As the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympic Games draw to a close this weekend, the spectacle of their opening ceremony still lingers. Light spiraled light beneath the Olympic rings, operatic voices rose into the night, and a choreography of color and song seemed to suspend history, if only for a moment. The theme announced at the outset—Armonia, harmony—set the tone for the Games’ aspirations. Harmony, organizers said, was meant to convey dialogue and creative encounter: past and present, city and mountain, Milan and Cortina, humanity and nature.

It is a stirring ideal. Yet ideals are most revealing when placed alongside reality. In this case, we watched the Winter Olympics unfold against a backdrop of continuing war in Ukraine, violence in Gaza, civil war in Myanmar and Sudan, unrest and fear in many other countries, and the familiar turbulence of global economic and territorial rivalry. Russia did not attend, banned following its invasion of Ukraine. Israel’s athletes were met with jeers from sections of the crowd, as was US Vice President JD Vance when shown to fans on the large screen during the opening processions. Ukraine’s delegation received one of the loudest cheers of the evening.

Harmony did not silence dissent. It framed it. For Buddhists, this tension is expected. The Buddha’s teaching begins not with harmony but with dukkha—the unsatisfactoriness, friction, and vulnerability inherent in conditioned existence. To invoke harmony in such a world is not to deny conflict but to respond to it. The ethical imperative is thus to both see division and to understand how to meet it.

The modern Olympic movement has long carried a quasi-spiritual ambition. The revival of the Olympic Truce in recent decades gestures toward a collective pause in violence, however symbolic. Before the Games began, UN Secretary General António Guterres reminded the world that the Olympics might demonstrate that, “the Olympics are an excellent moment to symbolise peace, to symbolise respect for international law and to symbolise international cooperation.” (Euro News)

The president of the International Olympic Committee, Kirsty Coventry, expressed hope that when athletes compete, “the world remembers what’s actually important.” (ABC News)

Such language resonates with Buddhist ethical ideals. The aspiration toward non-harm (ahimsa) and the cultivation of compassion (karuna) are not abstract virtues. They are disciplined practices, cultivated within the messy terrain of human history. Harmony, in this register, is neither sentimental nor naïve. It is fragile, contingent, and profoundly demanding.

The Buddha’s Middle Way offers a lens through which to consider the Games’ claim to neutrality. “Keeping sport neutral,” as Olympic officials have insisted, reflects a hope that athletic competition can stand apart from geopolitical conflict. Yet the Middle Way requires active attention. It is not indifference. Rather, it is a refusal to be captured by extremes—by hatred on one side or blind denial on the other.

When sections of the crowd booed certain delegations, they were expressing pain, anger, or solidarity. When others applauded enthusiastically, they were expressing hope or allegiance. The stadium became a microcosm of the world—layered and divided, yet gathered in one place under structures of peace. From a Buddhist perspective, such moments expose the constructed nature of collective identities. Nations, like selves, are formations—real in their effects, yet dependent on causes and conditions. Understanding those conditions can allow us to unravel their powers, an incredibly powerful practice when those powers drive us toward ongoing suffering.

Interdependence (pratityasamutpada) is both an abstract doctrine and an invitation to see deeper reality. And it is visible in every Olympic event. No athlete arrives alone. Years of training, coaches, families, communities, and national infrastructures stand behind each performance. As we witnessed with the South Korean snowboarders helped by a Buddhist monk, sometimes conditions arise from the most unexpected places.* Victory and defeat are relational phenomena. So too are boos and cheers.

To recognize interdependence is to see that harmony cannot be imposed. It emerges from conditions. It is cultivated. The image of two Olympic cauldrons lit simultaneously—one at the Arco della Pace (the Arch of Peace) in Milan and one in Cortina’s mountain square—carried symbolic weight. Two flames, geographically distant yet conceptually linked. In a divided world, we can hold multiple centers of meaning within a larger field of belonging.

