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Peace Is Already With You

wmjbyatt

Lunatic from birth
A discussion yesterday got me thinking about personal peace. It has been said—and written on coffee mugs—that peace is not the absence of noise and chaos, but rather stillness in the midst of it. We have this image of a wizened old Asian guy sitting around with a serene smile, no matter what’s thrown at him. This is our notion of peace, but what does it mean? When one has peace, does that mean that one is entirely free from worry, or self-doubt, or existential crisis?

Not at all.

See, peace is not peace unless it requires nothing other than itself. Peace is not peace if it depends on a lack of worry, a lack of self-doubt. Peace is stillness and peaceful even when the noise and chaos encroach the boundaries of the self, into that person who is supposed to have attained this peace.

We are at peace only when we have chosen, quite directly, to be at peace. That’s all it takes. You just flip a little switch in your head and quit being not at peace. It’s freakishly simple. So simple, in fact, that most of us refuse to accept that it can be so simple, and it becomes a dastardly difficult enterprise to be at peace.

If we are at peace, we are okay when the noise and chaos is inside of us. If we are at peace, we are okay with the noise and chaos around us. This does not mean that we are complacent. It does not mean that we don’t seek to pacify the noise and chaos itself. It only means that we recognize that the noise and chaos are, and that that is, right now, okay.

This path of reasoning can be dangerous, though. We can tempted to think that acceptance is equivalent to—or leads to—complacency. We can be tempted to think that “it’s all okay” means “it doesn’t have to change.” When we see evil and pain and suffering around us, we can be tempted to think “it’s okay, there’s a reason for it, let it be.” This is, in a word, ********. When we see pain and suffering around us, it is not incorrect to think that it should be altered, fixed, rendered peaceful. But we must accept that, right here and right now, that the pain and suffering do exist. This is how we can remain peaceful and make the world a better place.

In that same discussion that led to this post, one person quoted Mahatma Gandhi’s famous line, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” If we interpret this to mean that we want people to strive for goodness, that we want people to strive for peace and an end of suffering, we must ourselves strive for goodness, strive for peace and an end of suffering. But this sells ourselves short. If we are striving for peace, we are not AT peace. If we want the world to strive for peace, it cannot be a peaceful world. If we want the world to be peaceful, if we want the suffering and the pain to end, we must ourselves be at peace, we must ourselves be without pain and suffering.

We cannot make this world a better place when we ourselves still suffer. We can only make this world a better place by becoming the manifestation of our goals, individually.

“Peace in the world requires peace between nations. Peace between nations requires peace in the nations. Peace in the nations requires peace in the towns. Peace in the towns requires peace at home. Peace at home requires peace in the self.”
 
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