A CULTURE OF PEACE

On the occasion of the International Day of Peace, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, examines the factors that have made peace elusive to humanity. Pointing out fundamental flaws in thinking and actions, he says, Peace is not in terms of just avoiding war, but establishing an active culture of living in peace in the world.

Sadhguru: With all the faculties bestowed upon human beings, you’d think human beings are the most harmonious beings on earth. But if you look at the history until now, the world has never really been peaceful. People have been fighting for food, people have fought over boundaries, people have fought on their faith, their belief systems. People have fought for wealth; people have been fighting and are still fighting for their gods. We have always found an excuse to fight. We need to understand this, the way human beings are right now, if you take away one strife in the world, another is bound to evolve.

When World War II ended in 1944, many nations around the world vowed never again to fight; they said never again are we going to create this horror on the planet. Over 50 million people had died. They said this is enough. But in reality, since 1944 to this day, there has not been a single day’s break in fighting around the world. Somewhere, or the other some battle or the other has been going on without a single day’s break. So this is a clear manifestation, a clear declaration by human beings, that the way we are right now, we are incapable of being peaceful.

We need to understand this; the world is not a globe. The world is its people. If we do not work for individual transformation, if we do not look for ways of making the individual peaceful, talking about world peace is just one more entertainment in the world. Without attending to individual human beings, trying to bring about any kind of change in the world, always leads to more problems.