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Humanities

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We are all one family, under the flag of freedom, justice, tolerance, love and brotherhood.â&#x20AC;?

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Welcome to Humanities issue 1. This is a quarterly magazine released by Editor-in-Chief Hassan Farhat in order to highlight topics of world interest such as cultures, diversity, unity and literature. Each issue will highlight a host of topics that are relevant to that particular season, although we do welcome submissions unrelated to any running topic. We sincerely hope you enjoy Humanities and plese let us know what else you would like to see covered here. For lifestyle topics, please read our sister publiscation Ya 7elween Magazine, which is released on the first week of each month. This is a bilingual magazine written in both Arabic and English. We also have a complete English version released on the 15th of each month. Stay tuned for other publications we are soon to announce. Enjoy!

Hassan Ali Farhat (President)

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Canada Oh, Canada

Humanities Tours Toronto Toronto is one of the most frequently traveled destinations in North America, but suprisingly very few U.S. Citizens have ever been there. So our Senior Editor April Khan went there to see what we were all missing out on -- and boy was it a lot!

Before I get started, I must admit that I was in Toronto for more than just a bit of sightseeing, I went to subconsciously compare it to the UK, since I was once a resident there and am still a big fan (Go Arsenal!) I purchased many books to direct me to the main attractions and to catch up on a little history of the place, but to my suprise, these books bored the snot of of me. I will say however, that they were packed with a few details I would not have gotten otherwise. Suprisingly though, I leaned more about Toronto through my PokemonGo app as it pointed me to places all over the city, gave me bits of history and allowed me to capture a few Pokemon at the same time. (Totally happy about this. ) It also pushed me to do a walking tour as I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;t want to miss out on any Pokestops. What resulted from my PokemonGo obsession was an obsession with Toronto itself. I soon found myself putting down the phone and taking pictures of everything! I hope you all enjoy this virtual tour of Toronto through the eyes of Humanities!

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One of the most sought out historical landmarks in Totonto is the CN Tower. In fact, this tower is like a beacon and compass all in one. I was not about to miss out on an opportunity to catch a few Pokemon here, so off I was to see this seemingly alien structure. When I arrived I immidiately noticed a stroke of panic on everyone‘s faces and couldn‘t figure out why. Upon closer inspection I saw a sign that said Edge Walk.

about the 1,800 + feet tower insetad. I found out that it was named World‘s Largest Freestanding Structure in 1976 and held the record for 36 years! Obviously, Dubai set out to beat that record, but it was cool to know that Canada had such an untouchable gem -- and for so long!

It read -- Toronto’s tallest attraction has adventure lovers taking a walk OUTSIDE – around the circumference of the roof! So, do you dare to test your limits and experience the thrill of a lifetime? Being that I am a self-procclaimed chicken, there was no way in the world I was going to try this, so I decided to read

When the CN Tower opened in 1976, there were three public observation points: the SkyPod (then known as the Space Deck) that stands at 1,467 ft., the Indoor Observation Level (now named Indoor Lookout Level) at 1,135 ft., and the Outdoor Observation Terrace (at the same level as the Glass Floor) at 1,122 ft. MAGAZ INE TEMPL ATE / O C TO B ER 2013 / w w w.your magaz i ne.co m

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The next stop on my Pokemon driven trip to Canada was to Toronto‘s beautiful Royal Ontario Museum. This place was packed with treasures from Egypt, China, Japan, Greece and many more places!

conservation activities that span the globe. With more than six million items and forty galleries, the museum‘s diverse collections of world culture and natural history contribute to its international reputation. The museum contains notable collections of dinosaurs, minerals and meteorites, Near Eastern and African art, Art of East Asia, European history, and Canadian history.

There were so many things to c apture here that I didn‘t know where to start, so I carefully navigated each floor, reading the tags and signs and photographing nearly everything. Some of the photos are a little jarring since they were having a -- Hell as interpreted by the Chinese -- exibit, so just be prepared for some of the scariest sculptures you‘ll hopefully ever encounter. (See our Facebok page for images)

I saw so many things that drew me into an imaginary world where I found myself in China, India, Greece and even back in Pre-historic times. The pieces were more than well- curated, they made me think. They made me contemplate what it would have been like to be alive during the times these items were created. I spent nearly 4 hours here, but was very disappointed that the top floor was closed for rennovation. I wonder what was up there?

