Peace...Is It Really So Difficult?
01/09/2009 09:52 PM
Leila bought me a t-shirt in India that had this slogan- “Peace...Is it really so difficult?” on it and it got me to thinking. Why IS it so hard for us to gain some peace? We ALL want peace, yet very few spend any time on it, as we have already invested so much in that which takes us away from peace.
The Premise of Peace
Inner peace, contentment and other things come basically from a VERY simple premise:
Less thoughts, more peace.
So much of yoga practice goes towards this. “Without inner peace, there cannot be any outer peace.” - Swami Vishnu-devananda
I know for myself, I sought out sports of various kinds to gain some concentration of my thoughts and this would temporarily bring some peace. Some people throw themselves into work, or sex, or addictions of various sorts. We as a culture have been given some choices in this regard, yet sports and hobbies are so expensive, one basically must choose one hobby and stick with it to find one’s concentration. Still, when the moment the activity was over, I found my mind full of a list of “should’s” from my youth, watching so much TV, listening to too many emotionally immature people I knew, and so on.
Reducing the thoughts is the basis for the practice of mantra repetition. Mala beads- or rosary beads exist to serve this purpose. In Indian tradition, this is known as japa meditation. This practice is covered nicely by Swami Sivananda, Swami Vishnu-devananda, and even modern writers on improving thoughts like Dr. Wayne Dyer.
In order to reduce the thoughts to ease the mind and eventually gain peace, one replaces thoughts with a single thought, in this case a mantra, like ‘Om Namah Sivaya’ (Siva mantra), or choose your own. Choosing your own doesn’t carry the shared spiritual energy of something as resounding as ‘Om Namah Sivaya’, or ‘Om Namo Narayanaya” (a Vishnu mantra), but nonetheless the point is that any thought you replace is best done with a name of God, and therefore is pure. Chanting the name is one of the 8 modes of devotion, and ingrains a pure vibration in the mind of the person.
We all know people who have mantras in their minds about sex, drugs, or whatever their unhealthy choice of lifestyle, but the principle is the same. When I was a kid, Michael Jackson songs played constantly on the radio, and through repetition, I now know all of the lyrics to the songs, and even like the songs, even though I didn’t choose it. Repetition is what counts for the mind.
We repeat also our personal likes and dislikes constantly in our minds, and tell them to others. We dislike things different from us, and cannot tolerate others as for example other cultures can do. A classic like/dislike I learned as a child was from the cartoon Tom and Jerry. The Cat (Tom) is hating the mouse, and the mouse (Jerry) was outsmarting the cat constantly. Many cartoons schooled us in this way- Coyote vs. Roadrunner was identical in this fashion, and all very violent.
I wonder when I see this amazing video, if I can remove the dislikes and likes from our minds and have greater peace in social situations:
You Are That, or Them
When I was trained in the Sivananda tradition as a yoga teacher, I was taught that I was being trained as a peace missionary. I have taken this to mean that I am to help myself find physical, mental, emotional, and deep spiritual peace. In order to do that, I must see others as myself. They have a phrase for this, according to the Advaita Vedanta of Adi Shankara: ‘Tat Twam Asi’; or, ‘Thou Art That’.
Swami Vishnu-devananda had a great and simple saying to make us realize what this means practically:
“Sometimes when you go to scratch your head, you can poke yourself in the eye. You don’t yell and scream at your hand or fingers for causing such a pain for you! This is because you see your hand and fingers as a part of yourself. See everyone in this way.”
We as a culture, need to have some level of tolerance for each other. I her about in our North American cultures that we prevent things like gay marriages, which seems so wrong to me. Our divorce rate in heterosexual marriages is astounding, yet we prevent homosexuals from marrying because it’s ‘corrupting’ the institution? This kind of hypocrisy has no place in spiritual life, and I am quite sure Jesus would agree. It’s ego that is controlling such a narrow definition of marriage. It’s ego that is also destroying it from the inside out.
So as a spiritual person, I am not interesting in taking sides, but resolving the reasons why both sides do not work and why the middle does.
Our likes and dislikes, and our emotional chaos extends so far, that we cannot even drive without extending our egos into vast realms of personal space. For example, the video below. In this sort of traffic, no American could survive; 1) we lack the skill to drive this close together, and; 2) we would go nuts with our ‘road rage’ ridiculousness and our sense of entitlement to space.
