8. Peace

During the Buddha’s lifetime northern India was divided into a number of states with well-established warrior castes. Accounts of the Buddha’s life include an episode in which he intervened to stop a terrible war between the Shakyan and Kolyan states. When the Buddha arrived at the river that separated the two states, the opposing forces were drawn up and ready to begin combat. Asked to explain their reasons for going into battle, neither the leaders nor their followers could say, but many insults had been exchanged, and they all agreed that honor demanded a fight. The Buddha then learned from local farmers that the cause of the conflict was a shortage of water for irrigation. With this information he sought to convince the leaders that blood was more precious than water. The opposing armies listened as the Buddha told stories and gave teachings. At last they made peace. Not only was a bloody battle averted, but 250 men from each side joined the Buddha’s sangha of monks. [1]

The Buddha would have seen war and other forms of violence as examples of the suffering brought on by attachment, aversion, and ignorance. The Buddha’s sayings, collected in the Dhammapada, include the following:

Better than a thousand hollow verses is one verse that brings peace.[2]


Alas for the man who raises his hand against another, and even more for him who returns the blow.[3]

Without violent conflicts brought on by attachment, aversion, and ignorance, Shakespeare would have had much less to write about. At least sixteen of his plays feature battles, and most include fighting or violence of some kind. Thomas Hardy wrote that, “war makes rattling good history, but peace is poor reading.”Enter Hardy, Thomas, The Dynasts, (Part II, Scene V) 01 Sep 2013 (26 May 2016) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4043/4043-h/4043-h.html  Shakespeare was in the business of telling rattling good histories that celebrate war and the military virtues, but in his plays we often find that the cause of peace gets the more convincing arguments.

Of all Shakespeare’s plays, Henry V is the one best known for patriotic glorification of war, especially in Henry’s rousing St. Crispin’s Day speech. But a common soldier named Williams delivers the play’s truest insights about war and its effects:

But if the cause be not good, the King
himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all
those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a
battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry
all “We died at such a place,” some swearing, some
crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left
poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe,
some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard
there are few die well that die in a battle, for how
can they charitably dispose of anything when blood
is their argument? Now, if these men do not die
them to it, who to disobey were against all proportion
of subjection. (IV.i.138-151)

King Henry, who is visiting his men in disguise on the night before the battle of Agincourt, dismisses this by saying that the king is no more responsible for a soldier who miscarries in battle than a father would be for a son who miscarries on an errand, but this is a weak argument. Sending someone on an errand and sending them into battle, especially in a bad cause, are entirely different matters. Shakespeare allows Henry to appear to win the argument because he can’t very well do otherwise, but he gives Williams the better case.

In Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare’s play about the Trojan War, the Trojan leaders consider whether to end many years of costly fighting by returning Helen to the Greeks and to her rightful husband, Menelaus. Hector makes a compelling case for peace, ending with the lines:

If Helen then be wife to Sparta’s king,
As it is known she is, these moral laws
Of nature and of nations speak aloud
To have her back return’d: thus to persist
In doing wrong extenuates not wrong,
But makes it much more heavy. (II.ii.192-197)

The case for peace fails to carry the day. Even Hector reverses himself and joins the side of war. Shakespeare had no choice in this, since he was retelling a well-known story, but once more he has given peace the stronger argument. Hector pays the ultimate price for the continuation of war, and the full horror for Troy is brought home in the lamenting cries of Cassandra and in these lines spoken by Troilus:

Hector is gone:
Who shall tell Priam so, or Hecuba?
Let him that will a screech-owl aye be call’d,
Go in to Troy, and say there, Hector’s dead:
There is a word will Priam turn to stone;
Make wells and Niobes of the maids and wives,
Cold statues of the youth, and, in a word,
Scare Troy out of itself. (V.xi.15-22)

Shakespeare’s plays contain many such descriptions of the terrible harm that war inflicts on individuals and on society. The following passage from Henry V is among the most graphic:

. . . in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Desire the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters,
Your fathers taken by the silver beards
And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes
Whiles the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds, as did the wives of Jewry
At Herod’s bloody-hunting slaughtermen. (III.iii.33-40)

The case for peace takes a more humorous turn in Henry IV Part 1.  Sir John Falstaff enlists to aid the King in putting down a rebellion, though he is more interested in profiting from the war and has no stomach for fighting. When reminded by Prince Hal that he “owe’s God a death,” he responds with this soliloquy:

his day. What need I be so forward with him that
no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore
ends my catechism. (V.ii.128-142)

Depending on your point of view, Falstaff is either a shameless coward or the only sane person on the battlefield, or a mixture of the two. In any case, Falstaff memorably derides the hollowness of popular notions of honor and offers a human counterpoint to the scenes of deadly combat.

None of this would qualify Shakespeare as a Buddhist where views of war and peace are concerned, but for all the battles and exhortations to valor, more is said on behalf of peace than on behalf of war. Shakespeare comes closest to expressing the Buddhist principle of ahimsa or non-harming in these lines from Sonnet 94:

They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces.

In these examples we have been considering the outward peace of non-harming and the absence of war. Such outward peace is dependent on inner peace, which comes from the absence of attachment, aversion, and ignorance. The qualities that contribute to inner peace are those we have considered, including loving-kindness, compassion, joy, equanimity, renunciation, and contentment. These qualities are the basis for positive actions that bring good consequences. The inescapable connection between actions and consequences will be our next subject.


  1. Sherab Chodzon Kohn, A Life of the Buddha (Boston, Shambhala Publications, inc.) 78. 
  2. Byrom, Thomas, The Dhammapada: The Sayings of the Buddha (Boston: Shambhala, 1993), 30. 
  3. Ibid. 105. 

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