Where Do Peace and Happiness Come From?
Discover the profound insights into enduring peace and happiness that have always been free, unconditional, and permanent.
Life’s experiences reveal that the inherent nature of living beings must be peace and happiness, as everyone is instinctively pursuing them while avoiding conflict and suffering. Yet, our pursuit often leaves us with less peace and more disappointment, highlighting the challenges and imperfection of the sought-after happiness that often seems tainted with sorrow.
So, how can we attain perfect peace and happiness without spending money, wasting time, and getting depressed by the impermanence of outcomes? The answer lies in understanding the facts of how everything exists that over 90% of us and the institutions we trust have been overlooking for millennia. By recognizing these facts, we uncover two truths: First, our common perceptions and experiences of ourselves and others are opposite to the facts of how everyone exists, and that is the reason we are unhappy, fearful, dissatisfied, and suffering from countless problems. While most perceive and experience themselves and others as having different selves, the reality is everyone shares the same ever-changing essence of timeless life. We are, in fact, identical, without any different essence whatsoever, and this recognition is the cure to all our problems and suffering.
Three Facts of Existence.
Nagarjuna was the first to recognize the facts of how everything exists and the first to develop a scientific and logic-based language that explains it and helps others realize it. His discovery instantly restores our inner peace and unites humanity in ways otherwise unimaginable. It laid the foundation for Tibetan Buddhism, emphasizing the importance of wisdom and compassion, ultimately resulting in everlasting peace and the bliss of enlightenment.
The following three facts about existence revealed by Nagarjuna provide scientific proof of how all existence shares the same essence, the point most of us and the institutions we entrust with our safety and well-being are not even aware of, and why this ignorance is the root source of all unhappiness and suffering:
Fact #1.
All phenomena including us, that our senses perceive and experience are not singular.
Nothing is truly one entity, as everything from the physical elements of our bodies to the tiniest atoms and quarks is comprised of an infinite number of ever-smaller particles. No particle, no matter how small, can be singular either, and they too are made up of an infinite number of ever-smaller parts we don't even have names for. This applies to our mind too, the non-physical aspect shared by all living beings. Each moment of consciousness is not one moment. Each moment is composed of an infinite number of ever-shorter moments, and each of them is also made up of an infinite number of ever-shorter moments. Each moment, regardless of its length, is a product of a preceding moment, forming a continuous flow of events. This realization challenges the common belief in a standalone permanent person or an unchanging soul, as there is no separate owner apart from the ever-changing body and mind. If there was one unchanging soul or "me," the body and conscious experiences of the mind would have belonged to someone else and would have been experienced exclusively by somebody else and not me. Of course, this is not how everyone experiences themselves, thus proving that many beliefs we have accepted as true are nonfactual, unscientific, and illogical. They're based on a fantasy of our mind’s wishful thinking that seeks separate existence that is permanent in a universe that is without these qualities.
Fact #2.
All phenomena including us, lack a unique nature (essence) that can bring about our existence.
Instead, everyone and everything is a manifestation of the Universal nature (essence) with its countless physical and non-physical elements. Nothing comes into existence by its own nature (power and will); rather, the nature of everything else produces what we perceive and experience as produced. There is no actual difference between the producer and the produced, except in our mind's labels and the unquestioned belief in them. The next fact will clarify this further.
Fact #3.
All phenomena including us exist as different in concept only.
Fact #1 and Fact #2 reveal the absolute sameness of all existence; nothing is one unchanging, self-generating entity with a unique individual essence. A profound realization emerges as we acknowledge that every living being and thing is an expression of the same nature of the entirety—the universal nature that shapes the countless universal causes and conditions with its countless physical and non-physical elements producing the countless forms, bodies, and things constantly experiencing itself in the flow of consciousness. The facts are clear: no living being is different from anyone or anything except for the labels (concepts) that our mind invents, projects out on the forms and bodies, and believes in as facts. Everything can exist without our labels just fine; labels don't originate from the side of physical forms but from our mind. All labels originate and are projected by our minds onto perceived physical forms. However, our unaware mind believes that the perceived forms have always been the labels and that we are merely confirming that by thinking or sounding the label again upon perceiving them. Our blind belief that the label, which is merely a sound, originated from the side of the forms our mind perceives is absurdly contradictory to facts. Only our minds can generate labels, think them, and project them out; they can't come from the side of physical forms. We must recognize our mind's misunderstandings of facts and the role our minds play in creating division and separation, which breed fear, competition, scarcity, conflict, war, and endless suffering. If we recognize that without these labels, such as “me” and “they,” there is no inherent difference between any living being or thing, between the producer and the produced. The differences between us exist in these concepts only and nowhere in reality. Our shared origin and essence, mostly overlooked for millennia, become a scientifically and logically supported fact.
These three points reveal that our perception, experience, and understanding of ourselves and others contradict the empirical and tangible facts of existence.
Our shared sameness stems from the lack of individual nature capable of self-generating; everyone shares, which underscores that each person is not one entity but a manifestation of the same universal nature with its countless physical and non-physical elements. These unbiased facts revealed by Nagarjuna accentuate the identical essence everyone shares; no unique or individual qualities can be found in any living being or object. Whether taking the form of a human or an animal, our selfless nature remains identical, shaped by countless particles converging to create countless forms for our minds to experience. In reality, perceived distinctions are relative to our understanding of how everything exists and endure solely in concepts/names, such as "me" or "you," originating in the mind, while our essence remains universally shared.
The second truth we discover is that our past pursuits of peace and happiness were never going to bring lasting satisfaction because our understanding of reality is contradictory to the facts of existence. They go against the grain of existence itself and thus always lead to disappointment because true peace and happiness are our true nature revealed with the correct understanding of existence. Our true nature is one of peace and the cessation of all desire, problems, and suffering and their causes forever. The key to true peace and happiness has always been that simple, and based entirely on the ability to recognize the facts that everyone shares the same universal essence; thus, nobody is different from anybody, and our experience of duality ("me and you") is only an illusion, a very painful illusion.
Summary
All living beings exist without a unique essence; everyone shares an identical universal essence, thus identical to the whole existence that produced us. Our sameness stems from the inability of individuals to generate their own essence or self, which underscores that each person is a manifestation of the same universal elements, both physical and non-physical. Recognizing Nagarjuna’s facts instantly restores and strengthens inner peace, providing unimaginable happiness, purpose, and meaning in life. This understanding eradicates enemies, victims, racism, hatred, violence, depression, and desire that only bring more disappointment. All individuals share the same selfless existence; differences exist only in the mind’s concepts (labels), such as “me,” “you,” “American,” “Palestinian,” “Israeli,” "Russian," or "whatever." This truth offers solutions to personal and global problems previously unimaginable, enabling individuals to be instruments of good where no problem is insurmountable and always supported by all.
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