Being at Peace

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
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I’m sure this has been discussed numerous times in this forums past, but presently I am greatly interested in what it means to find peace from within. Lets abandon religious and spiritual meaning here for, although useful, these meanings can misconstrue reality. They more often than not reflect reality, but strict adherence to a certain code of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour ultimately distracts us from finding true peace.
I’m not sure what exactly i mean by peace. But for me, finding “inner peace” (could not avoid that cliche if I tried) is about getting a regular satisfaction out of life. I think I was most at peace with myself when I was a child. Obviously there is a lot of turmoil created by the emotional distress of growing up, but the experience is if anything a complete delight. Childhood is spent sheltered from the harsh realities of an evolutionary playground. The troubles of our world are created by natures inner turmoil, the very nature of existence dictates that when there are finite resources and multitudes of different organism’s… there will be competition. As a child we are sheltered from this experience, totally oblivious to the task which lies ahead of us.
If you have a healthy childhood, you will stand a decent chance of success. Some grow up and either become totally accepting or completely disillusioned by the whole trauma of becoming an adult, forming solid opinions of the world around us. Who else found this difficult? Sure, the ideas came thick and fast… but they were ever changing, evolving. Discovering hard truths about reality… was hard.
Childhood represents a period in our lives which is most satisfactory, all of our needs are attended to with little effort on our own behalf all for the sake of our greatest need… the need to learn. As children we are obsessed with learning and understanding the world so that we may better manipulate it. Our heads are then filled with what we can only know are truths, statements of reality which fit with our own experience of existence. As adults many of us feel satisfied with what we know and feel to be true of reality and just get on with it. Many others, like myself and members of this forum, find themselves craving knowledge in an attempt to further grasp at the idea of reality and how it relates to us. Like the child-self gone past, you still desire a better understanding of your environment and your species within it.
I guess that what inner peace boils down to is learning how to effectivley satisfy ones needs. I believe there are around 12 or more important aspects to life which, if satisfied, can provide a feeling of inner peace. A feeling of satisfaction, acceptance even.
Perhaps inner peace can be found in acceptance of reality as you can understand it, or perhaps there are those who have to satisfy their need to better understand reality by constantly craving for knowledge, solid truths. I suppose philosophy is a mix of both lust for solid truth and gradual acceptance that solid truth cannot always be attained. Im tempted to argue the importance of attending to ones needs, but perhaps acceptance has a role to play. For many it brings peace and content.

What do you feel brings inner peace?

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Wow, such a question is so easily the food for argument (conflict, non-peace). :confused:

Exactly what causes the lack of peace must be removed. So what causes the lack of peace, that boredom, anxiety, frustration, yearning, want, and uneasiness? What causes dis-ease? It is a long topic. Buddhism is very specifically designed to address exactly that one question. But from where to start.

One cannot sense dis-ease without want for what is not. By removing all want, one can free oneself of all dis-ease. But can one really remove all want? Is removing all want really wise?

Clarify, Verify, and Remember the Hopes and Threats toward Self-Harmony through Delightfully Developing Eternal Maximum Momentum

There is WAY too much to say on this topic.

Want only for that within reach.
Reach only for that in need.
Have need only for what is there.
Invite or accept nothing more.

Anything else you do increases dis-ease.

:twocents-mytwocents:

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Why would you want inner peace?

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Why wouldn’t one want inner peace? Confusion and inner turmoil ain’t cool or chic.

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Lately for me it has been enjoying the simple and never ending (until we die) pleasure of breathing, and letting everything else (especially my thoughts) revolve around that.

It’s rather hedonistic, but it works wonders.

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…that’s a very meditative/Buddhist way to be - from breathing, all things spiral outwards, which we call… life.

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This is lame. Why? Because so many things happen before one can even acknowledge breathing.

It strikes me as though many things happen/develop/are thought of before unconscious reflexes things are noted. Breathing is not the start from which everything spirals outward from. This is just a “nice” way of thinking, as are all religions. One needs to be unBuddhist before one can be Buddhist - you cannot let go of the self before you acknowledge a self to be rid of.

