 Most of the time, you feel peaceful, yet looking “out” into the world you live in, you find many acts of violence around you. Violence is any action or behavior that causes physical or psychological harm to an individual (personal violence) or group (global violence). Physical violence like assault and battery and psychological violence like verbal and emotional abuse is perpetrated daily all over the planet. War, genocide, terrorism and oppression is violence that affects large numbers of people. Political, economic and social forces are often at the root of both personal violence and global violence. However, whether it is personal or global, fear is what ignites violence.
You have likely heard that “peace starts within.” Inner peace is envisioned as an inner state of tranquility. It is your own inner sense of peace and contentment that allows you to be open to seeing a peaceful outer world. Though outer peace generally begins with cultivating inner peace and balance, it cannot be generated at all if there is no sense that peace already exists. That is, by learning to find peace within yourself and to respond to challenging situations with understanding and compassion, you can create a more peaceful outer world if you have a deeper wisdom informing you of the peace that is always present everywhere. You must know peace to create even more peace. From our perspective, peace is the nature and goal of every sentient being. It is living in loving alliance with all of yourself and with all creatures and beings. Peace is indivisible, it exists everywhere, it simply is the true nature of things. Suffering is what obscures peace, so when suffering is overcome on any level of existence, greater peace is revealed. Peace tends to project outward, it is only contained temporarily by forces of fear-based violence. Finding Peace means you have awakened to the ultimate inseparability between the happiness and well-being of yourself and of all others. This underlies the inspiration to attend to the needs of all, to love everyone and everything. With an engagement in mindfulness, promoting peace becomes the commitment to undertaking acts of loving kindness for all beings. While personal peace can be understood as the absence of tension, conflict, and disturbance, global peace can be envisioned as the absence of war and violence. Yet we would emphasize that peace is the natural state, and all that occurs, including the tension, conflict, disturbance, war and violence can exist in the midst of peace. This is to remind you that you cannot wait for there to be no war in order to live in a peaceful world. Nor can you expect to completely eliminate all personal violence compelled by fear before you cultivate and abide in a peaceful mind. Equanimity is a state of psychological balance and composure, allowing you to stay calm and composed in the face of difficult situations. It is a key component of inner peace and can be cultivated through meditation and other mindfulness practices. Practicing equanimity allows you to respond to stressful situations with clarity and compassion, rather than reactive violence or aggression. This helps you to cultivate a sense of peace and contentment. Equanimity is often considered the last of the “Four Immeasurables” or four sublime states in Buddhist teachings. The first three are love, compassion, and joy. Love is the practice of loving kindness for all, compassion is understanding the suffering of others and contributing to the alleviation of it, and joy is a practice of sympathetic joy, the delight in the happiness of others. It is with these practices of the four immeasurables that peace can be cultivated. Foundational to the cultivation of peace is also the simple knowing that peace is the natural state. Peace is everywhere. There is always peace, even in a violent world.
0 Comments
|
