Deepak Chopra’s passionate new book, Peace Is the
Way, was inspired by a saying from Mahatma Gandhi: “There
is no way to peace. Peace is the way.” In a world where
every path to peace has proved futile, the one strategy
that hasn’t been tried is the way of peace itself. “We must
not bring one war to an end, or thirty,” Chopra tells
us, “but the idea of war itself.”
How can this be done?
By facing the truth that war is satisfying, and then
substituting new satisfactions so that violence is no
longer appealing. “War has become a habit. We reach for it
the way a chain smoker reaches for a cigarette, promising
to quit but somehow never kicking the habit.” But Chopra
tells us that peace has its own power, and our task now is
to direct that power and multiply it one person at a time.
Behind the numbing headlines of violence running out of
control there are unmistakable signs of a change—Chopra
believes that a majority of people are ready to see an end
to war. “Right now 23 million soldiers serve in armies
around the world. Can’t we find ten times that number who
will dedicate themselves to peace? A hundred times?”
Peace Is the Way challenges each of us to take the next
leap in personal evolution. “You aren’t asked to be a
saint, or to give up any belief. You are only asked to stop
reacting out of fear, to change your allegiance from
violence to peace.” In a practical seven-step program,
Chopra shows the reader how to become a true
peacemaker. “Violence may be innate in human nature, but so
is its opposite: love. The next stage of humanity, the leap
which we are poised to take, will be guided by the force of
that love.” This is more than a hope or an aspiration. It
is a new way of being in the world, giving each individual
the power to end war in our time.
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