Somewhere down the line, it was realised that if we stopped breathing, we died. And since death is ‘bad’, we venerate breathing and from this point onwards, only then does breathing seem pretty fundamental. Breathing exercises make us feel good, and help us meditate - perhaps on the problem of there not being any Buddhists before one is socialised in a way that is contrary to Buddhism. There are no feral Buddhists. Nor religious feral children. Religion is something to tame the feral beast and take it away from fundamentals. To then say that religion is fundamental is pure ignorance. Fundamentally, we are atheist.

This brings me back to this point. If you want to revisit your fundamental roots, one chooses a lack of peace. There is no shelter from suffering and desire for the inner beast. The idea that suffering and desire were things to be avoided came much much later, from a desire to cope with an overabundance of suffering and unsatisfied desire. For those who succeeded more than average, suffering was not too much. For those who succeeded more than average, desires were mostly satisfied. They would not find these things a problem.

Religions, and philosophies like Buddhism, are for those below average. Lack of peace is what makes life interesting for everyone else.

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My life from about the age 17-24 (I’m 25 now) was spent theorizing about everything under the sun and under the moon. I sought out every horrifying thought possible. I held truth to be of the highest value, and was willing to suffer for it (and oh I did!) until my death.

I became a Nietzschean. I fought against Christian/Buddhist life denial and sought to affirm the whole of existence with everything painful and horrible included. I went that route, and I’m grateful to the stars that I did, but I am simply to old for this shit now (see my username)

I seek peace. Yes, I still seek chaos from time to time. The untamed beast still resides within me and by no means do I look at it (or my "Ego) as “bad”. I still haven’t changed my attitude of trying to accept and love nature and its process as it is. I do not seek an end-all-be-all “Enlightenment” that will release me for ever and ever from all suffering. However, I am tired. I am tired. Breath gives me peace, and also clarity; I can observe my thoughts and emotions (and their connection) much more effortlessly when I focus on the pleasure that my breath gives me.

Can I be accused of denying life and its ugly truths? Do I crave death? do I crave extinction? Most likely yes, and I say all the better for it. I am “below average”, not fit to be a Ubermensch, a sick decadent.

Now let me just breath in peace will you go ahead and actually give a shit about all of this.

Omm

Peace be with you

9

Not “everyone”, only the sick and twisted.

Actually what I consider to be one of the greatest misleading concepts of all time is that life ever really seeks Peace. It has actually always sought Harmony, not Peace. The confusion comes in when one has to seek in the direction of total peace just to get away from the extreme chaos. Harmony lay between the two extremes and is the only actual beneficiary.

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Interesting. Did anyone else notice that it was the advocates of peace that first responded with hostility in their replies. Someone asked a question: why would you want inner peace? There was no hostility in it, except what the readers supplied for themselves. And they did. I’m not really sure what this observation is meant to imply about the topic at hand, but I do find it humorous.

Incidentally, my logical mind says that turmoil in life is a constant and therefore you can’t find peace until you accept it, but thats just words to me.

In my case, I vary greatly from wanting peace, to wanting all out war. Typically, I only want the peace side of things when things are chaotic, and I want the chaos when things are peaceful. For me, the grass is always so mockingly GREENER.

But I love every second of it.

Except the ones I hate.

Which I then grow to love for the fruit they bear.

I’m so sorry for this tangental post, but I’m going to submit anyway.

Fromlostdays.

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Interestingly, I wrote something very much along these lines in my website http://www.mm-theory.com/pracapp/pracapp.htm#neurology and the child’s mind. It doesn’t say much about what brings inner peace to one’s mind, but it does say something about what is required to learn and adapt - even for adults.

But if the question turns on what does bring inner peace, I do have an opinion or two. But first let me ask you: why do you stop at 12 for the number of aspects in life for achieving inner peace?

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Although I’m not so sure if there were that much “hostility”, it can be normal.
I mean, if one lacks inner peace, one might seek it and venerate it.
Usually, we become hostile to protect something, like beliefs and other idea/matter of importance for oneself. As the idea/necessity of inner peace was questioned, it can be felt as the attack against something important for oneself.
And thus the lack of “inner peace” may express itself in inner and outward conflict/hostility, ironically.

The irony is a little similar to someone shouting loud “BE QUIET !”. :slight_smile:

This type of things happens often, I think. And we see many people doing exact opposit of what they desire, because that i how they are and because we often desire the opposite of how we are.

