Everyone in the world wants to achieve what they desire the most. For that purpose, they set a goal, work hard ceaselessly in the desired direction until they reach their goal. Fulfilling this desire seems like the primary objective of one’s life. But in this journey from being born till meeting the maker, unintentionally and unknowingly, we constantly chase the real primary aim, and that is to find pure inner peace. To this, every other goal, achievement merely matter. The one who finds the perfect peace and attains absolute stability has grown exponentially compared to the one who reaches his personal purpose. In the journey to reach the final aim of one’s life, one serendipitously hunts for his greater purpose.
Perfect peace refers to the state of one’s mind and body where one secludes oneself from the continuous tussle of the rushing world and its desires. He now knows the main motive of the life given to him… to raise his consciousness and make things easier for him in the next life. He now performs actions not to bear the fruits but only to desirelessly enact the role given to him by the higher forces. He flows with the wind and tides and rides every wave with the faith that they will take him ashore.
Some of us may not connect or disagree with the wording above. For those, let’s take some examples:
Let’s say there is someone who wants to be a millionaire in the future. If you ask him his goal, he would respond:
I want to make so much money that I do not have to worry about anything ever. I would sit in my mansion sipping some tea, flicking open the newspaper on a rocking chair, just acknowledging the beautiful view outside my yard.
The words he says, “that that I do not have to worry about anything ever”, clearly show that behind his intentions to become a millionaire is hidden a path to finding the perfect peace. He wants his mind to be free of all the worldly worries and get rid of all the tensions of his life, forget the struggles of his past, and just enjoy the present with sips of tea.
Let’s take another example:
If you meet a footballer, he would say:
I want to score the most goals in the world and break all records. I want to perform so well that upon my retirement, when I look back, I can finally say that I achieved everything there was and can sit back and enjoy my retirement.
Here too, we can see the main purpose in his life is to not have any regrets that would pull him into the past where he doesn’t want to be. He wants to look back on all the good memories, which would quench his thirst he once had to achieving everything. Now he wants to live his remaining life quietly and peacefully. Unlike the previous example, he doesn’t want to be a millionaire. This, to him, is the perfect peace.
So what so ever be the goals in life, the main glorious purpose of one’s subconscious is to find the perfect peace.
Quoting The Bhagvad Gita,
यः सर्वत्रानभिस्नेहस्तत्त्रिप्तोऽत्मनात्मना।
योधि न द्वेष्टि न काङ्क्षे स शान्तिमधिगच्छति।।
Which translates to “One who is not disturbed by the incessant flow of desires — who is free from longing, who is contented and mentally steady — can attain peace.”
The one who performs actions undifferentiated by the outcome and consequences reaches one step closer to being the one with God and gets to know the real meaning of life. The one who understands that his actions and their fruits belong not to him but the Almighty itself and does not long for rewards for his actions is free of desires and karma itself. The one who curves his boat with the streams of life is the one who reaches the land, and the one who tries to go against the flow might feel in control for a moment but ends up losing his boat to the tides.
The one who understands that he who does not follow the wheel of creation set of going in this world (does not perform his duties), sinful and sensual, he lives in vain, and whatever happens is bound to happen irrespective of his efforts, is the one who attains the perfect peace and becomes a ‘yogi – the one with god’. Supreme peace, or the perfect peace, is attained through devotion, selflessness, and surrender to God. Always choose peace by controlling desires, practising detachment, and embracing wisdom. Yes, it is the human tendency to react to an incident happening in his life, but it is our choice whether to accept it as it is or launch complaints like “Why always me?”, “Why only I am to suffer?”.
The one with the peace has the mental and physical solidity to accept the past, enjoy the present and leave the future in the hands of the supreme.
But to know and implement all of this in our real life, we need to give a regular reminder to ourselves so that we can finally embrace the truth and get a step closer to finding the perfect peace.
The question is whether we are ready to accept this supreme truth and can we incorporate this message into our lifestyle?
The ones who find the worldly attachments and relations amusing are the farthest from grasping this truth.
We took some examples above showing that everybody wants peace. But does one ever achieve it?
Like the person who wants to be a millionaire. After becoming a millionaire, instead of sitting in a chair sipping tea, full of greed and ego, he tries and desires to become a billionaire, and after that, the richest man in the world. In this process, he who was at the doorstep of claiming the perfect peace is now miles away from the truth.
Or the footballer who wants to have every achievement to his name. If he even misses claiming one, he would always have that kink in his mind that he was not able to have everything, even if he becomes the greatest footballer of all time. This kink arises due to the overhunger, which eats away at his path to find the perfect peace after retirement.
The person who once wanted to become a writer just to fulfil his passion now hunts for glory and recognition from the outer world, making him impatient, altering his passion into something which repels him from attaining what he once unknowingly desired… quietude that he once got from writing until writing was just a passion.
So, we need to understand that all that we do, all that we get and all that we are supposed to do, we only have control over how we do it or how efficiently we do it. After completing the process, we must leave its consequences in the hands of the almighty because even if we lose the battle, the one sitting above, seeing us going headlong in this race, would always make us win the war. He knows that, like a little child, we won’t understand his decisions at the very instant, but after some time, we will understand that what he did was for the greater good.
Understanding and assimilating this is the prime path to godliness and to quenching the hunt for the perfect peace.