A Holistic Peace: Buddhism and Liberal Peace

This chapter will offer Buddhist peace to integrate with liberal peace to create a new hybrid peace model. This chapter will make a theoretical connection between Western structurally and institutionally oriented liberal peace and Buddhist inner peace to produce a post-liberal hybrid holistic peace model. The first section will discuss the hallmarks of liberal peace, its critique and the background of the emergence of the concept of post-liberal peace. After introducing the basics of Buddhism and its core teaching, that is, the Four Noble Truths doctrine, the second section will analyze a Buddhist view of conflict dynamics and its inner peace. Then, this chapter will examine a holistic peace model that interconnects the spirits of liberal peace and Buddhist inner peace. This chapter will conclude by presenting the post-liberal hybrid holistic peace consisting of four elements: the promotion of human rights; promotion of dialogical and transformative democracy based on self-critique and mutual learning; economic system sustaining and furthering material, philosophical and spiritual fulfillment of citizens based on social justice and equity; and inner peace characterized as reflective self-awareness, non-dualistic thinking, multi-perspectival approach, and compassion.