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM, French: Musée royal de l‘Ontario) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America, the largest in Canada, and attracts over one million visitors every year, the second most for a Canadian art museum after the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Established on 16 April 1912 and opened on 19 March 1914, the museum has maintained close relations with the University of Toronto throughout its history, often sharing expertise and resources. The museum was under the direct control

Anyway, on to my next Pokestop -- Ripley‘s Aquarium, located by the Harbourfront. and management of the University of Toronto until 1968, when it became an independent agency of the government of Ontario. Today, the museum is Canada‘s largest field-research institution, with research and

It is located in downtown Toronto, just southeast of the CN Tower. The aquarium features several aquatic exhibits including a walk-through tank. The aquarium has 5.7 million litres (1.5 million gallons) of marine and freshwater habitats from across

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the world. The exhibits hold 13,500 exotic sea and freshwater specimens from more than 450 species. And speaking of the walkthough tour -- IT WAS AMAZING! It was more than a walkthrough, it was like a virtual swim through the sea. There were sharks, stingrays, carp, clownfish and many other aquatic marvels swimming above and all around me. I was pulled through this tank by a moderately paced converyor belt, which my feet thoroughly enjoyed. I had two phones filming at the same time, while holding my favorite SLR to capture every moment. I got to touch a horsehoe crab and take a funny photo with a shark‘s open-mouth over my head (my mom was not ammused). The aquarium holds 5.7 million litres (1.5 million gallons) of water and shows marine and freshwater habitats from around the world. The aquarium is organized into nine galleries: Canadian Waters, Rainbow Reef, Dangerous Lagoon, Discovery Centre, The Gallery, Ray Bay, Planet Jellies, Life Support Systems and the Shoreline Gallery. It is home to 16,000 animals. The Canadian Waters exhibit features animals from all the bodies of water surrounding the country. The gallery has 17 habitats. Some animals featured in this exhibit include: alewife, largemouth bass, American lobster, wolf eel,

lump fish, giant pacific octopus, china rockfish. The Rainbow Reef features animals from the Indo-Pacific water regions and is the most colourful gallery in the exhibit, hence its name. Some of the species in this exhibit include: Picasso triggerfish, humbug dascyllus, emperor angelfish, pajama cardinalfish, unicorn surgeonfish. The exhibit also features an interactive dive show. The Dangerous Lagoon is an underwater tunnel with a moving side walk, which is the aquarium‘s largest tank. Some of the featured animals in this exhibit are: sand tiger shark, sandbar shark, roughtail stingray, longcomb sawfish, green sea turtles. The Discovery Centre features various hands-on activities such as underwater viewing bubbles, a pop-up research submarine and a touch pool which allows visitors to touch living fossils. Discovery Centre inhabitants include clownfish, palette surgeonfish, horseshoe crab, guineafowl puffer. The Touch exhibits give visitors the opportunity to touch the skins of various animals like sharks and sting-rays with the help of aquarium employees. This gallery is home to whitespotted bamboo sharks, brownbanded bamboo sharks, southern stingray, cownose rays.

The Gallery exhibit, also known as Mother Nature‘s Art Gallery, features some of the most delicate underwater species from all over the world. This exhibit features the red lionfish, electric eel, lined seahorse, weedy sea dragon and the archerfish. This exhibit features six salt water and three fresh water exhibits. The Planet Jellies exhibit has colour changing displays with five species of jellyfish. These include: pacific sea nettle, moon jelly, spotted jelly, and upside-down jelly. The Ray Bay exhibit is focused around three distinct species of stingrays. Occasionally visitors can see aquarium divers feeding the stingrays during their daily interactive dive shows. Some of the inhabitants of this exhibit include the bonnethead shark, cownose ray, and the southern stingray. The Life Support System gives visitors a behind the scenes look at the aquarium’s life support systems room. The building features the largest life support systems room of Ripley’s three aquariums. This gallery features equipment for Dangerous Reef and Ray Bay. And if that isn‘t enough -- the gift shop is absolutely packed with cute whatnots to fill your Ripley‘s bag with! Seriously, don‘t forget to stop in here before you leave. (More to come in our next issue!)

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Heart to Heart Connections Have Real Health Benefits

Who doesn‘t love being in love? A true Valentine listens to you vent about work, lets you have that last slice of pizza, and (usually) remembers to take out the trash. He doesn‘t expect you to watch the Super Bowl. And he always thinks you‘re sexy, even in thermal underwear and bunny slippers. Scientists have long been keen to prove that love gives us health benefits, too—beyond the obvious advantage of always having a date for New Year‘s Eve. Researchers can‘t say for sure that romance trumps an affectionate family or warm friendships when it comes to wellness. But they are homing in on how sex, kinship, and caring all seem to make us stronger, with health gains that range from faster healing to living longer. The benefits of love are explicit and measurable:

Protects your heart A University of Pittsburgh study found that women in good marriages have a much lower risk of cardiovascular disease than those in high-stress relationships. Leads to a longer life The National Longitudinal Mortality Study, which has been tracking more than a million subjects since 1979, shows that married people live longer. Plus, they have fewer heart attacks and lower cancer rates, and even get pneumonia less frequently than singles. Helps beat cancer University of Iowa researchers found that ovarian cancer patients with a strong sense of connection to others and satisfying relationships had more vigorous „natural killer“ cell activity at the site of the tumor than those who didn‘t have those social ties. (These desirable white blood cells kill cancerous cells as part of