I think that probably all creatures have the tendency to run away (or at least try to do so) from anything “negative” (or so interpreted)from the lowest level of functions.
It means it would be practically impossible to accept all negatives.

Peace, in its extreme would be the lack of any activity/movement and thus death or even non-existence, I’d say.
In other words, unless one recognizes oneself and identifies with the total inner peace (death, non-existence, void), somehow, to the deepest layer of all cognitive and other interpretive systems, there would remain the longing for the peace, most probably.
However, this type of recognition is hostile against usual idea/desire for the living/activities that it would not happen to many people.
It means most people/creatures will not have the inner peace and will struggle for it and thus have even less peace because of the struggle. And it’s possibly how the life keep moving and moving . :slight_smile:

But this is when we consider things to the deepest level of peace.

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…but when the mind is void of all… distractions, then all we can hear/focus on is our breathe.

All living things respire, otherwise they would not be… living - life does indeed then spiral out from this… process, into the many realms of living species:

…actually, the most intelligent amongst us make their lives as simple/peaceful/stress-free as they can (under their current circumstance, of course) but that does not mean that it is/has to be devoid of fun/excitement/interest, infact, I would say… that one is more at liberty to enjoy life without any confusion/turmoil/drama…

14

Achieving inner piece is like putting a bouncer on the door to your mind, so as to inspect ones emotions, rather than letting them flood in unchecked.

When one can achieve that self-awareness, one asses one’s emotional responses to one’s situation, and thus gaining the ability to determine one’s reactions in a fashion more consciously elective.

Inner conflict, born of guilt, occurs when, through reflection on ones actions or potential actions(options), ones emotions conflict with ones conscience. The only way to negate guilt, is to give in completely to emotion, or to completely use reason.

Whether either of these are possible, is debatable, but buddhism is the conscious determination, and hedonism is the emotional determination.
If you use the methods of one to achive the other, such as using buddhist meditation to achieve hedonistic harmony, you are what you achieve, hedonistic, not the origin of what you do to achieve it, buddhist.

If you can deal with genuine, unequated, inner conflict, by that I mean you can function in society in a stable way, then more power to your delusion that, either you have real inner conflict, or that you are functioning.

15

I may be missing something, but isn’t the issue really about contentment? Contentment recognizes both tranquility and chaos, pain and pleasure, and all the dichotomies of which humans are so fond. It seems to me that recognizing and being at ease with our black and whites, our ups and downs, our rational and irrational selves, is the mature state of being.

I see no perfect unified state of being as possible. What is human is to discriminate and to discriminate, to say this - not that, is a dialectical process that is hard-wired in every human being. I would think that peace (or contentment) happens when we embrace rather than contend…

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Yes, making it a very deliberate and artificial mindset. Conscious change to a mindset that is not the normal, or the initial… in what way is this addressing the fundamental - the first?

It is addressing the simplistic, the benign, self-reduction, forgetfulness.
(These are all relative terms that require knowledge of their opposite, and inclination away from it.)

Yes, I acknowledged this: if breathing stops, so does animal life. Just like if eating and drinking stops, but Buddhism isn’t centred around starting from eating…

Buddhists would be a lot more fat. Breathing is chosen because of the effects of wanting to be simple, small, forgetful and tame. Drop as much of life as possible, and what you’re left with becomes a lot more manageable. This is hardly an indication of intelligence - the intelligent are the most capable at dealing with as much as possible: the exact opposite!!!

The fact that many intelligent people are Buddhists is actually much more to do with the indirect effects of being intelligent - but even more than this, it is do with decadent society. When society has succeeded and has little left to do but maintain its success, its need to succeed turns against itself and starts to eat away at itself: when there is so little left to gain from outside of the individual, and the need to work together has passed its sell-by-date, the individual turns to “improving” itself. Since it can’t make itself more than it is, it can only reduce itself in the hope that other areas of it will grow. Buddhism is this process taken to its end. It’s hardly surprising that it was founded by an obscenely rich decadent who was deliberately removed from life by his parents!

Intelligence in the context of a decadent society means “getting really good at undoing oneself”, essentially reversing its meaning.

The pharmacist originated in the priest, who had an eye for dissatisfaction. No one has surpassed this type in seeing ‘bad’ in the world.

