Peace

“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”
Gautama Buddha

The term ‘peace’ generally connotes to the absence of any conflict, stress, anxiety, agony and such. We long for peace: world peace, mental peace, peace in our workplace, peace in family, personal peace, mental peace, etc. Have you ever thought why is this affinity to peace is there in us?

Peace seems to be the fundamental goal of every human being. Peace is the precursor to happiness. Without peace, there is no happiness.

In this world, everybody wants to live in peace. Countries fight wars in order to maintain peace in their territory. Many countries have kept thousands of nuclear bombs capable enough to destroy humanity and other biological existence in the entire world 55 times over. Do all these are for world peace? If it is so, then our understanding of world peace is really skewed.

I feel that the root cause of all the conflict in the world is greed, desire, egoism, and material pursuit. Everybody is struggling to get hold of the limited resources available on Earth. Shri M K Gandhi’s statement is apt for the current situation, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” There is limit to one’s needs, but the greed of a person knows no limits.

This is also true for individual peace as well. There is no end to inner conflict until and unless there is absence of greed, egoism and desire in our individual selves.

In Chapter 2, Verse 71 of Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says,

विहाय कामान्य: सर्वान्पुमांश्चरति नि:स्पृह: ।
निर्ममो निरहङ्कार: स शान्तिमधिगच्छति ।।

Meaning: That person, who gives up all material desires and lives free from a sense of greed, proprietorship, and egoism, attains perfect peace.

Once this inner peace is attained by every human being, there won’t be any conflict in the entire world. Earth would be peaceful place for every organism. However, that is an ideal case which is practically impossible in Kalyuga or today’s day and age. Then you may ask, how can we achieve this peace in today’s world?

Well, for that you need to just visualize one thing. Do you remember the day when you were sad and the whole world around you became gloomy? Do you remember your happiest day in your life and everything around you seemed blissful? If you have had such an experience then you will be able to follow what I am going to write next.

We perceive the world around us through our mind and senses. So, their state also affects how we perceive our surroundings. Therefore, if we are blissful inside, we find everything outside to be blissful as well. Hence, having a peaceful state of the inner being will also affect our surroundings, if not at physical plane, but definitely at perceptual plane.

If we go by the Law of Karma, through our inner state of mind we attract or get attracted to certain situations aligning to our mental state. That’s why you may sometimes find yourself surrounded by people with common interests or situations promoting your current state of mind or desires. Therefore, if you have inner peace, you will generally find yourself to be surrounded by people and situations promoting the same.

In this present world, human beings are making themselves suffer. We suffer to get a job, when we get our desired job, we suffer the job itself. It is not just with job, it’s with anything we do with a fixed desire in our mind. In fact, we are ignorant of the cause of our suffering and pray to God to bring peace and happiness in our lives. How can we be peaceful if we don’t know what is disturbing our inner peace?

Gautam Buddha rightly says, “Desire is the root of all sorrows”. There is no end to human desire, it’s like an unfathomable ocean. This desire gives rise to all the vices like, greed, debauchery, corruption, etc. Once we become free from desire, we become satisfied and attain the peace of mind, body and senses. But how can we achieve this, since the entire world runs on human desire?

Chapter 2, Verse 47 of Bhagwad Gita is really enlightening in this regard,

कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन ।
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ।।

Meaning: You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.

Therefore, to achieve peace in our lives we need to perform our duties without any desire of personal benefit from the same and be detached from the work we do. One needs to discard the sense of I-ness from any duty one performs. Everything we do should be dedicated to the omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, God/ Paramatman.

Remember the question I asked in the beginning: Why do we have affinity to peace? As per Isha Upanishad, we get attracted to the things that align to our inner nature. Our inner self is immortal and peaceful, that’s why we long for peace and life. One who touches the inner self and knows its actual nature, no knowledge in this universe is out of reach for that person. She/he attains ultimate peace, the intricacies of the world do not disturb their inner peace. The ancient Indian sages had achieved such peace and have shared their experiences in our ancient scriptures like Vedas, Bhagvad Gita, Upanishads, etc. You may find examples of such extraordinary people in our recent times as well, but I am going to tell you their names, find it yourself!