“World peace must come through inner peace”
– Dalai Lama –
I went to see the Dalai Lama in Sydney yesterday with my friends and this was one of the messages that he had to share with us. Peace starts within.
After he had given his talk Beyond Religion (Ethical Mindfulness in Every Day Life) on the benefits of living ethically, he answered questions for about 45 minutes and one of the questions that came in was “How do we, or I, have an impact on today’s world, when there is so much violence and religious tension? What can we do as an individual?”
And his answer? “Real change, at a global level, must come from the individual. Not through the United Nations or European Parliament. . . we as individuals must start.”
And he went on to say “World peace, must come through inner peace.”
And this is something that has taken me a little while to get my head around. However, through my spiritual journey of late and from reading a fair amount on Buddhism, some of the Dalai Lama’s books like ‘The Art of Happiness’ and most recently Mr Eckhart Tolle’s books, the penny has dropped.
Our thoughts create our reality. Therefore, if we are not at peace inside and in our head, the reality that we experience will not be peaceful.
And it’s very interesting, because the more calmer I have become in my body and in my head, the calmer my life has become. The more love I have given to myself, the more love I have experienced in my life. And the more peace I have found inside, the more peace I have started to witness in my external life.
To some, it might sound too simple, but the beauty and brilliance of this notion, is that it really is that easy.
If for any reason we don’t like what we are experiencing in our external world, all we need to do is look inside and start to change what is happening in the thoughts in our head and the feelings in our bodies, and watch how our external world changes accordingly.
If our life is too fast and too crazy, we need to slow our thoughts down through meditation or yoga perhaps. If our life is sad, angry, or frustrating, we need to be kinder and more loving to ourselves through the thoughts we are thinking, and watch how everything external to us starts to change.
And most importantly, if we are looking for peace in the world, rather than running around trying to change everything outside of us, we must look inwards and seek to be more peaceful in our thoughts and feelings. We need to be the change we desire to see in the world.
You can see the Dalai Lama answering this specific question in the below You Tube clip around 2 hours 47.
Sending you lots of love, hugs and light,
Kat x x x
Inspiration for this post
Kat Kinnie's Blog 