Religion and Peace in Buddhism, the Dhammapada and the Sutta Pitaka: HSC Studies of Religion II

What this dot point is asking

Religion and Peace is a Studies of Religion II study, and "the whole study is to be completed within the same TWO religious traditions". For each tradition the syllabus asks you to:

1. investigate the understanding of peace "and how it is informed through significant writings within sacred texts". For Buddhism the named texts are the Sutta Pitaka and the Dhammapada;
2. outline the principal teachings about peace;
3. demonstrate how the tradition guides the individual in achieving inner peace;
4. discuss how the tradition is contributing to world peace.

This page covers all four for Buddhism. Pair it with a second tradition: the site's existing pages cover Christianity and Islam, and there are companion pages for Hinduism and Judaism.

The Section IV question (20 marks) sometimes allows ONE tradition (2020, 2021, 2024) and sometimes demands TWO (2019, 2022, 2023, 2025), so prepare both traditions in equal depth.

The answer

1. The understanding of peace in Buddhism

The Pali word for peace is santi. It has three linked levels.

• Peace of mind. Unrest is a symptom of dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), which the Second Noble Truth traces to tanha (craving). Greed, hatred and delusion, the "three poisons", disturb the mind and then spill into speech and action. The Dhammapada opens: "Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts suffering follows him ... If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow" (1 to 2).
• Peace between people. Conflict comes from the same poisons, so outer peace depends on inner peace. The Buddha's teachings on right speech, generosity and forgiveness are social as well as personal.
• Ultimate peace. Nibbana, the complete "blowing out" of the fires of greed, hatred and delusion, is peace in its fullest sense: "There is no fire like lust and no crime like hatred. There is no ill like the aggregates (of existence) and no bliss higher than the peace (of Nibbana)" (Dhammapada 202).

So in Buddhism peace is not only the absence of war. It is a quality of mind that can be trained, and its perfection is the goal of the whole path.

2. How sacred texts inform the understanding of peace

The Dhammapada (part of the Khuddaka Nikaya, within the Sutta Pitaka) is a collection of 423 verses attributed to the Buddha. Its peace teachings are among the most quoted in Buddhism.

The Sutta Pitaka (the "basket of discourses") contains the Buddha's longer teachings.

• The Karaniya Metta Sutta (Sutta Nipata 1.8) is the classic text on loving-kindness, chanted daily in many Buddhist communities: "Let none through anger or ill-will / Wish harm upon another. / Even as a mother protects with her life / Her child, her only child, / So with a boundless heart / Should one cherish all living beings; / Radiating kindness over the entire world".
• The Simile of the Saw (Kakacupama Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya 21) sets the highest standard of non-hatred: "Even if low-down bandits were to sever you limb from limb with a two-handed saw, anyone who had a malevolent thought on that account would not be following my instructions" (trans. Sujato).
• The Sigalovada Sutta (Digha Nikaya 31) sets out mutual duties between parents and children, teachers and students, spouses, friends, employers and workers: peace in society rests on reciprocal respect.
• The Cakkavatti Sihanada Sutta (Digha Nikaya 26) tells how a king's failure to give to the needy leads to poverty, then theft, violence and killing: a Buddhist account of the social causes of conflict (paraphrased).

3. Principal teachings about peace

• The Four Noble Truths. Suffering, its cause (craving), its cessation (Nibbana) and the path. Peace is the Third Truth made real.
• The Noble Eightfold Path. Wisdom (right view, right intention), ethical conduct (right speech, right action, right livelihood) and mental discipline (right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration). Right intention explicitly includes the intention of non-ill-will and harmlessness.
• The Five Precepts. The first, to abstain from taking life, is the Buddhist form of ahimsa. Others (no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no false speech, no intoxicants) remove common causes of conflict.
• The brahmaviharas. Metta (loving-kindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (sympathetic joy) and upekkha (equanimity), the "divine abidings" that make a peaceful heart.
• Kamma. Violent actions bring painful results for the one who does them; peaceful actions bring happiness. Violence harms the perpetrator as well as the victim.
• Interdependence (paticcasamuppada). Everything arises in dependence on conditions, so harming others harms the whole web of life. Thich Nhat Hanh expresses this as "interbeing".

4. How Buddhism guides the individual to inner peace

The Eightfold Path is often grouped into three trainings, and each is a means to inner peace.