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the body‘s immune system.) Some experts think it won‘t be long before doctors prescribe steamy sex, romantic getaways, and caring communication in addition to low-cholesterol diets and plenty of rest. If that sounds like a happy Rx, here are ways to make the emerging evidence translate into real-life advice.[pagebreak] The Benefits Of Bear Hugs Doctors at the University of North Carolina have found that hugging may dramatically lower blood pressure and boost blood levels of oxytocin, a relaxing hormone that plays a key role in labor, breastfeeding, and orgasms. And the more you hug, the better: Women who hugged the most daily had the highest oxytocin levels, and their systolic blood pressure that was 10 mm/Hg lower than women with low oxytocin levels—an improvement similar to the effect of many leading blood pressure medications, says Kathleen Light, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at UNC and one of the study‘s authors. „Getting more daily hugs from their husbands was related to higher oxytocin, and so the hugs were indirectly related to lower blood pressure,“ she says. More from Prevention: How To Get More Oxytocin In your Life[pagebreak]The hormone oxytocin has been linked to trust, and it helps women bond with everyone from newborns to stockbrokers. But its biggest benefit may turn out to be physical. Breastfeeding has been definitively linked to both lower breast cancer rates and the slower growth of some breast cancer cells; researchers speculate that oxytocin may be responsible.

Wael and Leanna

Why We Need to Feel Close Experts are quick to point out that sex is only one aspect of connection, and not as powerful as the real magic in relationships: bonding. That sense of being united, even during bad times, is a trait that Brian Baker, a psychiatrist at the University of Toronto, calls cohesion. And his research has found that it‘s more important to both health and happiness than a good sex life.

In one study, he tracked 229 adults who were under job strain. Though they had higher blood pressure at the start, spouses in pleasurable marriages actually lowered systolic blood pressure by 2.5 mm/Hg over a 12-month period. What‘s more, Baker says, happy couples seem to know almost instinctively that doing things together and spending more time with each other adds to their happiness. It‘s not that sex didn‘t matter to these couples. „It‘s one component of satisfaction,“ he says. „But couples who had less sex didn‘t seem to

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have any less sense of cohesion, and it was their emotional collaboration—their partnership—that kept the marriage strong.“

with less judgmental ones. „Conflict itself is normal,“ says Baker, „and it‘s healthy—it engages couples in the relationship.“

Maybe, Ellison says, that bond is the brass ring of marriage, enabling us to build a safe cocoon in a world full of difficult bosses, too much traffic, and not enough time. „An ideal relationship gives you a place to come home and recharge your battery. Sitting down with your partner makes you feel calmer. You‘re in a secure nest, and you‘re less stressed,“ she says. „How could that not be good for you?“

But there is a difference between healthy fighting and fighting that wears down your immunity. Studies from the University of Washington show that happy couples manage to be far more positive than negative when they‘re duking it out, interjecting playful jokes and affectionate pokes in the ribs.

The Love Rx Granted, sharing a bond of closeness with your sweetheart feels magical. But a relationship can seem more like a bed of thorns than roses when he‘s criticizing you over the morning coffee. With the exception of Marge Simpson, most women outgrow the idea that they can change men.

In contrast, the I‘m-ready-to-break-some-dishes-now anger that comes with fighting causes physiological changes that John Gottman, PhD, executive director of the Relationship Research Institute in Seattle, calls „flooding“; these leave heart rates too high for the couple to come to any effective solution. (Not used to expressing your anger? Researchers believe that warm interactions between couples can bring about powerful health results, even when one of the partners is battling disease.

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Letter to the West

This letter is dedicated to my brothers of humanity, who are at the hands of suffering…

All of our hearts are with you. Do not lose your senses from what is happening to you, your homeland or humanity. These disgraceful acts and indescribable fits of evil are completely unrelated to religion or any belief system. In fact, they are totally out of line with even the simplest ethical rule and humanitarian norm. The wicked acts carried out by certain people -- who are themselves demons-- are not connected to this humanity, nor could we ever compare them to human beings, or even find words to describe them. They are the strangers, the intruders and vile creatures in your community, and in our communities – and in fact in all societies. They dispel love for the sake of their devilish goals. We grieve when witnessing the destruction of your homes and ours, which is a direct effect of these evil acts. In some places, this grief becomes hatred and disgust, which works to divide our nations, burn bridges and destroy hope. It also destroys the love we have for ourselves and others. It breaches the innocence of our children’s souls, who can’t yet discern good from bad. They approach anyone and anything with an innocent smile, and a soul-lifting laugh. They don’t inquire to others about their beliefs or race. They don’t place segregate people into groups or have prejudice. They are innocents and place no blame. So why do these diabolical creatures rip them away from the hearts of their mothers and fathers, and destroy our future

