!
This philosophy of condemning feminine qualities has been the root cause of all wars in the world and it provokes aggressiveness and
barbarianism in men. Our history books are full of appreciation of the “heroic” deeds of Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte and other
such men who unleashed large scale violence in the world. We want ourcmale children to become brave heroes like them or at least imbibe some of their qualities.
This appreciation of aggressive male qualities has been more dominant in the West. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche condemned Gautama the Buddha because of his feminine grace and beauty. His idea of a real man was to be strong and to be made of steel. Buddha was the most compassionate and cultured of men, the most graceful man this world has ever known. But his compassion, grace and beauty are essentially feminine qualities that have been adored and worshipped in the East. Nietzsche condemned Buddha’s teachings also. He said that he could not appreciate his teachings as they were harmful to the humanity. He warned that if people believed in Buddha’s teachings, the whole world would turn feminine. Nietzsche appreciated the warrior, the military man, who is always ready to kill or to be killed. The sound and the rhythm of an army marching to the war zone was real music to his ears. It is this philosophy that gave birth to monsters like Hitler.
Nietzsche was certainly a genius who was born in the West and his psyche was corrupted by the Western philosophy of conquering and
ruling the world. So if we follow his philosophy we will have more world wars and no peace. If we want peace in the world, we will have
to nurture feminine qualities to bring about a balance in the world. It is about time that we avoid insane thinkers like Nietzsche and embrace enlightened mystics like Gautama the Buddha. This indeed will indeed bring a new era of peace. And prosperity also if we try to understand Zorba dimension of life envisioned by Osho, an enlightened mystic of modern time.
Osho says: It is true that all great qualities are feminine – love, compassion, sympathy, kindness. All these qualities have a flavour of
the feminine. We have been giving too much emphasis to the head and ignoring the heart. We are living an utterly miserable life because we
have got hung up in our heads and have bypassed our hearts. The head has dried our poetry of emotions, the sentiments, the smiles, the
tears, the laughter, and made our life so boring. Friendship has disappeared from the world because our head calculates too much. The
head is miserly and calculative. This is the head that has created such monstrous concrete jungles that man has no time to look at the
sky and dance with the clouds and rejoice in the rains. The heart wants to sing, but the head thinks about society and worries about what others will say about us. The head has made us much too serious in the name of sanity.
Mrs Indu Jain rightly stated at the World Peace Summit that she would like to invoke the all-pervading feminine power – the very embodiment
of non-violence – to be here with us. Give women a chance, and non-violence will effortlessly be the religion of the new millennium.
The new millennium should have a totally new vision and values of life, in which women give a significant contribution of their feminine
qualities to men, and use their feminine power for peace. Let the head and heart unite in meditation and create a new BEING in the world.
