Peace is often misunderstood as a state of inactivity or the absence of conflict, but it's much more profound than that. True peace is the inherent self-sufficiency and completeness of actuality. It's the recognition that everything is in perfect balance and harmony with itself, regardless of how it appears.
Peace is not about achieving a static state where nothing happens or where everything is calm and serene. Instead, it's about recognizing the effortless flow and dynamic equilibrium of reality. Whether it's the chaos of a storm or the tranquility of a quiet moment, everything is in perfect harmony with its own nature.
This peace is not something you find as an object or achieve through effort. It's the natural state of being when you stop resisting what is and see the inherent perfection in every moment. It's the realization that everything is unfolding exactly as it should, without any need for intervention or control.
So, peace is the effortless inclusion of all experiences, the recognition that everything is already complete and whole. It's about seeing the inherent balance and harmony in the flow of life, no matter how it manifests.
How does this perspective on peace resonate with your own experiences and understanding?
The sources below helped generate your response ...
- But peace may be something other than you think it is at any given point in your relationship with actuality.
It's easy to think of peace as being opposite of, I mean there's a lot of ways of holding peace. Some people think of peace as an opposite of activity or an opposite of dynamism or the opposite of being out of control or the opposite of energy or the opposite of emotion or what have you.
I would say peace is the spontaneous entire self-sufficiency of actuality.
Actuality is taking care of every aspect of itself in real time. And that's a load off. You have zero responsibility because the entire thing is being done by that which is doing it.
And that's already the case and that's observably a discoverability case. And to me I would say that's peace. But it's not a piece of eventlessness, it's not a piece of emotionlessness, it's not even a piece of happiness or anything.
But it is a very interesting and powerful and profound discovery or observation, the actuality of that and the self-verifying truth of that fact.
And suffering comes in if you resist that actuality. And the only way to resist actuality is not recognizing it. And the only way to not recognize it is to exercise imagination and hold the imagination to be actual in the face of actual actuality.
[Inaudible]
Definability or conscious intention doesn't generate functionality.
Source: 2013.zip: 2013 07 20... - It's peace in the sense that there is nothing left to be achieved
nothing to avoid, nothing to struggle with.
Personally, I would say conundrums are irrelevant
they're not resolved.
Problems stop being problematic.
They aren't solved but they stop being problems.
I think they're not really there.
So in that sense it's peace.
It's not a simplistic, sort of a new agey idea
of peace of sort of lying back with a shooting grin on your face
and smelling daisies all day or something.
Although you could probably do that if you could get away with it.
I don't think daisies have any smell.
It's an old expression.
What's that?
It's an old expression.
What is? Push up daisies.
Push up daisies, smell the roses.
You know, reality is totally peaceful
in the sense that everything is in perfect balance.
It's a perfect dynamic equilibrium.
And it's also completely peaceful.
It's also perfectly peaceful in the sense that
there is nothing that an individual needs to do.
There's no effort required.
[silence]
I found that when I...
whatever happened to me happened,
that I started to become aware of things that I was not aware of before.
Like now, when I dream, I always know I'm dreaming.
Before, I didn't.
I used to get totally, 100% involved in the dream.
And I still dream, of course.
On some level or another, I know it's as unreal as this is.
And everyday life.
That was one of the surprises.
Source: 2012.zip: 2012 11 18... - But peace, when you say peace, peace in what context?
What is it peace in what context, in what relationship?
The absence of how I was seeing things previously.
Okay. So the absence of how you were seeing things previously.
So peace with regards to a previous struggle. It was peaceful with regards to a previous lack of peace.
But then, if you ignore the previous lack of peace,
which sort of cancels out the peace that you feel as the absence.
It's like it feels so good when you stop banging your head against the wall.
But then forget about banging your head against the wall, then what is it?
Well, you can say, "Well, it's peace. Sure, it's love. Sure, it's everything.
Sure, it's nothing. Sure, it's light. Sure, it's dark. Sure, it's consciousness. Sure, it's absolute lack of being. Sure, it's absolute in oneness. Sure, it's absolute manyness. Sure."All of these notions apply.
But none of them are definitive. None of them pin it down.
None of them say, "Yeah, that's... Oh yeah, you got it. That's it. Finally, the final definition."Because what it is, is beyond categories.
Well, I had another experience where it was clear that it was all about beyond opposites,
beyond, as you say, pinning it down.
This particular time, it seemed as though I was pinning it down by saying it was love.
But I have seen where the truth can't be pinned down.
Source: 2010.zip: 2010 04 21... - Yes it's love but love can look like anything. Yes it's peace but peace can look like anything. The peace that it is is a peace of absolute integration with itself, absolute equilibrium with itself. So the war in Iraq is actually a totally peaceful occurrence because it's completely in equilibrium with its own flow, its own dynamic energy is perfectly in peace with that expression of itself. A waterfall is in a state of perfect peace as the water effortlessly goes over and obeying the laws of physics goes exactly the way it should go without fighting with itself whatsoever. Totally in harmony with itself. We humans with our chaos and our pathetic social systems and all that, we're totally in harmony. All of this pathetic nature that we have is an effortless flowing of its actual qualities in action. So the universe is unfolding without friction. That's peace. So peace is peace. But if you're looking for a childish kindergarten idea of peace you're not going to find it and you're going to think you haven't found it because you're looking for too limited a thing. If you think you know what it's going to be you'll miss it. Because it is what it is. It's not what you think it ought to be. You can't tell God what to be. It doesn't work that way.
Source: 2008.txt... - You don't find peace as an object, but peace is the fullness and completeness of the inherent
condition.
It's never threatened by itself.
It never departs from itself.
