How can you live a life of tranquility?
First of all thank you for your question. This is both a very common and very important question. I hope the answer does not discourage you too much. It is very simple.
We cannot live a life of tranquility!
Despite this fact, the question remains valid and important. We can try to understand what tranquility is, what takes away our tranquility and if it’s really something so desirable?
We can only ask questions based on our current perspective and experience. What we experience now is restlessness. This restlessness is subjective and is caused by internal and external circumstances. “Life” can actually be taken as a synonym for restlessness. If there is life, then there is no rest.
Imagine a private party in an apartment. The party guests enjoy loud music, but the neighbors feel disrupted at the same time. The same thing – in this case music – can be a reason for joy and disturbance. Both experiences are disturbances. One is experienced as pleasant and the other as unpleasant.
Another example would be the rain. Imagine the farmers longing for rain when there has been a drought for a long time. On the other hand, imagine the worries of a major event organizer who has planned an open-air event. Should it rain, it would bring joy to the farmer and anxiety to the organizer. In the absence of rain, the opposite would occur. But if it were cloudy and looked as if it was going to rain, then both would be tense with their expectations and fears and only in the course of time would it become clear to whom “fate or the gods were more merciful”.
Life is full of innumerable circumstances and experiences, which in their totality leave a feeling of conditioned satisfaction or dissatisfaction in us. Someone who is rather dissatisfied in life imagines rest as a kind of salvation, or the absence of the restlessness and its causes. On the other hand, the satisfied, pleasure-seeking people experience rest as the absence of the causes of their happiness. This can be imagined like a “0” account balance. A “0” account balance is very desirable for someone who is driven by debt, while for someone who enjoys spending money, it means the loss of everything.
This simply represents the experience of duality in the material world.
What does it depend on now, whether you are in the black or the red, whether life represents “good” or “bad” for you? This state is called karma. Karma can be understood both as action and the result of action. In our example, the black or red balance would be the result of our previous actions.
Actions are not simply activities, but they consist of activities and intentions which together determine the future karma as a result. Thus, in a simplified way, we can say that activities dedicated to the common good create good karma, and activities with selfish intentions create bad karma or negative circumstances in the future. In this way, one can understand why the old proverb says: “Everyone is the architect of their own happiness”. For there are no circumstances in life that we have not caused by our own actions. This is true even if we no longer remember or recognize the connections and the exact moments in time, because these actions can be scattered through different incarnations to make the riddle of life and existence even more complicated.
The karma that we experience in the present circumstances as a result of our actions in the past is important to the extent that we learn to understand and accept it, because only then do we become aware of how important what we do from that point on is. The karma as action in the now, is directly the cause of the karma as circumstances in the future.
One can become an alcoholic, or otherwise degrade oneself in life by consuming the results of good karma, in the form of an inheritance, or by creating it out of debt and through new debt.
Good karma and bad karma as the current state of life cannot be measured only by financial support. It is a combination of several aspects, such as social, family and above all the support of one’s own values and character.
One can only be a person of strong character if one is determined to overcome the duality of the material world. To do so, one must seek the connection with transcendence. Silence does not help you much. To be dedicated to the transcendental ideal, in good times and bad, requires strong faith. Material or karmatic circumstances such as intelligence, power, money, etc., in their presence as well as in their absence, cannot help or hinder you on this path.
For this reason, the path of faith is something natural in life, while the search for tranquility remains something abstract and confusing, just like the attempt to enjoy happiness, which cannot be separated from suffering.
We should therefore distinguish tranquility from peace. There is no peace because everything, the whole universe is in constant motion, creating ever new karmatic circumstances and experiences.
Finally, I would like to quote the “The Serenity Prayer” by Reinhold Niebuhr, in which he reflects the mental attitude through which we can achieve peace.
“God, grant me the Serenity
To accept the things I cannot change…
Courage to change the things I can,
And Wisdom to know the difference”.
Many secrets and answers lie hidden in faith.