622. Peaceful Life

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.