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Well-Being Peace on Earth begins with
you and me “Peace on Earth” is a wish often expressed this time of year. Whether it remains simply a catchy Christmas card slogan, brought out once a year to decorate our mantles, is up to you. It can serve as a wake-up call to each of us to step up and play our part in creating what our hearts desire. Peace on Earth is not only the responsibility of national governments and international political organizations. It is the responsibility of each of us, every moment of our lives, or more accurately, in the eternal present, the only moment that is real, the Now. Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Zen Master and one-time chairman of the Vietnamese Buddhist Peace delegation who witnessed firsthand the horrors of war in his beloved homeland. Rather than leading him to despair, this experience deepened his spiritual insight into the power of each individual to be a peacemaker, here and now, in the most simple choices of daily life. In “Being Peace,” a collection of talks he gave to peace workers in 1985, he said, “If a child smiles, if an adult smiles, that is very important. If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work. “If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.” While this sounds simple enough, how do we find the inner joy and mindfulness to live such simple instructions? If this question resonates with your heart, then I suggest that you seek to discover your spiritual path, the path that leads to your true Self. “You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level,” according to Eckhart Tolle in Stillness Speaks. “Reincarnation doesn’t help if in your next incarnation you still don’t know who you are....When you know who you truly are, there is an abiding alive sense of peace. You could call it joy because that’s what joy is: vibrantly alive peace.” The end of the year is a perfect time for looking back at the choices we have made in the past year and asking ourselves if these choices have served our highest desire. And it is a time for looking ahead with the wisdom gained from examining our past choices, and setting our course for the coming year. If you truly desire to live each moment in peace and joy, then you owe it to yourself to honor your desire. Make a commitment now to explore various spiritual teachings and practices until you find the one that feels right for you. It is out there waiting for you. Follow your intuition with a sense of adventure, for the search for your true Self is the greatest adventure in life. And the experience of discovering it is indescribably joyful and brings with it the deepest feeling of peace, truly the “peace that passes understanding.” This is your birthright as a human being, to know and to live each moment as your true Self, bringing forth peace and joy and compassion to a world desperate for these gifts. Keep seeking until you find your heart’s desire. In doing so, you will bring a great blessing to the entire world. You do not need to believe in any religion to appreciate the wisdom of one of the greatest peacemakers of all time, Francis of Assisi: “Lord, let me be an instrument of Thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console, To be understood as to understand, To be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are par- doned; It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.” Nataraj
Ishaya is an Ishaya monk and a teacher of the Ishayas’ Ascension in San
Miguel. He welcomes your comments and inquiries by phone at 154-9793 or email at
sma_ishayas@yahoo.com |