Can anyone be a peacemaker?
Sulak sivaraksa (left) and Michael Henderson (Photo: Rahul Kapadia)Outside the official programme, Armagh, the IofC centre in Melbourne, hosted two occasions with speakers from the Parliament. The first, ‘Can anybody be a peacemaker?’, featured Michael Henderson and Sulak Sivaraksa, Thai founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, who has worked over many decades to fight injustice and discrimination in Asia. Sivaraksa said that to become a peacemaker required qualities of honesty and humility. ‘Try to do it not because of yourself. In the Christian context you are guided by the Holy Spirit. In the Buddhist context you are guided by Bhodhisattva. It is not you who will achieve peace.’ Secondly, he said, ‘you must take the other side seriously… listen to them.’ He spoke of his own experiences trying to build bridges of trust with the Muslim and Malay minorities in the south of his country. ‘We Thais have been exploiting the Malays. If you go out to them you must be hone