Cultural Intimacy
Cultures are made of individuals. It is up to us to decide what we do with ourselves, and how we treat each other. Of course, I do not mean tolerating endless abuse and so on, but rather tolerating differences between people. In order to do this, we need to know ourselves, and we need to know our neighbors, our teachers.
Feeling alone? Feeling lonely? There is a severe lack of intimacy even between lovers, friends, neighbors, and, blood relatives in this Western culture. I think we ought to step across those modern insular social boundaries and connect, face to face. See what in the other is also so much like yourself. Throw a neighborhood party. Start a mailing list about street conditions and help out the older people on your cul-de-sac. You will be amazed at what you find. People are always amazing, when you get to know them.
The Dalai Lama, in the book The Art of Happiness (I have the audiobook version from iTunes)
talks about how he had intimacy, but in a very different way (being a monk) than what we tend to think of here in the West. He gained this with his teachers and fellow monks by being treated well, never spoken harshly to and so on. We tend to think only in terms of an intimate relationship being sexual. Here is a great article talking about the Dalai Lama’s ability to create intimacy with him so naturally (and obviously completely non-sexually) with people wherever he goes. There are several instances of this in the book as well. The Dalai Lama is so powerful, I believe, directly BECAUSE of his ability to create intimacy with everyone so easily. This brings a feeling a peace to people who are merely in his presence.
Many times, since 9/11, we have heard in the U.S. the mantra “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” Yet, we tend to unite only against enemies here (the enemy du jour, as given by the media on behalf of whoever is in power), and not so much with our friends. In my neighborhood in Seattle, my very community-minded roommate Nancy threw a party during the recent snowstorm, and many neighbors attended. They all remarked at the end how many of them had lived 20-30 years in this neighborhood, yet knew each other barely at all. Many people had their insular instinct shaken up by a neighbor who moved in and began a mailing list about neighborhood issues- roads, sidewalks, recycling, etc. and this person also went around door-to-door saying hi and meeting her new neighbors. In time, this impulse shown by one woman thawed out the insular thinking and gradually has begun to bring together the neighborhood. More and more people are throwing parties for the neighbors and they are getting to know each other.
The below video is more than just a Public Service Announcement, it’s a fundamental spiritual principle- non-harming and contentment, working together.
The Premise of Peace
Inner peace, contentment and other things come basically from a VERY simple premise:
Less thoughts, more peace.
So much of yoga practice goes towards this. “Without inner peace, there cannot be any outer peace.” - Swami Vishnu-devananda
I know for myself, I sought out sports of various kinds to gain some concentration of my thoughts and this would temporarily bring some peace. Some people throw themselves into work, or sex, or addictions of various sorts. We as a culture have been given some choices in this regard, yet sports and hobbies are so expensive, one basically must choose one hobby and stick with it to find one’s concentration. Still, when the moment the activity was over, I found my mind full of a list of “should’s” from my youth, watching so much TV, listening to too many emotionally immature people I knew, and so on.
Reducing the thoughts is the basis for the practice of mantra repetition. Mala beads- or rosary beads exist to serve this purpose. In Indian tradition, this is known as japa meditation. This practice is covered nicely by Swami Sivananda, Swami Vishnu-devananda, and even modern writers on improving thoughts like Dr. Wayne Dyer.
In order to reduce the thoughts to ease the mind and eventually gain peace, one replaces thoughts with a single thought, in this case a mantra, like ‘Om Namah Sivaya’ (Siva mantra), or choose your own. Choosing your own doesn’t carry the shared spiritual energy of something as resounding as ‘Om Namah Sivaya’, or ‘Om Namo Narayanaya” (a Vishnu mantra), but nonetheless the point is that any thought you replace is best done with a name of God, and therefore is pure. Chanting the name is one of the 8 modes of devotion, and ingrains a pure vibration in the mind of the person.
We all know people who have mantras in their minds about sex, drugs, or whatever their unhealthy choice of lifestyle, but the principle is the same. When I was a kid, Michael Jackson songs played constantly on the radio, and through repetition, I now know all of the lyrics to the songs, and even like the songs, even though I didn’t choose it. Repetition is what counts for the mind.
