A Guide to World Peace
Whirled bees sounds like world peace. This guide is about how close the world already is to agreeing on it.
Alan's idea
Alan Davis, whose document Who Am I? What Do I Believe? started Whirled Bees, read the prophets and the Great Books of every tradition he could find. His conclusion was plain: religion, at its best, is not about idolatry. It is a society's collected instructions for how to work together and be the best human one can be, for yourself and for fellow humankind.
He called the prophets and their books "divine" in a specific sense: not sacred, but extremely good. Human collections of strategies for enlightenment, peace, and peaceful co-existence, gathered over thousands of years by people trying to solve the same problem: how do we live together?
The goal of every human life, Alan wrote, is to climb toward the same summit. Its names differ: Consciousness, Enlightenment, Heaven, Nirvana, One-ness, Peace. He treated the names as synonyms.
The convergence
So this guide puts the traditions side by side, under Alan's Eight Practices, and lets them speak in their own words. A rabbi in the first century, a Chinese philosopher five hundred years earlier, a desert prophet, an Indian prince, and a Stoic emperor keep giving the same advice: be kind, respect everyone, teach, act instead of talking, learn from failure, slow down, fix yourself first, and cool the fight.
They do not agree on everything, and this guide does not pretend they do. See where they differ, below. The claim here is narrower, and it is Alan's: on how to treat each other and live in society, the world's traditions are strikingly likeminded.
From the Books
Underneath the curated guide sits the scripture itself: 1,971 passages drawn straight from the books of eleven traditions, in public-domain translations, each cited to its book and verse. The search above covers them along with everything else here, and you can also read them on their own, grouped by tradition and practice.
Start with a practice
The Eight Practices are the index. Pick one and read what all twelve traditions say about it, side by side.
Start with a tradition
Or pick a tradition and read its summary, its own Golden Rule, and everything it teaches across the eight practices.
Where they differ
Honesty matters more than harmony. These traditions disagree, sometimes sharply, about God (one, many, or none), about worship and ritual, about what happens after death, and about who may teach. Jain monks and Sikh householders do not live alike, and neither would mistake the other's path for his own.
What converges is the social teaching: how to treat a neighbor, a stranger, an enemy, an animal, the earth, and yourself. That convergence, across centuries and continents, among people who never met, is the fact this guide is built on. Read the passages and judge it for yourself.