Violence Reflection

With the combination of the violence discussions in both this class and my sociology class, I have found myself reflecting on violence and the plausibility of global peace in my lifetime. In my sociology class, we discussed violence in terms of its social context and the role its played in societies for many years. My teacher classifying herself as a pacifist focused the lecture heavily on peace as well. In order to do this, she had us meditate for about fifteen minutes for two class periods. Asking us to focus on our breathing and block out any thought or distraction our brain tried to force upon us really made me aware of how helpful meditating could be to attaining peace. My professor described the meditation methods we did as a way to train your brain to not think or to focus on one thought solely. After trying this myself, I could very easily see how this could be helpful with peace. I tried executing these practices throughout the week. When getting frustrated or upset with something, I tried to focus my attention elsewhere or control my emotions to prohibit them from getting more aggressive or taking them out on anyone else.

We also tried another type of meditation where we were asked to breathe in someone's pain and suffering and breathe out their remedy whether that was happiness or comfort. We were asked to do this for someone we loved, someone who annoyed us or whom we didn't like, the other members of our sociology class, and ourselves. For me, it was most difficult to do this for the members of my class. I tried to ponder this thought and came to the conclusion that my difficulty stemmed from not knowing my fellow classmates well enough to know their pains and sorrows (this class is about 60 people). I surprised myself at how composed I remained when I was asked to do this for someone who I was not fond of.

After exploring this short meditation experience, my thoughts about the attainability of peace dramatically changed and became more optimistic. I started to believe that violence could be stopped, not without immense difficulty of course, but that the possibility was available. I often find it is these personal experiences that have the most profound impacts and am glad that I was exposed to this as it has been very helpful.