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generations of hope? Because these very children will make this world into a safe haven and lead us unto salvation. Oh sons of my nation, who live in the western world. Do not harm the souls of others and do not think of their souls as unequal to yours. Open your homes as well your places of worship to others whom are your brothers and sisters in humanity. And don‘t ever sleep at night before exercising vigilance and making sure that they are comfortable. And never start your day without first checking on them in morning. Your messages are the messages of hope. They create an atmosphere of tolerance. This peace from you, delivered to them will help us all return to our nightly slumber in peace. We ask you to make this pledge (Amana) and to say it from your soul and to let it reside there until the Day of Judgement. And for the sake of God, maintain the integrity of the communities that embraced you, and opened their doors for you and your families with roominess and an open heart. Expel those intruders from your mind, and homes, and streets and cities Lastly, always ask God to keep you safe and to keep your new communities in the west safe as well. Our problems aren‘t with the west, but with ourselves. We shouldn‘t make our problems the problems of others, and we shouldn‘t export the problems that we face in our mother land to other lands. Yes, despite the sorrow, sadness, blood, and scanty of love within our motherland. We should always send hopeful messages of love and tranquility despite these new wounds. Don‘t ever forget that we are guests in the western lands and we need to return to them this favor with good words, and with a big smile and gentle approach. Our Prophet Muhammed (peace and blessings be upon him) has said that „A kind word is equal to that of giving charity“. He also said, „All of mankind belong to Allah, and surely Allah loves most those who benefit their families“. We should be in the first defense line for the protection of their communities and we don‘t need to wait an order from anyone. Everyone is responsible for his or her conscious and before Allah/God. And we should remember that the loss of one innocent person is the equivalent of the loss of the whole of mankind. In our holy book the Quran, we say that the killing of a person for reasons other than legal retaliation, or for stopping corruption in the land, is as great a sin as murdering all of mankind. However, to save a life would be as great of a virtue as saving all of mankind. (1)(2)(3) O Western brothers, open your churches to your non-Christian brothers, and continue sending the voice of love while allowing unlimited space of freedom under the law and silent the voice of those who are willing to destroy your culture. These mischief makers not only want to destroy the hopes of your brothers, but they also want to destroy our compatriots who live in your dearest as well generous land. These incoming people, who established themselves here in the new lands, who believe in this humanitarian message, they carry a message of belief and faith that is

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outwardly different but has the same meaning and is almost indistinguishable from yours. And open your mosques to others who believe in a different faith, and let them hear your voices, the voice of hope and love, and let them hear the voices of the of messengers of God as well the voices of saints and the voices of angels -- the Angels of mercy -- and let them hear the voice of one God who created us and create them. We say in our prayers, „All thanks to Allah“ we do not state that Allah Almighty is only God of the Muslims. Jesus (peace and blessings be upon him) said: „Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” (4) Let us beg of God to enable us to prove ourselves his children. Sincerely,

Hassan A. Farhat MD. Director of Emergency Care / New York Community Hospital (Assistant Professor / Mt. Sinai School of Medicine) Senior Editor / Ya 7elween Magazine President / HSF Media Inc. References “…if any one slew a person unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land, it would be as if he slew the whole people; and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.” [Quran 5:35] “God does not forbid you from being good to those who have not fought you in the religion or driven you from your homes, or from being just towards them. God loves those who are just.” (Surat al-Mumtahana, 8) “God does not love corruption”. (Surat al-Baqara, 205) Book of Matthew - New Testament Chapter 5:44 MAGAZ INE TEMPL ATE / O C TO B ER 2013 / w w w.your magaz i ne.co m

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istory doesn‘t record whether the first Olympic athletes in 776 B.C. went to sports medicine doctors, or if they took performance-enhancing substances.

ut the record does indicate that even 3,000 years ago, medicine was considered to be a good career path: A physician is worth more than several other men put together, for he can cut out arrows and spread healing herbs,“ says a character in Homer‘s Iliad, referring to a battlefield medico who was the Trojan War equivalent of Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H*.

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What We Learned From the Greek Can you name something you use everyday invinted by the Greek?

Did you know that the Greek contributed heavily to the fields of science and medicine?

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History doesn’t record whether the first Olympic athletes in 776 B.C. went to sports medicine doctors, or if they took performance-enhancing substances. But the record does indicate that even 3,000 years ago, medicine was considered to be a good career path: “A physician is worth more than several other men put together, for he can cut out arrows and spread healing herbs,” says a character in Homer’s Iliad, referring to a battlefield medico who was the Trojan War equivalent of Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H*. Today’s doctors don’t spend much time yanking out arrows, and while some still spread healing herbs, we call it “alternative and complementary medicine” and hope that Medicare will cover it. Still, modern medicine is riddled with relics of ancient Greek science, from versions of the Oath of Hippocrates that some graduating medical students still utter (“I swear by Apollo, the Physician and Asclepius and Hygeia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses ...”), to the technojargon that doctors spout. According to Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, nearly 90% of medical terms used today have Greek or Latin roots. So the next time someone tells you you’ve got hyperkeratosis, you can reply, “I don’t know what it is, but it’s Greek to me!” Yet apart from confusing technical terms and

