Inner peace is dream for many and living reality for a few.  Dragging oneself through the delusory world fighting it inch by inch only to find their own existence a crushing burden that gets more than they can bear and many a miserable soul desperate to throw everything aside and get away from it all to take a dip in the oasis of peace. A rare few make it, every tormented soul crave for it though. Up for sale, they would give eyes and teeth for it. Wretched souls yearning for peace cross the sea and mountains to find it. Some go the Buddha way, others go the way of Indian Gurus, Tibetan Monks and Yogis. Yet others end up at people who trade in it or trade on it. A few others fall for the tricksters who prey on people’s mind. Only a handful go their own way. I cheer this small group of lone seekers who go out on a limb under their own steam. They are the likes of Buddha who chose to swim in uncharted waters all by themselves. Buddha is not known to have followed in anyone’s footsteps, no way to know what he found, though.

Now, the question. Is peace tradeable? Is peace attainable or achievable? Can peace be found?

The last one merits some serious deliberations. The first two are hollow nothing. The question that can peace be found is in itself an evidence to the fact that people have been in a state of peace at some point of time, transiently though, and lost it unwittingly. They cherish the memory of what it is to be in a state of total peace! Or else, how could they possibly look for a thing that they have no knowledge in memory about! We know it but we’re not in it, therefore long for it.

Thus, finding peace is beyond question, however, the issue under question is do we really know how to find it! Do we really know what it costs! And, if we know them, are we walking the right path to find it!

There may be no two opinions about it that if, by some trick or ways or method, we could quiet our mind, and we’d get back to the state of peace. I’m in complete agreement with that. But then, the tricky business is, how to quieten the noisy mind talking all the time! Any Tom, Dick and Harry can shoot the answer from the hip, why not you take to Yoga or meditation, shutting eyes, siting in lotus posture in the foot of hills or thick of wood or on a rock by the river bank!

Many have taken to it. Wonder if they have found peace or have just palliated the torment and affliction of their mind – stress, anxiety and so on! If it indeed has worked in fighting stress and anxiety and thus easing their misery by giving a sense or semblance of peace, then yoga and meditation could be a good substitute for suppressants, sedatives and psychotropic drugs.  Sitting in certain posture, concentrating on a thing, escaping from noisy thoughts into a quiet thing with eyes closed, have no side effects, not like neuroleptics.  They definitely help in easing strains and calming mind as long as practitioners are into it! The question is, what if and when they are out of it! Don’t they slip into their former state of mind and once again go through the pains of wrestling with it!

I leave it those into it to answer it! I never felt a need for it nor do I know what Yoga and meditation is, no idea.

Let me come back to the issue, how can we quiet the noisy mind and thus prepare the ground for peace to take place or peace to descend on our top and then engulfing our whole being? We’ve always sought to achieve peace of mind by exhausting our minds with ideas and thoughts in our quest for peace. Unleashing thoughts and ideas to go after peace will mean pushing mind outside chance to go quiet. The essential prerequisite for peace is the quietude of mind. Quite the opposite, we go bending, stretching, twisting and turning the very mind that we want to steer towards a state of peace.  Instruments of knowledge, reason, logic, intellect and things thereof issue from busy mind as opposed to a quiet mind at rest. The noisier the mind the cleverer it gets at creating myth and illusions and duping us into taking them as real until exploded and then into creating new myths and illusions infinitely. There is no end to the tricks the mind plays unless we succeed in disempowering it. I know we can render it totally powerless. The way to it is not by shouting down the noisy mind but by creating no room for it to make noise. Men have succeeded in bending the other to their will with threat and force or shouting the other down, but no one has ever succeeded in bending his own mind to his will. Those who have ventured to do it have either cracked up or resigned themselves to it.

Now, the question is can we stop creating room for our mind to make noise and then steer ourselves towards a state of peace and bliss? The answer is, yes we can. But, there is no such thing as a free lunch. There’s a price to pay for peace. Are we ready to pay the price?

Here is a list of price one must pay to go into a state of permanent peace and bliss.

1. Are we willing to forgo our fake identity?
2. Are we prepared not to bother our head about sense or purpose of your existence?
3. Are we willing to undergo a complete transformation and be a totally new thing other than what we have been?
4. Are we willing to live naturally in a state wherein there is no hope and no despair, no happiness and no sorrow, no pain and no pleasure, no love and no hatred?
5. Are we willing to live in the order we are born in but not accepting it nor rejecting it?

Peace and state of bliss asks for a huge price to pay. Those of us willing to stake everything we hold on to on it are the best bet. Good day!