The Model of Inner Peace for World Peace by Buddhist Peaceful Means
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Abstract
Contemporary peacebuilding has generated substantial advances through diplomacy, legal frameworks, and institutional reform. Nevertheless, persistent cycles of polarization, distrust, and violence indicate that external mechanisms alone are insufficient to secure sustainable peace. This qualitative study investigates inner peace as a foundational condition for world peace and proposes an integrative framework, the Vipassanā–Bridge–Integration–Global (V-B-I-G) Model, to explain how Buddhist peaceful means may be operationalized for peacebuilding across multiple levels. Data were derived from documentary analysis of Pāli Canon sources and related scholarly literature, as well as semi-structured interviews with 20 key informants, including five Vipassanā meditation masters and fifteen experienced practitioners. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis.
The findings indicate that inner peace should not be understood as a temporary emotional state, but as a cultivated capacity for non-reactive awareness, ethical self-regulation, and wise intentionality. Three interrelated mechanisms emerged as central to this process: (1) mindfulness-based deceleration, which interrupts impulsive and conflict-escalating reactions; (2) ethical discipline (sīla), which functions as a preventative moral structure for trust and social stability; and (3) hiri-ottappa (moral conscience and moral caution), which serve as forms of internal governance that inhibit harmful conduct even in the absence of external control. The findings further suggest that shared contemplative practice can operate as a trans-cultural bridge by softening rigid identity formations and fostering empathic dialogue. Synthesizing textual and empirical insights, the V-B-I-G Model conceptualizes peace as a sequential and interdependent process that moves from inner transformation to relational connection, ethical integration in everyday life, and broader global responsibility. The study contributes to contemporary peace discourse by foregrounding the causal significance of inner cultivation in peacebuilding and offers implications for peace education, leadership development, and future empirical validation of the proposed model.
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