Peaceful Life
Monday November 22 2004 09:16 IST
By Karmayogi
Life has endless shades
and is found in an enormous variety. Some of them are good life, bad life,
successful life, active life, dynamic life, idealistic life, peaceful life,
dull life, problem-free life, etc.
We often hear people saying, “I want a peaceful life.” In a
spiritual country like ours, peaceful life implicitly means a life of inner
spirituality. It is a life where one is at peace with himself. One is not at a
discord with himself. It arises in the absence of ambition or greed.
There is someone who writes everyday to his guru asking him to make him the
Prime Minister of his country. Obviously he cannot know any rest inside. The
seething ambition will be gnawing all the time. He sets his sights so high, so
unrealistically, that all his energies go to feed it. It is a vain labour.
He will certainly learn in the end that it is a useless endeavour. It will be a
precious knowledge painfully acquired.
A peaceful life must necessarily be distinguished from a dull life. Monotonous
work is never attractive. Occasionally you can find someone doing such work and
being content with it. He will be ill at ease at any other work. It is a dull
life. His personality is so low that even such a monotonous life can help it
grow.
We are sorry for the cruelty and tyranny in life and measures are taken to
prevent them. In the highest spiritual sense, they too have a place in
God's creation and are justified by God. When the soul is unformed or
buried very deeply, one needs to subject the body to unceasing toil of an
oppressive kind.
That is how his soul awakens. In the absence of such willing work, external
agencies in the shape of cruel men do it. Anyway, the world at large and Life
have overcome that need. Hereafter no one needs to suffer cruelty or pain
unless he loves it.
When a businessman receives heavy orders in succession, he overworks, but likes
it. At times of weddings, at home we put in five times or ten times more work,
but it does not tire us. We enjoy working and ask more of it. As long as we do
not run into problems and meet with success after success, we enjoy work, do
not want to sit in one place.
People love a problem-free life and call it peaceful life. Certainly there are
rare specimens who enjoy doing nothing. That is to be lazy. It is not a
peaceful life, but a dull life. One does not seek a dull life, but one seeks an
active, dynamic, responsible life of accomplishments free of problems.
A dull life is dull in external acts, which means a life of no actions. Shift
to inside and let there be no inner actions, which means no inner movements. It
is a spiritual life of stillness. It is an exalted life of elevated
consciousness.
People can understand it in a man in ochre robes, not in a householder. They
may think him to be lazy. Actually, all his work will be done in great speed.