A Conscientious Objector

There are many in Sri Lanka today who see themselves as Buddhists yet who seem to favor violence as a solution to political problems. I'm thinking particularly of the JHU, the monk-led party that promotes a military solution to the civil war in your country. How do you view such forces?
We keep away from party and power politics completely. As far as the JHU is concerned, we don't have anything to do with it. We don't think that this is the right way for Buddhists. We believe that we should work in harmony with other communities without bringing forward other issues. In our movement we are completely different from the parties in our approach to community-building and peace-building. We have no quarrel with them. We say, "Please don't do politics." We believe peace-building should be done in three sectors. One is to enable people to think that we are one human society, that we are all members of one living world. The second is that there is no place in this world for violence. This is one thing that we try to achieve through mass mediation programs. Sometimes we get thousands of people to participate. We try to promote development of poor communities in those areas which have conflict situations. Third, we try to promote self-government on the level of the community and the village. We think these are three things that are contributing to lasting peace.

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