If you truly understand that the essential difference in peacemakers and warmakers is that peacemakers have discipline and control over egotistical anger, grasping, jealousy, and pride, while warmakers, in their ignorance, manifest the results of these poisons in the world—if you truly understand this, you will never allow yourself to be defeated from within or without.
Tibetan Buddhists use the peacock as the symbol for the bodhisattva, the awakened warrior who works for the enlightenment of all sentient beings. The peacock is said to eat poisonous plants and transmute them into the gorgeous colors of its feathers. It does not poison itself, just as we who wish for world peace must not poison ourselves.
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From The Ordinary Magic of Meditation © 2026, edited by John Welwood. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Boulder, CO.
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