I believe that if we are to ever to change this world for the better, and stop for all time our young sons and daughters dying in military conflict, then we must first change ourselves and our point of view.  The Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh is a great inspiration to peaceful living.  I want to quote a little clip from his book Being Peace.

In Plum Village in France, we receive many letters from the refugee camps in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, hundreds each week.  It is very painful to read them, but we have to do it, we have to be in contact.

We try our best to help, but the suffering is enormous, and sometimes we are discouraged.  It is said that half the boat people die in the ocean; only half arrive at the shores in Southeast Asia.

There are many young girls, boat people, who are raped by sea pirates.  Even though the United Nations and many countries try to help the government of Thailand prevent that kind of piracy, sea pirates continue to inflict much suffering on the refugees.  One day we received a letter telling us about a young girl on a small boat who was raped by a Thai pirate.  She was only twelve, and she jumped into the ocean and drowned herself.

Who is responsible?

When you first learn something like that, you get angry at the pirate.  You naturally take the side of the girl.  As you look more deeply you will see it differently.  If you take the side of the little girl, then it is easy.  You only have to take a gun and shoot the pirate.  But we cannot do that.  In my meditation I saw that if I had been born in the village of the pirate and raised in the same conditions as he was, I am now the pirate.  There is a great likelihood that I would become a pirate.  I cannot condemn myself so easily.  In my meditation, I saw that many babies are born along the Gulf of Siam, hundreds every day, and if we educators, social workers, politicians and others do not do something about the situation, in 25 years a number of them will become sea pirates.  That is certain.  If you or I were born today in those fishing villages, we might become sea pirates in 25 years.  If you take a gun and shoot the pirate, you shoot all of us, because all of us are to some extent responsible for this state of affairs.