are you ready for peace?

Are you ready for peace?

This might seem like a strange question. Surely everyone is ready for peace. Everyone wants peace. But if you look carefully at your own life, you will probably find that it is not always so. Of course, when we are in a difficult period or having a challenging moment, then we will feel we are ready for peace. That's what we want, we want peace. But at other times, perhaps when not much is happening for you, if you look inside yourself, you will probably find that there is at least a part of you wanting excitement, wanting to be stimulated, aroused – not necessarily sexually, but in some way fired up.

A lot of our entertainments are providing this for us. People who like to watch sport often get a bit of a rush from it, and that's just watching, let alone participating. Similarly a lot of TV and movie entertainment is designed to get our pulse racing, at least from time to time. The excitement is rather addictive. In its extreme form it comes as an adrenaline rush. This is why some people like extreme sports.

That excitement has a very alive quality to it. It's also there in the passion of sex. When we are making love, we are aroused. We are not at peace; afterwards yes, but not during the act. We are in a state of excitement. And excitement is not peaceful. It feels good in a completely different way. This is why some young men like to go and fight wars. They'd rather kill and be killed and feel the fear and the excitement than be at peace. If we were all ready for peace, there would be no wars. So have a good look inside yourself and see, are you really ready for peace? Or are you still yearning for passion, for excitement?

The inner peace, the profound inner peace, that the spiritual path leads us to is not an excited state. It is a calm state, a space of tranquility. It is blissful. It is enjoyable in that sense, full of bliss. And there can even be ecstasy from time to time. But even those moments of ecstasy do not have the same feel as the excited state that we knew before. The ecstasy is not really a state of arousal. It's more like a divine drunkenness, an intoxication with life. It is not excitement as such.

So the question is, are you ready to finish with that excitement that you currently know? Are you ready to finish with the aroused state of fear? The buddhas live in a space where there is no fear. And if you are not ready, if you are not yet ready for this great peace, do not be alarmed: Carry on living life as fully as possible; Jump into as many exciting situations as you can; Live it all. And when you have lived these excitements enough, then quite naturally your being will turn towards peacefulness, the bliss of being at peace with yourself and with existence.