Buddhist practice rests on learning to “sit with” conflict—both within oneself and with others. This requires a transformation of how conflict is approached. The Dhammapada reminds us: “Hatred is never appeased by hatred; by non-hatred alone is hatred appeased.” Rather than teaching detached passivity, this requires a discipline that is taken deeply to heart. Aversion to pain is natural. It requires wisdom and compassion to approach it with openness and a spirit of transformation.

Sport, at its best, embodies this discipline. The athlete’s training—while aimed at victory—requires work on attention, resilience, and balance. The moguls skier who falls and rises again enacts perseverance. Conflict, wisely approached and overcome, is at the heart of Olympic competition. This work and the feats of body and mind achieved by Olympic athletes can, in the best light, mirror the human condition—aspiration, struggle, failure, and recalibration.

Harmony, in this sense, resembles the tuning of a stringed instrument. The Buddha likened spiritual practice to tuning a lute—not too tight, not too loose. The Winter Olympics dramatize this tuning in physical form. Too much tension leads to collapse; too little yields mediocrity. The art lies in balance.

The Games’ closing weekend invites reflection on whether this calibration extends beyond the slopes and rinks. Has the Olympic fortnight shifted global politics? Almost certainly not. Wars continue. Political leaders posture. Structural injustices persist.

And yet, to dismiss the Games as mere distraction would be too simple. Ritual matters, especially one shared by so many people around the world. Collective gatherings shape imagination. When thousands stand together, when opera envelops a stadium, when athletes from historically antagonistic nations bow to one another after competition, something is rehearsed. It may not yet be peace, but it is a rehearsal for coexistence.

From a Buddhist standpoint, rehearsals matter. Practice precedes transformation. The cultivation of compassion in meditation provides new perspective for the practitioner. This alters the practitioner and, over time, altered practitioners alter conditions in the world around them. We hear this again and again from modern practitioners—the path to peace in the world begins with inner peace.

The question, then, is whether the Olympics succeeded at nourishing the conditions for broader harmony.

The jeers and protests remind us that harmony cannot be aesthetic alone. It must engage suffering. The cheers for Ukraine’s delegation carried moral resonance. They expressed solidarity with a nation enduring violence. The absence of Russia signaled the consequences of aggression. The tension between neutrality and moral accountability remains unresolved.

Buddhist ethics, grounded in intention (cetana), would direct us to ask what motivates our actions. Are we seeking domination or understanding? Retaliation or restoration? Even the desire for harmony can become coercive if it suppresses legitimate grievances. True harmony requires dialogue, not enforced silence.

The theme of Armonia—city and mountain, humanity and nature—also gestures toward ecological interdependence. Winter sport itself depends on fragile climates. Snow, ice, and alpine ecosystems are increasingly threatened by global warming. Harmony with nature is becoming an existential necessity for all of humankind. The Games, dispersed across multiple mountain venues, remind us that the earth is not an inert backdrop to human ambition. It is participant and condition.

As the Olympic flame is extinguished this weekend, the ethical work continues. The Buddha’s path is incremental. It unfolds in daily conduct—speech, livelihood, and intention. The spectacle of the opening ceremony, the disciplined exertion of athletes, the uneasy coexistence of protest and pageantry—these are mirrors held up to our collective life.

The Olympics may conclude this weekend. The work of harmony does not.

* Buddhist Monk’s Two-Decade Support Credited in South Korea’s Olympic Snowboarding Success (BDG)

See more

Winter Olympics 2026: Glittering Opening Ceremony in Milano and Cortina kicks off historic Games with message of “Harmony” (Olympics)
The top 10 crises the world can’t ignore in 2026 (International Rescue Committee)
UN calls for 52-day pause in global wars ahead of Milan Cortina Winter Olympics (Euro News)
A 2026 Winter Olympics opening ceremony message of harmony and peace, rammed into a world of division (ABC News)

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