We repeat also our personal likes and dislikes constantly in our minds, and tell them to others. We dislike things different from us, and cannot tolerate others as for example other cultures can do. A classic like/dislike I learned as a child was from the cartoon Tom and Jerry. The Cat (Tom) is hating the mouse, and the mouse (Jerry) was outsmarting the cat constantly. Many cartoons schooled us in this way- Coyote vs. Roadrunner was identical in this fashion, and all very violent.
I wonder when I see this amazing video, if I can remove the dislikes and likes from our minds and have greater peace in social situations:
You Are That, or Them
When I was trained in the Sivananda tradition as a yoga teacher, I was taught that I was being trained as a peace missionary. I have taken this to mean that I am to help myself find physical, mental, emotional, and deep spiritual peace. In order to do that, I must see others as myself. They have a phrase for this, according to the Advaita Vedanta of Adi Shankara: ‘Tat Twam Asi’; or, ‘Thou Art That’.
Swami Vishnu-devananda had a great and simple saying to make us realize what this means practically:
“Sometimes when you go to scratch your head, you can poke yourself in the eye. You don’t yell and scream at your hand or fingers for causing such a pain for you! This is because you see your hand and fingers as a part of yourself. See everyone in this way.”
We as a culture, need to have some level of tolerance for each other. I her about in our North American cultures that we prevent things like gay marriages, which seems so wrong to me. Our divorce rate in heterosexual marriages is astounding, yet we prevent homosexuals from marrying because it’s ‘corrupting’ the institution? This kind of hypocrisy has no place in spiritual life, and I am quite sure Jesus would agree. It’s ego that is controlling such a narrow definition of marriage. It’s ego that is also destroying it from the inside out.
So as a spiritual person, I am not interesting in taking sides, but resolving the reasons why both sides do not work and why the middle does.
Our likes and dislikes, and our emotional chaos extends so far, that we cannot even drive without extending our egos into vast realms of personal space. For example, the video below. In this sort of traffic, no American could survive; 1) we lack the skill to drive this close together, and; 2) we would go nuts with our ‘road rage’ ridiculousness and our sense of entitlement to space.
Cultural Intimacy
Cultures are made of individuals. It is up to us to decide what we do with ourselves, and how we treat each other. Of course, I do not mean tolerating endless abuse and so on, but rather tolerating differences between people. In order to do this, we need to know ourselves, and we need to know our neighbors, our teachers.
Feeling alone? Feeling lonely? There is a severe lack of intimacy even between lovers, friends, neighbors, and, blood relatives in this Western culture. I think we ought to step across those modern insular social boundaries and connect, face to face. See what in the other is also so much like yourself. Throw a neighborhood party. Start a mailing list about street conditions and help out the older people on your cul-de-sac. You will be amazed at what you find. People are always amazing, when you get to know them.
The Dalai Lama, in the book The Art of Happiness (I have the audiobook version from iTunes)
talks about how he had intimacy, but in a very different way (being a monk) than what we tend to think of here in the West. He gained this with his teachers and fellow monks by being treated well, never spoken harshly to and so on. We tend to think only in terms of an intimate relationship being sexual. Here is a great article talking about the Dalai Lama’s ability to create intimacy with him so naturally (and obviously completely non-sexually) with people wherever he goes. There are several instances of this in the book as well. The Dalai Lama is so powerful, I believe, directly BECAUSE of his ability to create intimacy with everyone so easily. This brings a feeling a peace to people who are merely in his presence.
Many times, since 9/11, we have heard in the U.S. the mantra “United We Stand, Divided We Fall.” Yet, we tend to unite only against enemies here (the enemy du jour, as given by the media on behalf of whoever is in power), and not so much with our friends. In my neighborhood in Seattle, my very community-minded roommate Nancy threw a party during the recent snowstorm, and many neighbors attended. They all remarked at the end how many of them had lived 20-30 years in this neighborhood, yet knew each other barely at all. Many people had their insular instinct shaken up by a neighbor who moved in and began a mailing list about neighborhood issues- roads, sidewalks, recycling, etc. and this person also went around door-to-door saying hi and meeting her new neighbors. In time, this impulse shown by one woman thawed out the insular thinking and gradually has begun to bring together the neighborhood. More and more people are throwing parties for the neighbors and they are getting to know each other.
The below video is more than just a Public Service Announcement, it’s a fundamental spiritual principle- non-harming and contentment, working together.
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