creating true peace usine the four noble truth to guide you

“It may seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time”. (Hanh, 25-224 ) The book Creating True Peace : Ending Violence in Yourself, Your Family, Your Community, and the World starts at the last hour of life. Author Hanh created a picture of heaven without angels and halos, without white clouds and golden mansions, but instead a place where Eddie explores his life on earth and finds out the mysteries about love, hatred, guilt and forgiveness. It is not the heaven taught in Christian churches. Instead, this entire book reflects the fundamental four noble truth of Buddhism: life is suffering; the origin of suffering; cessation of suffering is possible; and the path to cessation of suffering. (Hanh, 25-224 )

The first noble truth of Buddhism is suffering. George Boeree, a psychology profession in Shippensburg University, who also conducts extensive studies of Buddhism, wrote in his lecture “An Introduction to Buddhism” that life is suffering; in Buddhism the word “Sanskrit” means imperfect, stressful and filled with anguish(1). There is not a more proper word than “Sanskrit” to describe Eddie's life, a life that is revolved around by pain and suffering. The conflicts between him and his father haunt his life. His father has abused him physically and emotionally through out his childhood. When he returns wounded from the war his father shows him little support. Ultimately, he has to accept his career as a maintenance man in Ruby Pier, the amusement park where his father worked. He blames his father for the lost opportunity to become an engineer. He hates his father, hates his job, and hates the guilt and nightmare he carries back from the war. The ...