solemn oaths, do we really owe the ancients any thanks for modern medical wisdom? It depends on what bits of medical wisdom you value, historians say. Humor Me According to legend, the field of medicine was created by the centaur Chiron after he was wounded by Hercules and needed to heal himself. Chiron is also said to have passed on his medical wisdom to the hero Achilles. Whether the centaur invented the waiting room or managed care is unknown. Greek gods, goddesses, and demigods such as Apollo, Asclepius, Hera, and Hygea were also credited by ancient worshipers with healing power. But it was the revered Greek doctor Hippocrates, who lived around 400 B.C. who is given the nod as history’s first medical superstar. “Hippocrates is generally credited with turning away from divine notions of medicine and using observation of the body as a basis for medical knowledge. Prayers and sacrifices to the gods did not hold a central place in his theories, but changes in diet, beneficial drugs, and keeping the body ‘in balance’ were the key,” notes an article on the National Library of Medicine’s History of Medicine division web site.variety and class. By now, seven Michelin Stars are glowing on the Sylt firmament and more than 200 locations be-

stow a delicious agony of choice on the guests. OK, so the old boy knew a thing or two about maintaining health. But the same source goes on to note that Hippocrates had some ideas that, while all the rage in fifth century B.C., aren’t given much credence in 21st century A.D.: “Central to his physiology and ideas on illness was the humoral theory of health, whereby the four bodily fluids, or humors, of blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile needed to be kept in balance. Illness was caused when these fluids became out of balance, sometimes requiring the reduction in the body of a humor through bloodletting or purging.” In truth, what Hippocrates and his contemporaries didn’t know about medicine could fill a book, but what they thought they knew could also fill a book, or even a whole set of encyclopedias. Nearly 60 treatises on everything from diagnosis, infectious diseases, pediatrics, and surgery have been attributed to Hippocrates, but these works, known as Hippocrates’ “corpus” were probably penned by several different authors spread out over a couple of centuries, and the treatises often contradict one another, according to the NLM. “If you read through the corpus, what you find is not so much medical knowledge that’s of use to us, but you find a way of thinking about medicine -- the obligation of the doctor to his

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patient and to his fellow doctors and so forth,” says, Ann Ellis Hanson. Teaching New Docs Old Tricks Hanson says that like the writings of Plato on questions of justice and ethics, and the

writings of Aristotle on biology and physics, the medical knowledge of ancient Greece was an attempt to put the world “into if not the physical control, the mental control of human beings.”

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Magazine not the physical control, the mental control of human beings.“ She notes that while the ancients also performed medical research, they did so only to confirm what they actually knew, rather than to test an unproven idea as we do today. But by the middle of the third century B.C., doctors in Alexandria, Egypt, were beginning to conduct systematic dissections of animals and human bodies, and even (if you‘re squeamish, you may want to skip this part) vivisection (dissection of a living body). The knowledge of anatomy gained through these practices was put to use by another famous doc of antiquity, known only as Galen. Born in Asia Minor in the year 131, Galen earned his reputation as a surgeon to the gladiators of Pergamos, an ancient Greek city located in what is now Turkey. After nearly four years of patching up hacked-up combatants, Galen moved to Rome where he soon gained fame as an anatomist and as a doctor to Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and three of his successors. Galen wrote on anatomy, physiology (how the body functions), and treatment; his surviving works (many which were lost after the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, later to be rediscovered in the libraries of the Moorish empire) had a profound influence on European medicine. Like any good scientist, Galen was an observer and an experimenter, commenting, for example, with a good deal of insight into the nature and function of the kidneys and the secretion of urine. In his treatise titled On the Natural Faculties, Galen matter-of-factly points out that „practically every butcher is aware of this, from the fact that he daily observes both the position of the kidneys and the duct (termed the ureter) which runs from each kidney into the bladder, and from this arrangement he infers their characteristic use and faculty.“ „Galen, for all his mistakes, remained the unchallenged authority for over a thousand years. After he died in 203 C.E., serious anatomical and physiological research ground to a halt, because everything there was to be said on the subject had been said by Galen, who, it is reported, kept at least 20 scribes on staff to write down his every dictum,“ describes an article on the web site of the historical collection of the University of Virginia. Even though we frown on bloodletting and the notion of humoral balance these days, at least a few of the ancient‘s ideas as embodied in the Hippocratic Oath, such as abortion and euthanasia, still resonate today. In about the middle of the first century A.D., she notes, the Latin writer Scribonius Largus cited the Hippocratic Oath in support of his anti-abortion position. „His argument is that medicine is an art of healing, therefore abortion is not right,“ Hanson says. „And then 50 years later you get the Greek doctor Soranus actually quoting the Oath, and saying yeah, but there‘s another treatise in the corpus that does permit abortion, and therefore I‘m going to follow that because there are times when you have to abort because the woman is going to die without it.“ Some things never change.

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Is World Peace Possible? By Saâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ood Mahmoud

When I was in grammar school learning about World War II, I remember thinking how grateful I was that society had finally matured to the point in the intervening years that war no longer ever broke out. Today I can hardly remember what bizarre thought process led me to conclude that people had actually become less barbaric with time. I do remember I also believed racial prejudice had died out decades ago and that the pronouncement of guilt or innocence by our justice system reflected actual guilt or innocence.

