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Text of the Month No 13
By Jos Slabbert Do you understand? The
silence of Tao Explanation and comment I read the other day that
there an estimated 40 wars going on right now on this beautiful earth of ours. Even the
obscurest of these wars tends to devour the innocent more than the perpetrators
themselves. Another sad statistic is that when war breaks out in a region, the children in
that region are in greater danger of getting killed or maimed than the soldiers fighting
it. I just cannot comprehend how
anyone can see war as a solution to anything. Of course you can argue that there sometimes
is no other alternative to war. I mean, war was essential in ridding the world of the
scourge of fascism and Hitler, wasn’t it? My own relatives fought and died in this
war. But they also dropped bombs on the innocent in German cities. War mostly is the certain sign
that we are not moving towards civilization, but towards barbarism. Personally, one feels so
helpless when one sees the images of the dying and wounded on TV screens. War has a
tremendous negative effect on faith in goodness. It destroys the hope that, somehow,
somewhere in the future, the virtuous will be victorious and evil will be overcome. The above poem is a
declaration of faith. What it says in the clearest terms is that the world of the spirit
cannot be conquered by an ignorant, cruel world. Every human being can come into contact
with the indestructible essence of life and power, and this union with the Tao gives us
the faith to continue and to be compassionate at a time when pride, chauvinism and greed
seem to be dominant. What we need to do is just to become silent, and listen to the silence which is Tao.
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