This is because more was bad in the world to him - because he was sick and twisted! Unfit for the world, the world’s badness stuck out for him more than ever out of necessity. Only then could this type medicate himself and others to become something that he could cope with.

Most “sick and twisted” to this sick and twisted type were the healthy. They were the greatest source of oppression to this type because they were so much more capable, taking the most from life - leaving the sick and twisted ones with so little. The most ingenious reversal of values ensued here: the most healthy were transformed into the least healthy! They were crippled with talk of an invisible power greater than them, who would punish them in the afterlife for being healthy - that is, sick and twisted…

A result of the medicating (making mediocre) compulsion of the pharmacist-priest. The most middle-of-the-road attitude ever.

I don’t think contentment really cuts it either, but I do think that the attitude being discussed relies on the assumption that “peace” equates with “contentment”, which equates with “preference”. And that anything that is least preferred should be eradicated (or discarded and forgotten in the case of Buddhism).

This is the source of my quarrel. Even what you prefer isn’t always the best, nevermind contentment and peace. Discontentment and war, dissatisfaction - these aren’t just sometimes best, they’re also inseparable from their opposites! In what way is contentment “contentment” unless there is discontentment in order to relatively even recognise it?! You can only earn peace after you have had war to compare it to.

War, discontentment and un-preference are only bad if one has a particular talent for being terrible at them, or coping with them.

They become the norm ONLY to those who struggle to get on top of them. Only then can it become a life-long quest to seek its alleviation.

17

Intelligent or not, people can only cope with so much stress before stress-related diseases/burn-out set in :confusion-shrug:

…anyway, I don’t think it’s actually down to intelligence but to personal preferences, to function/thrive on inner-peace or outer-turmoil.

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Silhouette, mindfulness of breathing is an exercise utilized by many people the world over as a way of developing the power of attention. The point is initially to calm the discursive mind. The reason to calm the discursive mind is so that our intelligence can be effectively utilized to see the world without delusion. It is a simple human endeavor, like learning your abc’s when you’re little so that you can read and write and interact conceptually with other intelligent people.

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It works too.

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If I’m not mistaken, I have three of the more prolific female posters nipping at my heels, I wonder if this is co-incidence?

Perhaps I show myself to be too removed from the world when I assume that the ability to calm the discursive mind is merely mediocre? I have no doubt that mindfulness works towards this end, that it reduces stress, and that it is a simple human endeavour - to quote all three of you. But perhaps it is a middle-class overestimation to expect simple mental stress-reducing control from the majority of the population.

I didn’t actually intend to go here, and it’ll probably open up an unpeaceful succession of replies, but considering the possibly co-incidental pattern that just revealed itself: it has not escaped my notice that females use more words in a day than males, and that females are more advanced and proficient socialisers/sympathisers. Disregarding arguments of “what constitutes the ‘average’ female” and “does this exist?” and “what about the many who are equal to or less proficient to males?”, I’m going to allow myself to use some patterns and similarities I’ve gathered from my experience, and experience of other people’s experiences. Obviously this may yet again show some removal from the world on my part…

I see proficient socialisation and empathy as blooming through mindless chit-chat. As such, discursive nattering is an invaluable human tool and it should not necessarily been seen as an improvement when this is ceased - in favour of controlled mindful silence and concentration. Perhaps it is only even possible for those of higher intelligence to do this. I hardly see this as the end of the journey of self discovery though. I have developed too great a respect for natural emergences to assume that diverging from norms is best. Time and time again, I see that the natural emergence was simply underestimated, and one would do well to revisit it.

There is too much value in mindless discourse, the self and war to follow a philosophy/religion that’s sole goal is to eliminate these things from one’s life. Is mental control so hard for even the intelligent that they have to make it their life’s sole goal to devote themselves to this task?

For all the mindfulness, simplicity, inner tameness and forgetfulness that Buddhism affords you - and learning these abilities will serve you extremely well in certain situations - to stop here is both unnatural and foolish. For the rest of the situations, one needs warlikeness, largeness, complexity and mindlessness - and even if by chance one didn’t need these things, one would be missing out on huge parts of life if they restricted themselves from them. I see a restricted life as mediocre, so maybe I just have extremely high standards when not even high intelligence is good enough when it stops at Buddhism.