Exploring the Idea of Inner Peace
Inner peace – everyone seeks it but it’s a nebulous concept at best. For most people, its meaning can only be grasped in its absence. We all want to find inner peace. But how? Ask yourself. Do you go about your daily lives mindlessly, working to make enough money, going out with friends to unwind and coming home to family without really seeing them? But underneath it all, is there a hollow feeling, an incompleteness that material things and superficial relationships cannot fulfill?
On the other extreme, desiring the latest gadget but not buying it to prove a doesn’t give you satisfaction either. And you’re realistic enough not to expect relationships to be on a constant high. There will always be problems and challenges in our lives, and most days, we are just coasting along, neither ecstatic nor sad.
Our planet today is vastly different from what it was decades ago. Technology has changed everything. Annihilation in wars don’t require a battalion of armies. Terrorist acts halfway across the globe are broadcasted immediately, as are natural disasters claiming thousands of lives and destroying whole villages. But even people from a distance who are not affected by these appalling events feel the sorrow and pain, and are beset by a sense of anxiety and helplessness. Such is the troubled world we live in.
That said, here are quotes to reflect on that will help you, dear reader, cope with the pervasive angst encompassing our cosmos. These quotes include ones about happiness and acceptance because they are synonymous to inner peace, in my opinion. By themselves, they will not find inner peace for you. But hopefully, they will inspire you and make you contemplate and shift perceptions if necessary.
Quotes to Help You Find Inner Peace
Dalai Lama XIV
1. When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.
2. If a problem can be solved it will be. If it can not be solved there is no use worrying about it.
3. Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.
Buddha
4. Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
5. Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions.
6. A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes. – Hugh Downs
7. But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads. – Albert Camus
8. There is a criterion by which you can judge whether the thoughts you are thinking and the things you are doing are right for you. The criterion is: Have they brought you inner peace? – Peace Pilgrim
9. Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. – unknown
10. Detachment is not that you should own nothing but that nothing should own you.
– Ali ibn abi Talib
11. For peace of mind, we need to resign as general manager of the universe. — Larry Eisenberg
12. If you establish serenity and happiness inside yourself, you provide the world with a solid base of peace. If you do not give yourself peace, how can you share it with others? If you do not begin your peace work with yourself, where will you go to begin it? – Thich Nhat Hanh
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