Making peace

As SAARC gathers to discuss our collective wellbeing, these ancient prayers come from the Indian heart: Om saha nava vatu/ Saha nau bhunaktu/Saha veeryam karava vahai/Tejasvina vadhitam astu/Ma vid-visha vahai/Om shanty shanti shantihi. ‘May God protect us/May He grant us joy/May he unite our efforts/May our learning give us lustre/May we never quarrel/ Peace be upon us all.’ This prayer holds equally good, does it not, at the level of an office and its teams, a family and its members? Another prayer charged with life and hope, because it implies improvement: Kaayena vaacha manasendriyair vaa/ buddhyatmanavaa prakrteh sva- bhaavaat/karomi yajnyat sakalam parasmai/ Narayana iti samarpayaami. ‘I dedicate to God all that I do, with my body and mind, my five senses, my natural instincts and my intelligence.’ There’s a huge compliment in there to ourselves as aware human beings. But the lesson for both individuals and leaders seems to be that with empowerment comes responsibility — not an easy prayer underneath; it sits cross-legged on a particularly poky rock.

Another lovely prayer from the world’s heritage leaps to mind, this time with a name to it: St Francis of Assissi. It’s a famous one, almost as wellknown as the Serenity Prayer: Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace/Where there is hatred, let me sow love/Where there is injury, pardon/Where there is despair, hope/Where there is darkness, light/ And where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not seek to be consoled as to console/To be understood as to understand/To be loved as to love/For it is in giving that we receive/It is in pardoning that we are pardoned…

However, it is hard to relate to the last line of this prayer, which is, “And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life”. That’s the biggest parlour trick of all the deferral religions and it’s not good enough. It is a celibate and ascetic view, a houris-in-Eden view that may suit monks, sanyasis and jihadis. But unless they are suffused with love for their fellow beings, which makes them do life-sustaining work, can they really know about life and the nurturing of it, with its zillion nameless tasks? It’s too easy for ascetics to trash life, to spurn the womb as a place of filth. It’s too easy to say, hell, I’ll have a better deal next time. We hope so, for our sakes and for the sake of lost loved ones. But do we really know? What if they got it wrong, all those ‘official’ voices of religion? For what does our common sense say? This life is what we know. So let’s live it with soft words and clean deeds. Our prospects are full of potential, our countries make up a great swathe of earth. Now give us peace, all you leaders.