The Meaning of Peace

The term  peace  has many interconnected meanings.  The most basic principle of peace is a freedom from disturbances and oppressive thoughts and emotions within oneself and within a larger group of individuals.  On a grand scale peace can be defined as a freedom from conflict among all in humankind.  But what if peace is really more than that?  What if the peace we seek is something altogether different from the way we have come to define it? 

To illustrate this point I’d like to direct your attention toward a new concept of thought.  Just because we experience a lack of pain does not indicate an experience of pleasure, nor does an absence of hatred indicate love.  A simple absence of anything does not necessarily by default produce the opposite measure.  The absence of disease doesn’t necessarily indicate health.  There are other variables involved in all of these things. 

An absence of conflict does not indicate peace.  It indicates a dormancy of conflict.  Peace must be continually generated and produced within ourselves.  We can’t bombard the world with peace simply by refraining from conflict.  There must be an action.  That action begins deep inside. And it begins within our thoughts and the spaces between them.