How tough it was for you to achieve inner peace?

This question assumes that one is trying to achieve anything? One is not trying to achieve anything because one has seen that trying to achieve anything, whether it is peace or money, brings about conflict in oneself.

Let’s try to understand the whole movement of achievement. When we want to achieve something, we set an aim. After setting an aim we move towards that aim. Let’s look at this further.

If I want to achieve inner peace, I must have some idea of what is inner peace. How do we create this idea? Don’t we create this idea as an opposite to the state of conflict we are in? We could not have created an idea of peace if we did not have the experience of conflict. So the idea of peace contains the experience of conflict in it. The idea we create, contains it’s opposite. The idea of peace contains it’s opposite – conflict. Both opposites always go together.

The second thing we see is this whole movement from ‘what is’ to ‘what should be’. First we are in conflict, then we create an idea of peace from this conflict, project it into the future and then move towards it. Now, can a mind which is constantly trying to move from ‘what is’ to ‘what should be’, ever be free from conflict. The very movement of becoming is causing conflict. A mind which is free is not in any state of effort, isn’t it?

So what can one do if one observes these facts? Instead of making an opposite idea of a fact and pursuing it, can one observe conflict as it is, without trying to move away from it, modifying it or escaping it through an opposite idea. When one stays with the fact of conflict, is there any conflict? In such a state, the mind will not even put a label ‘conflict’ to what it is observing.

How do we recognize a particular movement of mind as ‘conflict’? Isn’t it when we compare what is happening in our mind against some idea. In this case, we say we are in conflict when we compare it with the idea of peace we have constructed. Suppose I have no idea of peace in my mind. Then will the mind label any movement as conflict? Once we do not label any movement in our mind, there is freedom for the mind to watch it without trying to change it. In this freedom to observe choicelessly, there is silence.