Dear Beloved Friends,

May 8th- Remembering the cost of forgetting.

Today in France, the US, and Great Brittain bells ring softly across cities and villages, and flags are raised. Ceremonies are held and names are remembered.

May 8th, 1945 marks the end of war in Europe, after six years of devastation that tore through the human soul, like a storm without mercy.

Yet, even on this day of commemoration, there is something deeper to contemplate than victory.

For what is this victory, when millions of people have lost their lives? What is liberation, when entire generations carry wounds that continue to echo in their bloodlines, their memory, and their silence?

On this day, the surrender of Nazi Germany became official after the collapse of a regime born from hatred, fear, delusion, and the intoxication of craving for power.

A single leader, consumed by separation from humanity and from his own heart, lead nations into unspeakable suffering.

Before the surrender, he took his life, leaving behind a continent shattered in body and spirit. But the war wasn’t over. In Asia, the devastation continued. Bombs kept falling. Mothers were still losing children. Ambitions of empires and ideologies buried bodies beneath them.

Today we pause to remember history and look into the human mind itself.

The Buddha taught that suffering begins with ignorance and the illusion of separateness: the notion that one’s life is more important than another, that domination will bring peace, that violence can create safety.

When consciousness falls asleep, humanity becomes capable of unimaginable cruelty.

War doesn’t begin on the battlefield, it begins in an unchecked mind.

In greed. In fear. In resentment. In dehumanization. The inability to see oneself in another human.

At present, we see displacement across the world, families wandering without shelter, children growing under sounds of sirens and explosions: we must ask ourselves whether humanity has fallen into spiritual amnesia, forgetting the suffering of the past.

The uniforms and the flags change. The forms change. But unconsciousness repeats itself until it is met with awareness.

To remember May 8th spiritually is not to glorify nations or victories. It is to bow our heads before the immense suffering human beings create when they lose touch with humanity and their heart.

It is also to honor the tremendous resilience of the human spirit. Even after the horror, people rebuilt. They loved again. They planted gardens in ruined cities. They forgave. They searched for meaning and carried one another in grief.

The greatest act of remembrance is not in ceremony alone but consciousness itself.

To refuse hatred and indifference. To remain deeply human, in a world that tempts us towards division.

The Buddha didn’t teach us to escape the world but to awaken from it.

May we recognize how easily fear can turn into violence.

May we all become more conscious of the seeds we nourish ourselves.

May we not forget the sacredness of life.

~ Ven. Bao Co