The Promise

- We can rise above the battlefield of all internal conflict by learning to cultivate uncertainty in our conditioned and bureaucratic thought patterns and beliefs.

Excerpts from “The Promise and the Practice”
Hal Tippers next book on Personal Conflict Resolution - Coming Fall 2006  

It is my sincere attempt in this book to investigate established world solutions to conflict in language that can be easily interpreted and implemented for individuals to find peace in their own lives and relationships. I’m hoping that by defining life skills for peace using modern terms and common symptoms of conflict experienced in everyday life relating to conflict resolution, a greater audience will be served. Hal Tipper

   Most world religion philosophies promises peace in some form as the end result of their practice. It appears however, based on the amount of conflict evident in the world today, that something is missing?

My research takes me back to one of the first religious philosophies that promises peace from 528 BC. Buddhism.

     According to the Buddha, any person can follow his example and become enlightened through the study of his words "Dharma" and putting them into practice, by leading a virtuous, moral life, and purifying his mind.       In general, the aim of Buddhist practice is to end all kinds of suffering (Conflict?) in life. To achieve this state, adherents seek to purify and train the mind by following the Noble Eightfold Path, or the Middle Way, and eventually to gain true knowledge of reality and thus secure the ending (nirodha) of ignorance and of unhappiness and the attainment of liberation: moksha or nirvana. (Pāali nibbāana).

The Four Noble Truths

The Buddha taught that life was dissatisfactory because of selfish craving, but that this condition was
curable by following the Noble Eight-fold Path. This teaching is called the "Four Noble Truths".

• duhkha There is suffering. Suffering is an intrinsic part of life also experienced
  as dissatisfaction, discontent, unhappiness, impermanence. (Conflict? - My Definition)
• samudaya "arising (of suffering)": There is a cause of suffering, which is selfish
  attachment or desire rooted in ignorance.
• nirodha "cessation (of suffering)":There is a way out of suffering, which is to
  eliminate selfish attachment and desire.
• māarga (Pāali: magga) "path (to cessation)": There is a path that leads out of suffering,
  known as the Noble Eight-fold Path.
  
  The Four Noble Truths was the topic of the first sermon given by the Buddha after his
  enlightenment, which was given to the ascetics with whom he had practiced austerities.

Comments:
- From the perspective of solutions for peace, the second Noble Truth states that
“ The cause of suffering is selfish attachment”  This implies personal responsibility
and accountability that we as individuals are the cause and source of our own suffering.
- The third Noble Truth is the promise of Peace and the Fourth, the practice.

More to come.