A Peaceful Existence

Has man ever realized true peace? People think that they "know" what peace is, but if they truly realized the actual nature of what it means to be peaceful...wouldn't they? Everybody says they want peace, people practice a method, but nobody seems to be able to realize the truth of it. It could be that the true nature of peace cannot be realized through a practice. A practice implies a method, which is the result of organization. Man, it seems has always sought peace through war and violence. So the ideal of peace, the word peace is not the reality. Though the idiocy of the conceptual, the defined, we "fight" for peace. So the peace that we seek is really just an extension of war, the war that is within each of us, the projected image of the violence and contradiction of the self. If the mind is clogged up with a self promoting agenda, how can there ever be peace. If we are constantly trying to undermine the other with our religious or political beliefs how will we ever be at peace. It seems the best that we can hope for is the periodic lapses of violence that are the result of our sheer exhaustion from trying to beat each other into submission. This has been the only peace that we have known, the time spent preparing for another conflict. If your argument is that there can be no peace without the threat of war or violence, then you are lost to me. We do not speak the same language. Your understanding is superficial and bound to a particular belief system. It cannot be penetrated by logic or truth. It is reasoning that is the result of emotional and psychological attachment. In such a world there is only violence, to such a mind there is only the illusion of peace, never the reality.

The politicians are a comical bunch, they try to find peace though commonality. They try to find something in opposing agenda's that they can agree on. A common "enemy" or an idealistic goal that may give a sense of a unity of action. How utterly and completely useless are their programs of compromise which are in reality a way to self promote. It is the tyranny of legalized gangsterism. The corruption of authority and its laws of selective violence. One cannot realize peace though the political machine, for it is the very definition of violence. To legislate is to imprison.

Is there an answer to the question of peace? Can the mind find the reality of peace in this moment. Something that is not the result of the book you just read or the teachings of a religion or guru/master or some other such nonsense. These are only the opinions of others which you may make your own, but which are not a realization of ones own violence. A person has to get intimate with ones own violence. You must see the violence that is in your own perception of peace. To realize the origin of ones dualistic nature which is the beginning of all violence. All violence, indeed all wars come from the smallest thought, the perception of the divided and alienated. They grow into an immense ideological hatred that is the result of conformity to the perception of a common fear. Is it possible to look directly at your own fear and realize how closely related it is to the violence that you inflict on yourself and others? When we speak of violence we are not just referring to the physical or psychological, but to the whole field of violence that is the consciousness of a conditioned mind. The subtle violence of opinion and conclusion which begin with a mind that is in the conflict, confusion and contradiction of the ideal, the illusion of a self that "knows".

So a peaceful existence has to start within. In the depths of ones own psyche, a person has to realize the extent of ones own violence. How that violence has been ingrained in the mind since birth. A person must also realize that one has a genetic propensity toward violence as a means for survival, and that the intellect can carry that instinct beyond what is reasonable for the prevention of extinction. If a person realizes the moment as the reality of what is, then it is possible for one to live a life of peace that is the outcome of an unconditioned consciousness. It is a mind that is constantly letting go of the past, not clinging to the minds disappointments and disagreements. It is allowing the truth of the moment to cleanse you of all opinion and conclusion. It is recognizing your own violence in the violence of others and realizing the intelligence of peace that is beyond the self that thinks it "knows".