[504] World Scripture - Inner Peace

[대태양/김현수]

Part Four - Family and Society

Chapter 22 - Peace

2) Inner Peace

PEACE BEGINS WITH PEACEFUL INDIVIDUALS. People who attain inner peace radiate peace to others. They possess inner strength, clarity and compassion with which to treat others peacefully, even in the face of hostility. By cultivating what Father Moon calls unity of mind and body, people can become vessels fit to receive God’s abundant love, with which to share with others.

Cultivating inner peace must be the starting-point for all peacemaking efforts in the outer world. No political or economic program can produce a just and equitable peace if the people it seeks to help are full of hatred and violence in their hearts.

World Scripture

Just as a deep lake is clear and still, even so, on hearing the teachings and realizing them, the wise become exceedingly peaceful.

Dhammapada 82 (Buddhism)

Men do not mirror themselves in running water—they mirror themselves in still water. Only what is still can still the stillness of other things.

Chuang Tzu 5 (Taoism)

As rivers flow into the ocean but cannot make the vast ocean overflow, so flow the streams of the sense-world into the sea of peace that is the sage.

Bhagavad-Gita 2.70 (Hinduism)

If a person’s heart is peaceful, his body will be at ease, and if a person’s heart is malicious, the body will be malevolent.

Hadith (Islam)

The Lord lives in the heart of every creature. He turns them round and round upon the wheel of his Maya. Take refuge utterly in Him. By His grace you will find supreme peace, and the state which is beyond all change.

Bhagavad-Gita 18.61-62 (Hinduism)

All this is full. All That is full.
From fullness, fullness comes.
When fullness is taken from fullness,
Fullness still remains.
Om. Peace, peace, peace. 
Isa Upanishad: Peace 

Chant (Hinduism)

The monk looks for peace within himself, and not in any other place. For when a person is inwardly quiet, there is nowhere a self can be found; where, then, could a non-self be found? There are no waves in the depths of the sea; it is still, unbroken. It is the same with the monk. He is still, without any quiver of desire, without a remnant on which to build pride and desire.

Sutta Nipata 919-20 (Buddhism)

What causes wars, and what causes fighting among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

James 4.1-3

Whence come wars, and fighting, and factions? Where but from the body and the lusts of the body? For wars are occasioned by the love of money, and money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the body.

Socrates, in Plato, Phaedo (Hellenism)

Once the good are perfectly good, there can be no war between them. This much is true, however, that while a good man is still on the way to perfection, one part of him can be at war with another of his parts; because of this rebellious element, two good men can be at war with each other. The fact is that in everyone “the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.”

(Gal. 5.17)

Thus, the spiritual longing of one good man can be at war with the fleshly passion of another just as fleshly passion in one man can resist spiritual tendencies in another. And the war here is much like that between good and wicked men. So, too, a good deal like the war of the wicked against the wicked is the rivalry of fleshly desires in two good men, and this will continue until grace wins the ultimate victory of soundness over sickness in both of them.

Saint Augustine, City of God 15.5 (Christianity)

Wage jihad against the desires of your selves, and your hearts will be occupied by wisdom. The best jihad is to ensure that one does not even consider transgressing against others.

Hadith (Islam)

Only when a man invites insult will others insult him. Only when a family invites destruction will others destroy it. Only when a state invites invasion will others invade it. The T’ai Chia says,

When Heaven sends down calamities,
There is hope of weathering them;
When man brings them upon himself,
There is no hope of escape.
Mencius IV.A.8 (Confucianism)

Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know.

Mohandas K. Gandhi (Hinduism)

Teachings of Sun Myung Moon

Can you find peace if your mind and body are fighting? How can you find happiness and peace when your mind and body are not one?

(242:60, December 27, 1992)

Before we complain about the world’s conflicts and the absence of world peace, we should reflect on ourselves and consider whether our minds and bodies are united into one, whether we are the starting-points of peace, and whether God is at the center of our endeavors for peace.

(140:17-18, February 1, 1986)

From time immemorial, when saints and sages sought for the Kingdom of Heaven, they did not seek it by vying with their enemies, expressing wrath and anger, full of fury. Rather, we understand that they forgot themselves even in front of their enemies’ swords. They sought the Kingdom while quietly longing for God, worshipping God, and feeling peaceful embrace in God’s bosom, while transcending the circumstances of the battle.

(25:38-39, September 28, 1969)

We commonly say that the human body is the temple of God, but what is a holy temple? Is it a place to work for a living? Is it a factory or an office? When we think of a holy temple, we visualize a tranquil place of rest. Where can we take rest? It should be amidst love. A holy temple is a tranquil place filled with God’s love. If we wish to be God’s temples, we should have this same quality: inwardly tranquil and filled with God’s love. We want to elevate our inner selves to this high level. As people of God’s love, we become participants in the world of heart. That means our love is like a well that never runs dry; you can draw water from it all you want yet it never runs out. The reason it never runs out is because God is there.

(91:78, January 30, 1977)

What is peace? When your mind and body become one and you have a peaceful family, then there can be a peaceful nation and a peaceful world. Peace cannot come based on some man-made ideology. You have to make a foundation for peace in your mind and body, and then in your family among husband and wife, and parents and children, centering on God’s original heart. Such families are the cornerstones of peace. Even if your family were immersed in a universe of peace, it would still have to receive direction from the root.

(305:203, July 14, 1998)

The United Nations at its founding proclaimed a movement for world peace, and for sixty years it has dedicated itself to this task; yet world peace still remains far distant. Peace among nations can never come when those entrusted with the task have not resolved the Cain-Abel relationship between their own mind and body.

(March 25, 2006)

The question is how I can turn the war going on inside of me into peace. This is extremely important. If I cannot accomplish this, then even though the world might be at peace, to me it will still be hell.

(131:34, March 11, 1984)