But I’ve forgiven my earlier self this embarrassing naivete because I think his conclusions weren’t based entirely on ignorance as much as on a hope for how things could be. And though for many years I scoffed at the notion, I have to confess now that I’ve become convinced world peace is indeed possible. WHAT IS THE TRUE CAUSE OF WAR? Countries don’t go to war. The leaders of countries go to war. They marshal their reasons, stir up the public, dehumanize the enemy (as I wrote about in an earlier post, The True Cause Of Cruelty), and send out their forces. The number of people actually responsible for the decision to go to war can usually fit comfortably inside a single large-sized room. Leaders, of course, only occasionally represent the best of what humanity has to offer so they usually exhibit the same failings and weaknesses as the rest of us. They get angry when they shouldn’t, let their egos motivate them more than they should, and are entirely too concerned with doing what’s popular rather than what’s right. They suffer from the same three poisons as the populations they lead: greed, anger, and stupidity. The true cause of war lies in the unchecked rampaging of these three poisons through the hearts of individual people. Though the situations confronting world leaders that lead them to decide to wage war often seem complex, the only way in which they’re different from conflict that erupts between two people standing in a room is that they occur on a larger scale. But if in civilized societies we expect people to work out their differences amicably (whether themselves or with the help of the courts), why don’t those same expectations apply to differences between civilized countries? IS WAR EVER NECESSARY? In a world in which tyrannies continue to exist, war may in fact sometimes be justified. In the same way it’s necessary to fight to defend oneself when attacked, so too it’s

sometimes necessary to go to war to put down injustice, or even the possibility of injustice when its likelihood is great enough. Rarely, however, is this given as a primary reason. Even democracies seem to be roused to war only by self-interest. Fair enough. But when any leader chooses war, he or she should do so with a heavy heart. As the original Buddha, Shakyamuni, once said when asked if killing was ever to be permitted: “It is enough to kill the will to kill.” In other words, we should strive to kill the theidea that killing others should be anything other than the very last action we ever permit ourselves to take. Shakyamuni was a realist. He knew the world would always be filled with people bent on committing evil, people whose ideas about how to live involved oppressing and killing others, and though he felt compassion even for them would speak loudly and passionately about the necessity of standing against them in concrete, practical ways. EXPERT HUMAN BEINGS To achieve world peace—to create a world in which war ceases to break out—seems impossible because of the sheer number of people who haven’t yet mastered themselves, who haven’t tamed their ambition to raise themselves up at the expense of others, and who haven’t learned to start from today onward, letting past wrongs committed by both sides remain in the past. In short, it seems an impossible dream because we’re in desperately short supply of human beings who are experts at living.

An expert at living isn’t a person who never experiences greed, anger, or stupidity but rather one who remains in firm control of those negative parts (which can never be entirely eliminated), who’s able to surmount his or her darkest negativity, and displays a peerless ability to resolve conflict peacefully. What generates this expert ability to resolve conflict? Wisdom and joy. Wise people are happy people, and happy people are wise. If enough people in the world’s population became happy and wise, violence would be used far less often to solve conflict. If this pool of experts at living became large enough, we’d start seeing some of our leaders being picked from among them. And if enough leaders were experts at living, war, too, would be used far less often to solve conflict and further the interests of nations. I’m no Pollyanna. I fully recognize that as long as there remain inequities between classes, as long as people feel they have little hope for a good life and remain unable to tolerate others believing differently than they do about important issues, violence and war will continue. Which means the real path to world peace can’t be found in the passing of more laws, in diplomacy, or even in war itself. It can only be found in the actions individual human beings take to reform the tenets they hold in their hearts in order to become experts at living. Some argue human nature being what it is precludes the possibility of world peace, but I would counter that human nature doesn’t need to change—it only needs to be managed. Haven’t countless numbers of us already learned to do this every day, denying our baser impulses in order to contribute to solutions instead of problems? THE REAL BARRIER TO WORLD PEACE The reason most scoff at the notion of achieving world peace is because if you buy the principle that individual human revolution is the real solution, then literally some billions of people would need to actively embrace the

notion of devoting themselves to continual self-reformation. But—if you buy the principle that enough people becoming experts at living would create world peace, then you can’t argue world peace is literally impossible—just extraordinarily unlikely. I don’t believe world peace will be achieved in my lifetime. But I do believe it won’t be achieved in any

lifetime after mine unless I make causes for it to happen now. How can I-and you-make those causes? As Gandhi famously said, by becoming the change we wish to see. Strive to become an expert at living. Be good to those around you in concrete ways. Create an island of peace in your own life. If you do, it will spread. If enough of us do this, our islands will meet, ceasing to be islands and becoming

whole continents. World peace exists literally in the actions each one of takes in our own lives. The most significant obstacle to achieving world peace isn’t the extraordinary difficulty involved in becoming a genuine expert at living, though. It’s that those most in need of reforming the tenets they hold in their hearts, who most need training in how to be an expert at living, are

