Is There a Relationship Between Mysticism and Peace?
Mystics as Peacemakers?
Do a quick search of the internet and you will find many suggestions that mysticism is associated with peace. But what does this mean? What kind of peace do mystical texts promote (if they promote it at all)? Are all mystics peacemakers? Are mystics all pacifists? These are important questions but there aren't any clear answers online.
Copyright Louise Nelstrop
Recent scholarship has begun to think about these questions. Some, like Paul Hedges, are sceptical that mysticism can have a definite relationship to peace. He points out that many mystics, across religious traditions, seem to have engaged in anything but peace. Zen Buddhism is known to be associated with the martial arts - you just have to think of all those Bruce Lee movies! So that can hardly be described as peaceful!
Then there is Bernard of Clairvaux in the Christian tradition, who starts what becomes a school of love, all the while promoting the crusades. At one recruitment drive his preaching is so successful that they even run of cloth crosses (which a 'would be' crusader wore on their clothes as a sign of commitment to crusading), so in typically flamboyant fashion he rips up his monastic robes to make more. That too can hardly be described as peacebuilding.
We could go on... There are many examples of mystics like this. But does this mean that mystics are not peacemakers?
But what is Peace?
Peace is a slippery term. It is too bald to simply describe it as non-violence. Johan Galtung famously divided it into negative peace (using nonviolent means to bring about the absence of violence and wars) and positive peace (working, through nonviolent means, to prevent injustices, inequalities, prejudice etc.) Yet even this is not enough.
Copyright Louise Nelstrop
Anthropologists and others working in the softer sciences have noticed that what peace means shifts depending on context and location. Sometimes what emerges as peace is not easily as quantifiable as peace scientists might like.
Scholars like Oliver Richmond, Kevin Clements, and Roger Mac Ginty have begun to argue that we need hybrid models to make sense of peace. As Richmond and Audra Mitchell put it:
Peace is not a universal concept that can be transposed identically between different contexts of conflict. Rather, unique forms of peace arise when the strategies, institutions and norms of international, large liberal-democratic peacebuilding interventions collide with the everyday lives of local actors affected by conflict. [1]
Cheyney Ryan has even gone as far as to ask how we make sense of people like Alice Hertz, who self-immolated during protests against the Vietnam War. He argues that Alice presents us with complex questions about whether we view such actions as simply desperation ('doing violence to oneself') or understand them as a protection of another ('taking violence upon oneself')?
Copyright Louise Nelstrop
Mysticism presents us with yet another added layer of complexity, adding the relationship between experiencing and promoting inner peace and to the success of external peacebuilding. Peter Gan and Farid Mirbagheri both argue that mysticism might provide a missing piece of the jigsaw that we need to find external peace.
Such arguments are not new - Charles N. Alexander, known affectionally as Skip, was famous for his motto - 'peaceful body, peaceful mind, peaceful world' [2] But is mystical peace even this simple? Hedges shows us that we need to delve deep into mystical texts and the lives of mystics if we are really to assess whether mysticism, across religious traditions, might be a resource for peace.
New work is moving in this direction. Take the edited collection of Muhammad Shafiq and Thomas Donlin Smith, which showcases case studies of different ways that mystics across traditions engage peace, but there is much more work to be done - both collecting examples and theorising what we find - we need complex models that help us understand the hybridity of mystic peace.
We hope to update you soon with some early findings.
We will be posting a handy questionnaire to help gather data very soon - so watch this space!
Notes
[1] Oliver P. Richmond and Audra Mitchell (eds), Hybrid Forms of Peace: From Everyday Agency to Post-Liberalism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 1.
[2] Charles N. Alexander, 'Peaceful body, peaceful mind, peaceful world', Modern Science and Vedic Science, 5/1-2 (1992), 150-164.
Bibliography
Alexander, Charles N., Peaceful body, peaceful mind, peaceful world', Modern Science and Vedic Science, 5/1-2 (1992), 150-164.
Alexander, Jeffrey C., 'This-worldly Mysticism: Inner Peace and World Transformation in the Work and Life of Charles "Skip" Alexander', Journal of Adult Development, 7/4 (2000), 269-274.
Boege, Volker, Anne Brown, Kevin Clements and Anna Nolan, 'Building Peace and Political Community in Hybrid Political Orders', International Peacekeeping, 16/5 (2009), 599-615.
Firchow, Pamina, 'Peace Methods and Methodologies', in Oliver P. Richmond and Gëzim Visoka (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Peacebuilding, Statebuilding and Peace Formation (Oxford: OUP, 2021), pp. 152-163.
Galtung, Johan, 'Violence, Peace and Peace Research', Journal of Peace Research, 6/3 (1969), 167-191.
Hedges, Paul, 'Identity, Prejudice, and Mysticism: Exploring Sustainable Narratives of Peace Across Religious Borders', in Muhammad Sharif and Thomas Donlin-Smith (eds), Mystical Traditions: Approches to Peaceful Coexistence (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), pp. 223-240.
Mac Ginty, Roger, International Peacebuilding and Local Resistance: Hybrid Forms of Peace (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Mirbagheri, Farid, 'Mysticism and a Paradigm Shift in Peace Studies', in M. Hermansen, E. Alsan, E Erșan Akkiliç (eds), Peace Education and Religion: Perspectives, Pedagogy, and Policies (Wiener Beiträge zur Islamforschung, Springer VS, Weisbaden, 2022).
Richmond, Oliver P. and Audra Mitchell (eds), Hybrid Forms of Peace: From Everyday Agency to Post-Liberalism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
Ryan Cheyney, 'The One who Burns Herself for Peace', Hypatia, 9/2 (1994), 21-39.
Muhammad Sharif and Thomas Donlin-Smith (eds), Mystical Traditions: Approches to Peaceful Coexistence (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)