What Does Peace Mean?

Peace is not understood only in terms of avoiding war; peace is to establish an active culture of living in peace. Since ages, we have found excuses to fight. If we do not work for individual transformation, talking about world peace is just one more form of entertainment. Without attending to individual human beings, trying to bring about any kind of change in the world, always leads to more problems. If there are no peaceful human beings, there is no peaceful world. Today, the world’s focus is on economics. Since the planet’s resources are limited, and our lives are driven by the engine of economics, war is inevitable. Unless subtler aspects of life become important, peace remains a dream. Any destruction of life, beyond the need for one’s survival, is violence. Religion and quarrelling cannot go together. Somewhere, we have lost the basic sense of what religion is. True religion is an inward step. But, today, it has become only about belonging to this group or that group. This has only brought hatred, conflict and separation among people. What the world needs is not more religions or more followers, but people committed to becoming peaceful themselves. If people just learnt how to be absolutely still with great intensity, you would see all violence simply evaporate from the planet. It is not slogans and statements that will bring peace to the world, but a lifelong striving to produce peaceful human beings. Peace is not in terms of just avoiding war, but establishing an active culture of living in peace in the world.

Source: Economic Times, 21/09/2018