And it is a condition of absolute fullness and completeness.
So, even though it never lets you land anywhere, you're always landed.
Subjectively, to me, it feels more like an enabled capacity for being.
And so, I can always find that.
I can always experience that.
That's always there somehow.
Even when I'm tossing and turning in bed or whatever, it's like, I know that all that
is happening in this capacity for radiance.
And it's enabled in its own...
It's empowered.
It empowers itself.
It has authority.
It has force.
And that forcefulness is ultimately trustworthy and self-verifying.
What's going on?
Here, here.
Peter, could you talk a little bit more about the peace aspect, but when you were talking
about when you're with a particular, let's say, flavor or energy, and then you shift
a little bit, it's the same flavor, but that whole thing...
Yeah.
Well, nothing has a way that it actually is.
And it can seem to be infinitely different from itself just by slightly shifting your
perspective on essentially the same thing.
I'm using words like the same thing as inaccurate because there's no things to be the same or
not.
So, it's not actually like that.
Source: 2014.zip: 2014 03 10... - Because peace can be defined as non-resistance to what is as it is. But does it necessarily look like sitting here with a shit eating grin on your face staring at the wall? Maybe it looks like punching people in the grocery store line. The whole chariot story of Arjuna in the dialogue. Sure. Would Krishna telling all of them to get out there and pick it and kill each other, would that constitute peace? I mean, I think it was nothing that really happened. Would it not constitute peace? Who can say? Again, you have these qualities likeā¦ We are defining these qualities like peace, we are defining all these qualities and again reality does not have qualities. We are looking at reality and saying, oh there is peace or there is chaos. There is no sign. Reality is not giving us a sign saying here is peace. Reality is not giving us a sign saying here is chaos. Reality is just being and we are imposing these labels. We are saying, oh no this is peace, this is a good situation, this is compassion, this is happiness, this is suffering. Reality is just doing its thing. It is doing its thing as a whole, as one, as a united front with itself. We are breaking it up into all these subcategories and categorizations and all of that. Do they inherit? Are they real? Does reality necessarily come in these cubbyholes that we are trying to put it in?
Source: 2007.txt... - It's like kindergarten where they've grown up to taking care of you and there's snacks and everything's good and no one gets any owies and everything is okay. We all go have fun and we rock, play in the sun. It's a very infantile idea of peace and happiness, of a dumbing down version of okayness.
True peace is in effortless inclusion. It's in the fact that everything is completely, inclusively being done by itself. There's no obligation. There's no effort. It's ease.
Ease is a better word than peace. This is easy. What this is, it's intrinsically easy. It's infinitely easy. It's very peaceful, but it's not a piece, it's not a dull piece of stasis or nothing changing or predictability or anything like that.
But it's a piece of absolute effortless flow. Effortless flow that demands absolutely nothing. It needs nothing because it doesn't demand any, there's no obligation. There's no, it doesn't require.
That's effortless and so that's a big load off because we're used to approaching our lives and saying, "Oh, I have to do this and I have to do that."But when you get to it, wow, this is all doing itself, it feels really nice when you see the trees and the wall.
That is peaceful, but it's not a dull piece. It's a piece of flow. And it is bliss. It is happiness, but again, it's not a happiness of some simplistic absence of anything occurring that you don't like.
Source: 2012.zip: 2012 05 18... - I mean, would that be peace? That's not peace.
Peace is balance.
Peace is the fact that gravity is pulling this bottle down
and the solidity of this chair is supporting the bottle.
So it's the absolute perfect dynamic equilibrium.
The bottle is not complaining. It's not fighting.
It's just perfectly balanced.
What about during an earthquake?
Same thing.
In an earthquake, the earth is a perfect dynamic equilibrium
where the forces within the earth, the tensions that it builds up,
are balancing themselves, and that balancing creates a dynamic process
that makes all the matter around it
also behave in a balancing way as the energy dissipates itself.
It's all perfect.
And the fact that people get maimed and hurt
and things get knocked down is also perfect
because getting maimed and hurt is part of reality.
You're not going to stop people dying.
You're not going to stop physical pain.
How are you going to do that?
You're going to get everyone hooked on junk?
Are you going to just give out general anesthesia
and say, "OK, no more pain anybody."You're going to stop filling your body now.
You walk outside, you trip, and you knock.
Your arm and your elbow break.
It's probably going to hurt.
Is that not love? Is that not peace?
Not really.
It isn't.
What are you going to do about that?
How are you going to stop bones from breaking?
The only way to do that is to be dead.
Source: 2010.zip: 2010 06 13... - But even it's that, and I know it's that, and it's always dynamism too, but there's
still a place...
Oh, there's a wonderful piece to be found, but then when you go into the subtlety of
the piece, all of a sudden there's all this...
There's not even something to believe.
...and you run down there too.
All of it is sort of, the different energy fields are different depending on where you
sit with them, sort of perspective.
I mean, you can be with an energy field and have it just be this beautiful, loving piece
that's just settled.
And then you can be with exactly the same thing from a slightly different angle and
all of a sudden it just takes off.
And it's not anything different.
It's just, because it's not one thing.
It's infinitely multidimensional.
And then you get the sense that even a apparent tumultuous or more rapid energy movement is
that piece.
It just looks different.
I think that, yeah, the piece just comes from knowing, just experiencing it, that has
nothing to do with the quality or the flavor or the taste of the way.
Right.
Yeah, peace is not something you find objectively.
You don't find peace as an object, but peace is the fullness and completeness of the inherent
condition.
It's never threatened by itself.
It never departs from itself.
And it is a condition of absolute fullness and completeness.
Source: 2014.zip: 2014 03 10...