Was there peace in the country before the war began? Was there peace in you before before you got afraid of viruses or bombs? Was there peace at all or was it just a fantasy? Is there even peace?

We have nullified and reduced peace to a mere space between acts of visible violence. There was peace before the man punched or the woman stuck with a knife. There was peace before we got scared, ran away, attacked, or curled up waiting for an attack. There was peace before the war began and we gained peace when it ended. Really?

Peace is not a state of the world, for this material world into which our bodies are born is never in absolute peace. Matter and the world growing from it are in an endless state of change and in a creative dance of opposites, where no state is ever absolutely permanent and peaceful. Plus and minus, birth and death, night and day, good and evil and all the other opposites indefinitely. Where is the peace in the midst of all these changes?

Peace is a state of mind. Peace is the bosom of the creator, where all of this imperfect creation takes place. Peace is oneness playing with the ever changing dualities within its being. Peace never gives up its unity in the face of the tempting challenges of duality and separateness. Peace is a creator who knows he is one with everything and sees all boundaries and separations only as temporal and thus never to be taken too seriously. Peace is a man who knows he is the creator of his world, the eternal oneness beyond this play of duality.

Peace is a child playing on the sandy beach of the ocean of eternity. The child builds himself a character out of the sand and a sand castle, a partner and the whole world for them. The child plays with his character for awhile or as long as he is interested and amused. Then the child destroys his wonderful castle and everything related to it and builds a new one even finer. And all this in his great innocent peace knowing that all will eventually disappear when the tidal wave of eternity once again rises from the ocean and sweeps away all that it has been created on the sandy beach. Peace knows that it will remain, even if all that he has created is lost. Peace knows that he is an eternal creator, the universe itself that can never be truly bothered by the changing mirrors of the world.

In the beginning was the joy that sang and created, and also in the end. Peace be in him who knows this and lives to experience it in the midst of all change. Peace be upon him whose peace does not begin at the end of war or after the destruction of viruses. Peace be upon him for whom it is a state of mind and the beginning and the end of all creation, the divine creator within all of us, the alpha and the omega. All in peace and in wonder of creation, even man himself.