W

ahid Institute director Yenny Wahid'€™s call to spread more peaceful messages truly deserves our honest appreciation. Nevertheless, in order to spread peaceful messages, people first need to feel peaceful inside themselves, as genuine feelings of peace and love come from within the heart, not from the mind.

Any messages of peace that emerge only from the commands of the mind will have a hollow and insincere ring, and will be immediately detected as being false by those who also read with their feelings and their hearts.

So far, religious education, however intensive, has not been successful, and has essentially failed in dispelling the increasing trend of expressions of hate and violence in the media, on the Internet and in daily life. In fact, that a growing number of young children actually brutally bully and even kill each other is an alarming phenomenon that has only escalated with all the external demonstrations of religious fervor that we have seen emerging in the past 15 years.

Genuine, wise and gentle spiritual education, not only strict religious education, as well as pleasant and also harsh personal experiences, will teach people of all ages to understand that all of us will eventually reap what we sow '€” whether they are seeds of feelings, thoughts, words or actions.

What goes around comes around, in accordance with the laws of karma, the laws of the Creator. For what we do to others, we actually do to ourselves.

A person who has been taught from a very early age to deliberately sow and disseminate the good seeds of love, empathy, kindness, understanding, honesty, wisdom and mercy, and makes it a habit, will ultimately see just rewards in his life.

On the other hand, a person who has grown up in an uncaring, loveless, brutal environment, who has chosen to live dominated by negative feelings of envy, anger, violence and hate, who deliberately chooses to make miserable, hurt, and bully others, will eventually see the negative karma of his actions appear in his personal life, in his career and in his health.

For that reason, proper spiritual education is the key, where budi pekerti, education regarding manners, morals and courtesy, should be provided to people of all ages, as one is never too young or too old to learn about these truths of life. And people are never too young or too old to provide good examples of deportment for others.

Tami Koestomo
Bogor, West Java