Date: 11/29/2025 11/30/2025
Location: Star Ocean Meditation Center
Teacher: Sara
Dharma Knowledge
The Dharma and the Resolution of Conflict
From the perspective of the Dharma, conflict is not an accident but a predictable outcome when certain conditions are present. The Dharma does not approach conflict through moral judgment or emotional reassurance, but through an analysis of how conflict arises, how it is sustained, and under what conditions it can cease. The focus is not on assigning blame, but on understanding causality.
According to the Dharma, the root of conflict lies not in external circumstances, but in cognitive structure. Conflict arises from clinging to “I,” “mine,” and “what I identify with.” When identity, position, interests, or emotions are treated as fixed entities that must be defended or expanded, opposition becomes inevitable. At this point, the other is no longer seen as part of a web of conditions, but as a threat or obstruction.
A key insight of the Dharma is that conflict is not caused by difference itself, but by misperceiving difference. Divergent views, competing interests, and conflicting needs are normal features of conditioned existence. Conflict escalates when these differences are interpreted as personal negation—“you are wrong, therefore I am threatened,” or “you deny who I am.” Once conflict shifts from issues to identity, rational exchange loses effectiveness.
The Dharma does not propose suppressing conflict, but dismantling its cognitive assumptions. The teaching of non-self does not deny individual existence; it denies a fixed, unchanging core that must be protected at all costs. When the self is understood as a contingent process rather than an entity, opposing positions lose their absolute status. Conflict may still occur, but it no longer carries an inherent drive toward escalation.
The Dharma’s approach is also distinct from appeals to tolerance or passive endurance. In this context, restraint does not mean repression, but clear observation of causal processes. When anger, bodily tension, and impulsive speech are directly observed, they no longer automatically translate into harmful action. Ethical discipline functions not as moral enforcement, but as a means of preventing conflict from being amplified behaviorally.
Mental stability plays a critical role in conflict resolution. During conflict, attention narrows and interpretation becomes rigid. Through the training of concentration, one learns to create space between stimulus and response. This interval allows conflict to be seen as a process rather than an immediate threat demanding reaction. Within this space, reinterpretation becomes possible.
Wisdom addresses the conflict at its root. Insight into impermanence, conditionality, and non-substantiality reveals conflict as a temporary configuration rather than a decisive battle to be won. When conditions change, conflict changes. Wisdom does not eliminate differences, but removes clinging to them, depriving conflict of its sustaining energy.
It is important to note that the Dharma does not promise a conflict-free world. As long as conditions exist, friction and divergence will arise. What the Dharma offers is freedom from being governed by conflict structures. Conflict can be recognized, understood, and contained, without hardening into hostility, violence, or prolonged antagonism.
Thus, conflict resolution in the Dharma is not a set of communication techniques, but a shift in cognitive orientation. When the self is no longer absolutized, reactions are no longer automatic, and causality is clearly seen, conflict loses its capacity to dominate the mind. This is not an idealized state, but a result achievable through sustained training.
The value of the Dharma in resolving conflict lies not in producing superficial harmony, but in terminating the internal mechanisms that generate suffering. Whether external relationships immediately improve is secondary. The decisive criterion is whether conflict continues to produce further suffering.
