Thought for the day eight

If man cannot find peace within himself, can there be peace in this world?

This is the highest level of philosophy. Man gets born, gets educated, starts earning, the desire to earn more and more gets imbibed in him, this leads to race against time and the earning would be against the cost of peace of mind, well most of the times and with most men/women.

I think each one of us will undergo this torture. When we are having a job, this would be in a competitive world. I need more money than my neighbor/ friend. At what cost? Health? Peace?

Yes, this is the in thing now. We have pollution everywhere, variety of them. One of the worst is noise pollution. This means, the exterior peace is gone.

Inner peace has to come from within. People go to Himalayas to get the peace. We see people going to resorts in the weekends saying ‘far from the madding crowd’

I have read a novel by Mr. Yandamoori Veerendranath, famour Telugu author. The author has lost his wife somewhere and he goes in search of her. Her name is Shanti. When we come to the end of the novel we come to know that he is referring to Peace (Shanti in Sanskrit) which is being lost by him.

Really a very poignant way of narrating the loss and gain of peace.

There is a story of a king who comes to know that a monk in the forest has a coin which gives peace of mind. So the king goes to the forest and meets the monk who is in his hut. The monk smiles when the King says he wants the coin to get peace.

The monk agrees but says, I will hide it in this hut. You have to search and take it.

The king agrees. That night the king stays in the hut on the insistence of the monk. Early in the morning the monk goes out. The king now decides to search for the coin.

He goes on searching everywhere in the hut. The hut was quite small and not many hiding places!

By the time the monk comes back the king would have searched the whole place and failed.

The monk asks, did you find it?

The king says no.

Did you search the whole place? Asks the monk.

Yes, says the king exasperated.

The monk walks to the pillow on which the king had kept his head previous night and removes the coin from below the pillow.

The king did not even think of looking at that place.

The monk says, oh Rajah, the peace is not anywhere else, it is within you. If you try to find it outside, you will be sadly disappointed.

Yes, the peace is within. We have to close the physical ears to the noise around us whenever we want peace.

I would be very peaceful when I sit alone on a beach. The noisy waves give me very soothing feeling. Same with a water fall. The water falling sound is like music to my ears.

Sounds funny? No, please try to sit (of course, alone!) in these places and experience the same. I find peace even in the noisiest place if I chant a single word or a mantra of any God. We can keep repeating it in mind so that the concentration will go towards that and calmness surrounds our mind.

Still, I feel music could be the best thing. Not the bang bang one. Any rhythmic sound.. say it could be TR Mahalingam’s flute or Beethoven’s violin. If we listen to them with our open inner ears, peace will come and engulf us.

Well, there could be more methods which you all use.