"Is it at all possible to live in peace? There is no peace in the world. There is chaos, disorder, great danger, terrorism, threats of war. These are all facts. We live every day of our lives with all the turmoil, with all the labor that people have to do, with all the problems we have to face. The politicians talk about peace, the hierarchy of the Catholic church talks about it, so do the Hindus and the Buddhists and the Muslims, but actually there is no peace. We must have peace in order to grow, to flower, to understand, to have time to look around, to explore into ourselves and see what we can find there. Peace is not freedom from something; freedom between two wars, between two fights, between two problems, or a sense of physical relaxation is not peace. Peace is something much more fundamental, much deeper than the superficial freedom that one may have or that one may think one has.
"Is it possible to live in peace both inwardly psychologically, and outwardly? We may want peace, and we may see the necessity of having peace, but we do not live a peaceful life. The world is preparing for war. Ideologies are fighting each other; they do not consider human beings but only the extension of power, so we cannot possibly look for peace from the politicians and governments. That is a fact. Religions have helped to bring about wars. They have tortured, condemned, excommunicated, burnt — and the next moment they talk about peace. Probably only the ancient Buddhists and Hindus have accepted the dictum 'Do not kill'; but they do kill. Those religions that are established on books become bigoted, fundamentalist. They become terrorists of the world.
"So where does one find peace? Because without peace we are like animals, we are destroying each other. We are destroying the earth, the oceans, the air. None of those groups that are searching for peace have given human beings, you and me, that peace. So where do we find it? Without that fundamental necessity we cannot possibly understand greater things of life.
"Let's go into this to find out for ourselves as human beings, without any guide, without any leadership, without any priests, without any psychologists, because they have all failed. Can we have peace in the world and in us? First, can we have peace in ourselves?
"The word peace is rather complicated. One can give different meanings to it depending upon our moods, depending on our intellectual concepts; romantically, emotionally, we can give different meanings to it. Can we not give different meanings, but comprehend the word and the significance and the depth of that word? It is not merely freedom from something, peace of mind, physical peace, but the ending of all conflict. That is real peace not only in ourselves but with our neighbors and with the world, peace with the environment, the ecology. To have deeply rooted peace, unshakable and not superficial, not a passing thing but a timeless depth of peace!"