those least interested in it, a point well articulated here. The only real lever we have to pull with such people is their desire to become happy. We must convince them to follow our lead by becoming so happy ourselves—so ridiculously, genuinely happy—that they decide on their own they want to be like us, that they want what we have. And then we have to show them how to

get it. Good ideas are our weapons. When people come to deeply believe in notions that promote peace, peace will follow like a shadow follows the body. To say this strategy is long-term would be an understatement. But all other solutions seem to me even less likely to succeed than the one I’m proposing here. You may think me as hopelessly naive as my younger

self who thought war had already been eliminated for continuing to hope that widespread, lasting peace is possible, but as John Lennon famously sang, I’m not the only one. The ultimate dream of every Nichiren Buddhist is the accomplishment of world peace by the achievement of individual happiness. We need to summon the courage to even voice a commitment to the goal.

We can’t worry about if it can be done at all, or how long it might take. It can be done. It will take a long, long time. But the argument that it can’t be done and therefore shouldn’t be attempted is the argument of cowards. If there weren’t people throughout our history who refused to listen to that logic, we’d all still be living in caves. Look again at the last

word in the title of this post.

A Meditation Technique to Change Your Brain The short cut to a perfect life As a certified nurse practitioner working at a busy university student health center in Albuquerque, N.M., Barbara Krause had been intrigued by the promise of mindfulness meditation—a technique taught at more than 200 hospitals around the country as a way to combat stress and gain some relief from a busy mind. Studies have long found that the practice lowers blood pressure, diminishes the risk

of stroke and reduces stress.

course of mindfulness-based stress reduction to learn how to tune out the mind’s internal chatter and truly notice what is going on in and around her. Through the class, she learned to connect with her breathing and become aware of physical sensations as a way of anchoring her awareness in the present.

a concept called neuroplasticity—the idea that what we focus our attention on actually reshapes the brain in crucial ways.

Today, she tries to sit and breathe for 20 minutes at a time four or five times a week. “It was a wonderful experience,” Krause says. “I’m very much a novice, but I’m enthused.” Helps stress, chronic pain and high blood pressure Thousands of people are successfully using meditation to deal with stress, chronic pain, high blood pressure and other issues. Meanwhile, neuroscientists are uncovering the changes in the brain that accompany these benefits. Their research relies on

What Krause didn’t realize is that the science on meditation now says the ancient practice can actually cause physical changes in the brain that protect us as we age. Scientists have been studying these changes in people who practice the

The stress-busting effects of meditation may even protect our cells from damage associated with aging, as well as from autoimmune disease and other inflammatory conditions. A Harvard Medical School team reported in 2008 that it found these beneficial changes in the genes of people who regularly practiced meditation, yoga and other relaxationinducing routines. Meanwhile, Emory University scientists found in 2007 that those who meditated regularly seemed to avoid some normal age-related decline of gray matter in a part of the brain that helps control motor skills and learning. The disciplined repetition of redirecting attention—the way Krause does—is what seems to drive the brain changes that can be seen in brain imaging studies. It’s much the same as what happens with a musician

kind of basic meditation that focuses on sensory awareness and breathing. This type of meditation is common in Hinduism and Buddhism and is called various names — such as mindfulness or Zen — depending on which tradition you’re talking about. Krause, 57, enrolled in an eight-week

repeatedly playing scales or an athlete or dancer practicing a movement. Adds gray matter Joshua Grant, a scientist at the University of Montreal, has shown that longtime Zen meditators are less sensitive to pain than control subjects—and it may be because they have a thicker layer of gray matter in the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region known to be involved in processing pain. Heightened or sustained brain activity may cause the cortex (gray matter) to get thicker, just as working out a muscle would make the muscle bigger. As we age, we see a natural drop in that thickness, Grant says. But repeated experiments suggest that meditation preserves or even builds up the density of neurons in various regions, suggesting that those who meditate may actually be keeping their brains younger and healthier. Short-term effects

While Grant’s study involved people who had practiced Zen meditation for 1,000 hours or more, Fadel Zeidan, a psychological researcher, wondered whether a briefer meditation experience could have an effect. “I was curious whether things can happen immediately,” says Zeidan.

“We live in this drive-through society. We want things quick and easy.” For three years, from 2005 to 2008, Zeidan tested the pain sensitivity of some small groups of college undergraduates at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He then gave them simple mindfulness instructions and had them practice

for 20 minutes at a time on three consecutive days. He found that the students had a higher tolerance for pain than when they started. “Pain is undeniable ... and it happens in the moment,” says Zeidan, a mindfulness practitioner. “Mindfulness teaches, ‘You can let it go.’ ”

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DuVal, whose father was a meditation teacher, had a high-pressure career as an independent filmmaker when she realized about five years ago that her life was out of control. “I got really stressed and couldn’t handle it anymore,” DuVal recalls. “My dad said, ‘Why don’t you try meditating?’ I tried it and very quickly started realizing the benefit.” Last year, she took over for her father when he retired. Not a religion Although mindfulness meditation practices are often associated with Buddhism, DuVal says her teaching is not religious. “What it means to meditate itself isn’t religious,” she explains. “It’s something that you do with your mind, basically.” Mindfulness meditation seems to have something for everyone, DuVal says. In a recent class, “some people were just stressed out at their jobs,” she says. “Other people are facing life-threatening illnesses. I had a woman with stomach cancer. I had a man who had broken his back in several places and was in chronic pain.”

