A medical doctor, who has been enlisted in the Army, is currently stationed somewhere in the Middle East. We philosophized this morning. He’s been away from his wife, also a medical doctor, and young child. Anxiety has arisen (when will he be home? how can he live this way, given that things are not within his control?) as have guilt and shame. He thinks often of persisting and of enduring.

This is not the way.

He told me insightfully: “There is always something.” If not these duties, then some other. If not this thing being off, then that thing.

In fact, there is always something for the one for whom there is always something.

He is not alone.

The untrained mind is a manufacturer of suffering: it produces the problems and then it produces the solutions. Filled with loves and hates of its own devising, it then seeks to get rid of what it dislikes or what it hates or, in any case, of what it says ails it. What a mess!

This is not the way. To continue this way is to continue on the path of endless suffering.

True peace, by contrast, is context- and event-independent. As such, it goes nowhere. While all is moving, true peace is unmoved.

To true peace, it makes no difference whether we get what we want, whether we get what we don’t want, or whether we don’t get what we want. No difference whatsoever. How could it?

To true peace, likes and dislikes, loves and hates, desires and their fulfillment or lack thereof all emerge, as it were, in the foreground of experience. As the background of all experience, true peace is solid, constant, present, aware.

To true peace, there is not always something. Because no hurt, no need to persist or not persist, to endure or not endure, to concoct or not concoct. True peace abides, unwavering and shining while embracing all.