People are very eager to have a peaceful situation in their minds and in the world. Despite many endeavors, peace is always a very rare commodity. So how to achieve peace according to Krishna consciousness philosophy? That is explained in the following article.
in order to understand what is peace we can start by studying the opposite. just like by studying a shadow we may get an idea about a substance. the opposite of peace is conflict. how does a conflict arises? people try to serve their senses: their eyes, tongues, ears, touch, noses. it is foolish to try to serve our senses, because we are not the senses. we are the consciousness that perceives the enjoyment of the senses. by trying to satisfy our senses, we come into conflict with other people who also try to satisfy their senses and there is competition. everyone is trying to compete about who satisfy his or her senses the most. this is called ignorance. instead of trying to satisfy ourselves, we are trying to satisfy our senses. it can be compared to a driver in a car. the driver may put gas in the car and the car may function very nicely, but if the driver does not take food, he dies. similarly, we may satisfy our bodily needs, but if we do not satisfy our spiritual thirst, we will not be happy. since people are not happy by serving their senses, they try to serve senses of others. in this way their circle of serving expands from their individual bodies to bodies of their families, communities, states and international organizations, but since the original desire to satisfy one's individual senses and mind is always there, the conflict simply expands and we see that one family fights with another family, one community is fighting another community and one country is preparing bombs to destroy other countries.
therefore if we change our activity from satisfying the senses to satisfying the senses of krishna, there will be peace. who is krishna? Krishna is the supreme personality of Godhead. He is an individual person with his senses but at the same time he is all-pervading. He has many names, but his original name is Krsna- which means all-attractive. He is attractive to everyone, not just humans but also animals and plants. His all-pervasivness can be compared to sun. The sun being situated at the specific spot in the universe pervades all the planets through its sunshine. Similarly, although Krishna is one, He pervades all the universe through his energy. Everything we see around us is his energy. We ourselves and all the living entities are His superior energy. Therefore if we try to satisfy Krsna's senses instead of our senses, we become truly satisfied and peaceful. This satisfaction is not selfish as in the case when we try to satisfy our senses separately. By satisfying Krsna, all living entities become satisfied since they are his parts and parcels. In this way, all families, communities, countries will be peaceful and there will be no conflict. It is just like if one throws a stone in a lake, the ripples from the stone expand but never clash with one another since they have a common center. But if we throw many stones at the same time, there will be many clashes. Similarly, if all our energy is invested in serving the Supreme Godhead and we make this the center of our activities, there will be no clash nor conflict amongst us. But if we all try to individually serve our personal interests, it is unavoidable that we will clash and fight. Therefore to find real peace is to satisfy Krsna, the supreme center of all energies.
Comments