How can I gain peace

How can I gain peace

How can I gain peace

 
Questioner: If my real self is peace and love, why is it so restless?
Maharaj: It is not your real being that is restless, but its reflection in the mind appears restless because the mind is restless. It is just like the reflection of the moon in the water stirred by the wind. The wind of desire stirs the mind, and the ‘me’, which is but a reflection of the Self in the mind, appears changeful. But these ideas of movement, of restlessness, of pleasure and pain are all in the mind. The Self stands beyond the mind, aware, but unconcerned.

Q: How to reach it?
M: You are the Self, here and now. Leave the mind alone, stand aware and unconcerned and you will realize that to stand alert but detached, watching events come and go, is an aspect of your real nature.

Q: What are the other aspects?
M: The aspects are infinite in number. Realize one, and you will realize all.

Q: Tell me some thing that would help me.
M: You know best what you need!

Q: I am restless. How can I gain peace?
M: For what do you need peace?

Q: To be happy.
M: Are you not happy now?

Q: No, I am not.
M: What makes you unhappy?

Q: I have what I don’t want, and want what I don’t have.
M: Why don’t you invert it: want what you have and care not for what you don’t have?

Q: I want what is pleasant and don’t want what is painful.
M: How do you know what is pleasant and what is not?

Q: From past experience, of course.
M: Guided by memory you have been pursuing the pleasant and shunning the unpleasant. Have you succeeded?

Q: No, I have not. The pleasant does not last. Pain sets in again.
M: Which pain?

Q: The desire for pleasure, the fear of pain, both are states of distress. Is there a state of unalloyed pleasure?
M: Every pleasure, physical or mental, needs an instrument. Both the physical and mental instruments are material, they get tired and worn out. The pleasure they yield is necessarily limited in intensity and duration. Pain is the background of all your pleasures. You want them because you suffer. On the other hand, the very search for pleasure is the cause of pain. It is a vicious circle.

Q: I can see the mechanism of my confusion, but I do not see my way out of it.
M: The very examination of the mechanism shows the way. After all, your confusion is only in your mind, which never rebelled so far against confusion and never got to grips with it. It rebelled only against pain.

Q: So, all I can do is to stay confused?
M: Be alert. Question, observe, investigate, learn all you can about confusion, how it operates, what it does to you and others. By being clear about confusion, you become clear of confusion.
 
Nisargadatta Maharaj – I am That
The Self Stands Beyond Mind
Item 8 b

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