Peace Is So Ordinary We Reject It

An early morning meditation talk given by Sri Swami Atmaswarupananda on October 11, 2014, at Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh (The Divine Life Society). Swamiji opens with the universal search for happiness, citing Swami Chidananda's dictum that without peace there is no happiness, and traces how people pursue peace through alcohol, vacations, yoga and meditation before discovering that peace is not an object to be attained but the nature of the essential "I." The search itself disturbs our essential peace, he says, because seeking it as something separate from ourselves only moves us further away; our practices instead should expose how the ego's endless insistence that "I must be at peace" is itself the obstacle. This peace cannot be grasped by the mind as an object; it is realized only by intuition, higher than direct experience, revealing itself to the mind rather than being forced into being. Because it has always been present, its recognition is undramatic and ordinary — so ordinary that we reject it as too simple. Swamiji closes by asking whether we can be like a little child and accept something so plain. Swami Atmaswarupananda was born in Canada in 1925. In 1974, he came to Sivanandashram at the suggestion of his Guru, His Holiness Swami Chidananda, the President of The Divine Life Society. After twenty years, spent primarily in a life of study and reflection, his Guru asked him to give a brief talk each morning at the conclusion of the early morning meditation gatherings. He offered these talks daily for many years. This channel preserves the portion that was captured between 2012 to 2016, along with his lectures at the Yoga Vedanta Forest Academy. A selection of his talks was published by the Divine Life Society as the book "Trust God." Om Namo Bhagavate Sivanandaya Om Namo Bhagavate Chidanandaya