Editing SG34BHU-T (section)

== I ==

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The joy of a morning when the dark violence of the storm and the raging waves have at last subsided, and we are blessed with a bright and tranquil voyage over calm seas, is a joy shared by all humankind. Toward peace! The light of peace is the common hope of all humanity; it must be the North Star guiding the course of human creation.

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To be sure, human history has been stained by all too many scars of conflict. According to statistics, across the long five thousand years of human history, for every thirteen years of dark conflict there has been only a single year along the line of peace.<ref>The claim that recorded history contained only a small fraction of years free from war circulated widely in European and international peace literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often presented as statistical evidence of the persistence of organized conflict. Seno’o invokes this ostensibly scientific calculation to underscore the systemic character of warfare in human history.</ref> This is indeed a sorrowful historical fact. And yet, despite all this, peace—in the past, present, and future—remains the pillar of cloud guiding all humanity and the white path leading to the farther shore of culture. It is precisely for this reason that so many awakened predecessors took upon themselves the cross of sacred love and became imperishable signposts pointing toward the ideal realm of peace.<ref>Seno’o freely incorporates Christian imagery into his Buddhist rhetoric. The “pillar of cloud” recalls the divine presence that guides the Israelites through the wilderness in Exodus 13:21–22, while the “cross of sacred love” evokes Christ's sacrificial death. Such language reflects Seno’o's longstanding engagement with Christianity as a model of socially engaged religious practice.</ref>

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The Buddha, Christ, and others were exemplary pioneers of the peace movement. But beyond them, not a single drop of the blood and tears shed by martyrs was sacrificed for anything other than the cause of peace. Even the class struggle that today swirls throughout the world and at first glance appears so objectionable—if we quietly sound the true intentions of Marx beneath the ground at Highgate<ref>Karl Marx (1818–1883) was buried in Highgate Cemetery in London. Seno’o's striking image of “sounding” Marx's intentions beneath Highgate allows him to reinterpret class struggle not as an end in itself but as a means toward universal peace.</ref>—we find that all their efforts, too, constitute a scientific social movement directed toward the construction of a peaceful society and animated by the aspiration to save all humanity.

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Of course, conflict and war cannot simply and easily be eradicated. Nor should they be regarded as absolutely evil. Indeed, there are times in human life when a solution by the sword is necessary. But such a course should be an exceptional course (''kendō'' 権道), restricted solely to those unavoidable occasions when it is necessary to safeguard peace; it must never become the ordinary course (''jōdō'' 常道) of human life.<ref>''Kendō'' (権道) denotes an exceptional or provisional course of action justified by circumstances, in contrast to ''jōdō'' (常道), the normal or enduring way. Seno’o uses the distinction to argue that force may sometimes be provisionally necessary to preserve or establish peace, but can never constitute the normative principle of human relations.</ref> From problems within a single household to relations among nations, conflict and war lead human beings into anxiety, agitation, fear, and despair, bringing economic and cultural destruction in their wake. It hardly needs saying that these are actions to be avoided. War is an action of last resort, permissible only to a human conscience that deeply abhors the cruelty of war itself. The peace movement, by contrast, must remain the eternal common undertaking of all humanity.

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