The Real “Shock and Awe”

Have you ever asked yourself how the Buddha would have responded had he been President of the United States when the country came under terrorist attack on 9/11?

For that matter, how would Jesus have responded? What in practice might either he or the Buddha have done?

Looking back nine years, “shock and awe,” the slogan of the time, has been shockinglyexpensive—in fact a major reason for the burgeoning U.S. deficit—and awfully costly in terms of the lives of American forces and their coalition counterparts.

That’s about the only shock and awe that’s been accomplished.

Far more Americans and those of other nations have died and suffered terrible injuries as a result of the West’s reaction to the attacks on American soil than died in the attacks themselves.

Has Iraq been made safe for democracy?

Certainly not in the light of the recent spate of horrific bombings in Baghdad and other regions of the country.

There’s also the fact that religious and racial factions within Iraq are at each other’s throats, with no long-term settled peace in sight.

Meanwhile Afghanistan continues to suck up vast resources, both in the form of military intervention and in aid, with Pakistan now also deeply penetrated by the Taliban that was supposed to have been eradicated by “shock and awe”—and threatening death to aid workers who seek to help the country in its tragically flooded state.

In our increasingly polarized and dangerous world, one has to wonder whether there may be a better way than the eons of action and reaction that have characterized the way we deal with one another.

When Nelson Mandela spent almost three decades in prison in South Africa, no small amount of the time in solitary confinement, he came face to face with the silent stillness of the Presence that underlies the whole of creation.

It changed him.

Mandela came out of prison to lead his nation with the insight that reconciliation is the only hope for a stable future.

How different is the arrogance of “shock and awe” and the humble proclamation of reconciliation.

Is it possible we would get a completely different outcome if we ever gave reconciliation a true, sustained try? If we put into it the kind of resources and budgets that we put into shock and awe-style reactions?

Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr—these both walked in the steps of the Buddha and Jesus. How might they have responded to 9/11?

A single individual can’t do it. It takes others catching the vision.

Gandhi saw those he invited to recognize their oneness become separate, sometimes hostile nations as they are today because others didn’t catch the vision. King’s dream is still far from fulfilled. South Africa hasn’t followed through on what Mandela began.

But what if large numbers, sick of the bloodshed and ruined lives, were actually tolisten to these visionaries?

What if heads of state sought the combined wisdom of Eckhart Tolle, Neale Donald Walsch, Adyashanti, and many others?

Sooner or later, if we are not to see increasing violence that ultimately leads us to self-destruct, the dream of a conscious response to terrorism and international belligerence has to become a reality—as Eckhart Tolle’s publisher Constance Kellough brings out in her Namaste book The Leap—Are You Ready to Live a New Reality?

Were consciousness to dawn globally at a grassroots level coupled with enlightened leadership, the Taliban would simply become irrelevant. No one would harbor them anymore.

Is anybody in power seriously contemplating what the Buddha, Jesus, Gandi, Mandela, or Martin Luther King Jr would do at this moment in world history? Is anybody asking input from our present visionaries?

There is already a deep peace on this planet, beneath all the unrest, just awaiting our recognition. It’s always been there, always within our grasp.

Will we now cease our shock and awe tactics and enter into the stillness of the Presence that has always been planet-wide?

It’s not a pipe dream. It’s the only viable dream.