True Serenity

THE OUTER LIFE WILL HOUND YOU IN SOME WAY
You know that old spiritual cliche… meditating alone in the mountains, in a cave, something like that? I have done it. Not a cave, but alone in the mountains. Finding a place in the forest or mountains, to sit and meditate, be clear, be alone, sounds so romantic, so spiritual… yet there is still discomfort. Aching body from hard ground. Mosquitoes. Starvation. Shivering in cold weather, burning and sweating in hot weather. No kitchen, no comfy bed, no shower, no gadgets. Loneliness. Boredom. Fear. Animals that can kill you and eat you. As much, or more, fear and discomfort as there was in the busy, crowded life I was escaping. There was some powerful beauty, serenity, yes… but it’s never the pure, romanticized version people think of.

Escaping your present life will not necessarily bring serenity. Running to another better circumstance is not guaranteed to bring you lasting serenity. Most people are romanticizing serenity, romanticizing aloneness, romanticizing the mountains, romanticizing meditating in some ashram in India, whatever new situation you were dreaming of. But every situation has its own harsh realities, as much or more so than your present life of turmoil.

If you’re feeling spiritual and wonderful in the quiet moments, looking at a heavenly view at sunset, a deer in a field, you feel the serenity. Then something interrupts or jars you and you’re annoyed. You might still be thinking of stressful things, working out your never-ending problems, even while looking at that view. You have not found serenity, you have only been awash temporarily in sentimentality, romanticism. Your surroundings were peaceful and beautiful for awhile, so you were feeling peaceful and beautiful too. But you can still be jarred easily out of any temporary sentimental, romantic feeling of beauty and peace.

In civilization, or the forest, in obscurity or in fame, in your family or away from it, in your country or overseas, there is only one true and consistent serenity:

IT IS INSIDE YOU
Serenity must be sought inside yourself. It must be sought within you, whether you are in the middle of noise, fear, discomfort, or in the middle of quiet, calm, serene situations. In traffic, or alone in the mountains. At your hectic job, or in a silent retreat. It is easier, of course, to feel serenity when you are in serene circumstances. And it helps to find serene circumstances in the beginning of your search for serenity, to give you a starting place, a place to feel the serenity naturally without having to fight for it. It helps clarify your beginning efforts to discover what serenity is, what benefits serenity brings to your mind, health, life.

But over and over, noise and troubles will arise no matter where you are, they will keep hammering at you, in intervals or even steadily. You run to a new place, a new set of circumstances, and the place you arrive at soon pops forth with its own problems. You run again, and more problems find you. And eventually you must come to one truth: serenity will be interrupted, even attacked, wherever you are, whatever circumstances are around you. When you arrive at that understanding, you begin to stop running.

When your legs stop running and you switch your movement to internal movement, to internal search for serenity no matter how average or awful your circumstances are… when you beat and hack the deep brush aside from your inner path, the roughest outer world will have a much more difficult task if it wants to shatter your serenity. When you attain higher and stronger stages of inner serenity, it can still be shattered… it just takes more to shatter it.

Because true serenity cannot be jarred easily by external turmoils or internal neurosis. True serenity is tough and grounded, not sentimental or romantic or fleeting. It takes the work of many years to find your serene mind, through all kinds of tests and challenges. You might move to nice circumstances, and hide in them for so long that you are tricked into thinking you have true serenity. But then something happens to jar you – it has to happen eventually – and your serenity is obscured once again.

So to practice serenity, you gradually realize you cannot run to another place that will always be serene. Those places are nice, they help, they give you the circumstances that help you practice more purely, but you also decide to practice everywhere, in every circumstance. If you feel serene in a monastery, a nice place, then you eventually must go back to the city; and if you’re once again swearing at traffic and frustrated at the words and actions of hectic unthinking people… what have you learned? You’ve enjoyed a ‘provided serenity’, you’ve felt it for awhile, but it didn’t accompany you back into the busy, noisy change of circumstances. It was an experience, but not a learning.

To learn serenity… you have to learn how to bring it with you, wherever you are.

YOU DON’T MAKE IT, YOU OPEN TO IT
Actually, it already is with you. It always is. You don’t ‘make’ serenity… you allow it. To allow it, you must clear away all the maelstrom that your mind places in front of it. That stuff is what comes and goes, builds up or goes away. That noisy stuff… that’s what’s in the way of your serenity. And it’s all stuff that can be worked with, wrestled with, let go, managed, practiced with. Doing all that takes tough, ongoing effort. You let go of, and beat aside, your chaotic parts of mind, you use whatever mind and life tools you can find or invent, you hack this thick brush aside, until the crystal clear calmness remains.

Serenity is always there, dwelling inside you. You cannot create it or force it to appear; what you can do is to slowly peel away the constant rattle inside your head, the unfettered thoughts and desires and reactions and emotions. You practice letting those go. You practice letting them arise and dissolve away, rather than getting hooked and immersed and trapped by them all day long. You practice not getting caught up in anything, even your own thoughts.

You take a deep breath often during the day, let things fall away in your mind and nerves. You seek quiet time, quiet areas, for more pure breaks in which to practice and remind yourself of what serenity is. Those breaks help you remember serenity, even when you’re thrust back into the busyness and noise. Even a minute, or five minutes, away from the rat race, gives you time to breathe, clear your mind a little, shake off the stress, let things re-order inside you again. Learn to assert that; in the midst of something stressful happening, you don’t need to escape it permanently, you can assert, “I just need five minutes. I will be back.” And you can leave, and you can do this even if others chide you for it, or don’t understand, or don’t give you permission, or don’t agree. You can just do it, in most circumstances of your life and work. That little ‘reminder’ of serenity… goes a long ways.

IT’S NOT JUST AN IDEAL, IT’S REAL
Maybe you will never arrive at an exalted, rock-solid, total enlightenment stage of true serenity. I have not, I am far from that. But true serenity is reachable, possible, measurable in realistic amounts that will hugely impact your life and health. It can be discovered and allowed to exist, when you grow to want serenity more than you want the things that lead to turmoil, drama, and which cover up your serenity.

Stop insisting that the world shut up or change; it would be nice, yes, if the things happening around you are all conducive to serenity. But the hardest things to change are the things that are outside yourself. Start insisting that the reactive part of you that is so noisy and bothered by the world… shuts up. Let your own inner noise fall away, and then you will notice yourself experiencing more serene and productive ways of reacting and responding.

When your bothered nerves begin to stop becoming angry and offended by so many things, you let the part of your mind that is bothered by all things… dissolve away. Once that noisy, reactive part of you dissolves away… what is left to stand in the way of serenity?