Periodiek 50 - Stichting Vredescentrum Eindhoven

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CONSIDERATIONS
Longing for Peace
One cannot find any limits of – at least –
astonishment, but eventually rather frightfulness and
horror while observing the manifold violent conflicts
in the todays world. Some might be able to find and
give reasons and excuses or evasions, why conflicts
with violence are necessary, here and there. More-
over, they argue, why conflict and violent action are
even fundamentally unavoidable.
In the light of – at least – even fundamental features
of virtuous human beings as well as humanity as and
in its whole, there are no reasons for a net of – finally
hopeless – conflicts and certainly not for violent
conflicts. Moreover, there is in everybody – no doubt
– a deep desire for a save and secure life in peace
and harmony.
In many traditions of various cultures, we find
not only myths, legends, and fairy tales, but also
– sometimes detailed – descriptions and stories of
societies, living in a paradise-like harmony and their
whereabouts. Later on – most probably inspired by
the old stories – poets, writers, and filmmakers used
the very objective for new books and films. There are
numbers of old and new drawings and paintings, like
mandalas and tankas, made with imaginations of
places of peace and harmony, particularly about
Shambhala in Asia, the city where time stops. In
the recent past there where travellers – pilgrims,
who wanted to find those legendary places, like
Shambhala, in reality, and some of them reported,
that they dreamed very lively about, and others,
that they even really had been there – but after a
while, they – unfortunately – had to leave.
There are not only treatises on those special places
that – physically or mentally – exist or existed in the
past, but there are also predictions about peaceful,
celestial spaces :
In the Revelation of Saint John 21:1-8 and 21:9-22:5,
the end of The New Testament, there is a prophecy
reported about ‘a new heaven and a new earth’
and about ‘the new Jerusalem’, which, by the way,
obviously has nothing to do with the present city of
Jerusalem. The content of the prophecy is the future
ideal city of huge dimensions, and superb qualities.
The text can be interpreted symbolically, but it is
also possible to draw a city plan according the
description.
The hidden paradise was amongst others a subject
of Plato’s City of Magnesia.
Reconstruction’or vision of Shambhala, hidden behind snow and ice covered mountains, a place of Harmony and
Peace. The highest cultural and spiritual ambitions and intentions become reality, … Design: the author, 2005
VredesTertsPeriodiek Stichting Vredescentrum Eindhoven Jaargang 18, nr. 50, september 2009