The college students’ brief training also made them noticeably less anxious, Zeidan says. And they felt less pain even when not meditating. “We found out that meditation has a lasting effect on cognition even with short-term training,” he says. Fighting depression In recent years, clinical psychologists have used this insight to develop mindfulness-based ognitive therapy,

which has proved effective for helping people deal with anxiety and depression. It has even been shown to prevent a recurrence of depression. In Albuquerque, Krause underwent her training with Michelle DuVal, who teaches classes at a local health center and at the Univerity of New Mexico. DuVal sees about 600 students a year, most of whom are in their 40s and 50s.

Learning to adopt a mindful attitude “changes everything,” DuVal says, “because the whole world comes from your mind. We train them in putting their minds into the present, where stress cannot and does not exist.” Resting the mind A key point is realizing that whatever we experience, “it’s not outside of us,” DuVal says. “It’s our relationship to things happening in our life that causes the stress. It’s how we look at them. How we think about them.”

Society has long idolized love as some sacred concept capable of brushing aside all of the life’s hardships. The culture, from books and movies to history and folklore, all identify it as the ultimate goal in one’s life worthy of all pain and struggle. This unrealistic portrayal of love has caused us to overestimate its worth to the point it has negatively affected our relationships. When we operate under the misconception that “All we need is love”, we are ignoring other core values such as respect, humility, and commitment to our relationship. It makes us lazy because we use that excuse to push all the hard stuff under the rug. However, if we operate under the concept that “Love is not enough”, then we are mature and aware enough to realize that strong healthy relationships require plenty of work. We need to show those in our lives more than love so that we cement these relationships over deeper values.

The real danger lies in that love will create unrealistic expectations. One or both would expect the flame of passion to keep roaring, and this will sabotage everything with meaningless fights and hurtful accusations. We must bear in mind that love isn’t synonymous to compatibility; we can end up falling in love with someone that is our complete opposite. This will create many problems, but love has never been a logical process; it’s a tumultuous random one. We might end up in abusive relationships with partners that mistreat us and make us feel bad about ourselves. Our partners might be damaged themselves and need to destroy our equilibrium to bring us down into their own blend of chaos. They might not always be destructive just different! They have a completely altered view of life with a distinct set of ambitions and beliefs than us. For example, we might want to have a family and settle down while they want to travel the world and explore

without the burden of children and commitments. So we might very well end up with the paradox of being in love with partners that suck the joy out of our lives. When looking for a partner, the mind needs to have its saying. While we all want those that give us butterflies in our stomachs, we also need to look deeper into who they are, their values, how they treat themselves and others, what life goals they have, their view on important issues… If these are too different, we might become involved in a highly dysfunctional relationship. Love doesn’t solve any problems. At the beginning, when the passion is running high, we might tend to forgive easily and let things slide. But once the haze over our eyes is cleared, we find it hard to deal with problems when there is no stable and practical foundation of respect and understanding. The same passion that made us so forgiving will turn tides and make every little misunderstanding swell into a huge issue. Some of us believe that love is worth sacrificing everything and everyone for, so we end up compromising ourselves and staying despite being abused. It’s true that love is all about compromise, and compromise usually means sacrificing one thing or another for the sake of maintaining harmony. It’s actually a very healthy approach. The danger is when we end up giving

up core values such as self-respect and dignity just for the sake of the other people’s happiness. Love is supposed to complement our individuality not erase it. If we ever find ourselves giving up who we are just to keep the relationship going, then it’s best to leave before we become shells of our old selves. The true test of love is an enduring friendship. No matter how intense the fires of passion are, they will eventually burn down. That is when we will need the bond of friendship to keep the relationship strong and alive. We must treat our partners as we would our best friends. We must be able to spend time with them, communicate in an open manner and have as much fun and laughs as we would with our friends. Some might argue that we cannot tolerate the bad behavior we take from our friends from our partners. But then again why do we tolerate much worse abuse from partners and keep trying desperately to hold on to a broken relationship? In the end, it’s all about what we accept and what we don’t whether from a friend or a partner. We have to choose a standard and demand it be respected. We will form connections with people who are good for us and those who are bad. We will have healthy relationships and some that are simply toxic. Love is rarely a one-time experience. We can fall in love when we are 8 and again when we are 80. But once we lose a part

of our soul and identity, it might take us years and decades to gain it back, if we ever do. Life would never be quite complete and satisfying without a wild abandoned loving experience. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s normal that we all aspire for that, but it cannot be the only defining experience in our lives. Love shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t consume us to the exclusion of everything else. Love might be beautiful and essential, but it never was nor will it ever be enough! Written by Dr. Laurence Ajaka

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