Sila (ethics). Keeping the precepts removes guilt, fear and conflict. Lay Buddhists often take the precepts formally when they visit a temple, and many keep extra precepts on Uposatha (observance) days.

Samadhi (meditation).

• Samatha (calm) meditation, commonly on the breath (anapanasati), steadies and quietens the mind.
• Metta bhavana, loving-kindness meditation, radiates goodwill in widening circles: to oneself, a friend, a neutral person, a difficult person and all beings. It directly replaces the "hatred" of Dhammapada 5 with "non-hatred".
• Mindfulness (sati), taught in the Satipatthana Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 10), brings calm awareness of body, feelings, mind and mental objects into daily life.

Panna (wisdom)

Vipassana (insight) meditation sees that all conditioned things are impermanent, unsatisfactory and not-self. "All conditioned things are impermanent"; "when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering" (Dhammapada 277). Letting go of clinging is the deepest peace.

Supports

Taking refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha; chanting (including the Metta Sutta); retreats; teachers; and festivals such as Wesak, which recall the Buddha's enlightenment. In Australia, where 2.4% of people reported Buddhism at the 2021 Census (ABS), many Buddhist centres run meditation classes open to the public.

How the stages connect

Ethics calms outward conduct, meditation calms the mind, and wisdom removes the roots of unrest. That is why Buddhists say the peace of Nibbana is reached by the whole path, not by meditation alone.

5. How Buddhism contributes to world peace

Leaders

• The XIVth Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), exiled from Tibet since 1959, has pursued non-violent means for Tibetan autonomy. His Five Point Peace Plan (21 September 1987) proposed "that the whole of Tibet ... be transformed into a zone of 'Ahimsa'". He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 "for advocating peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect". He teaches that compassion is the basis of world peace and meets leaders of other religions.
• Thich Nhat Hanh (1926 to 2022), a Vietnamese Zen monk, opposed the Vietnam War, founded the Order of Interbeing and later the Plum Village community in France, and popularised Engaged Buddhism: applying mindfulness and compassion to social and political suffering. Martin Luther King Jr nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967.
• Maha Ghosananda (died 2007), a Cambodian monk, led the Dhammayietra (pilgrimage of truth) peace walks from 1992, after the Khmer Rouge genocide, to promote reconciliation and oppose landmines.
• Historical model: Asoka, whose Rock Edict XIII renounced conquest by war for "conquest by Dhamma". See the Asoka page.

Organisations

• Sarvodaya Shramadana (founded in Sri Lanka in 1958 by A. T. Ariyaratne) links village development with peace and reconciliation work.
• The Buddhist Peace Fellowship (founded in the United States in 1978) supports Engaged Buddhist social action.
• Soka Gakkai International, a lay Nichiren movement, has issued annual peace proposals on disarmament and human security.
• Interfaith bodies. Buddhists take part in Religions for Peace and national interfaith councils, including in Australia.

Limits and criticisms.

• In Myanmar, nationalist monks helped stir hostility towards Rohingya Muslims before and during the violence of 2017. In Sri Lanka, Buddhist nationalist groups have been linked to attacks on Muslim and Christian minorities.
• In twentieth-century Japan, some Zen leaders supported militarism (documented in Brian Victoria's Zen at War).
• Buddhist leaders themselves, including the Dalai Lama, have condemned such violence as contrary to the Buddha's teaching. A strong answer treats these cases as a gap between ideal and practice, not as the teaching of the texts.

Evaluating Buddhism's contribution to peace

In one sentence

Buddhism understands peace as the stilling of greed, hatred and delusion, taught in the Dhammapada ("By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased") and the Sutta Pitaka (the Metta Sutta, the simile of the saw), cultivated through precepts, meditation and insight as the path to inner peace and Nibbana, and carried into the world by leaders such as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh, although nationalist violence in some Buddhist societies shows how far practice can fall short.

Try this

Q1. Outline ONE principal Buddhist teaching about peace. (3 marks)

• What the marker wants. A named teaching (for example the first precept or metta), its meaning and how it brings peace.

Q2. Demonstrate how Buddhism guides the individual in achieving inner peace. (8 marks)

• What the marker wants. Sila, samadhi and panna as means, each supported by a sacred text, with an explanation of how they produce inner peace.

Q3. Discuss how Buddhism is contributing to world peace. (20 marks, often paired with a second tradition)

• What the marker wants. Teachings, named leaders and organisations, limits, and a judgement.