The Gift of Inner Peace

How Stillness Transforms the World Around Us

If we are peaceful, we radiate peace.

Even if we can’t see it, we create small ripples of peace and harmony around us.

A little while ago someone in our practice community wrote to us saying: ‘Last night, my youngest son and his extremely stressed girlfriend came over for dinner. His girlfriend sank into a chair, looked at me gratefully with her hazel-brown eyes, took my hand and said, “The moment I step inside your home, my shoulders drop completely, straight away! It’s just so incredibly wonderful to come here!”

‘And I thought about my long, long journey across barren mountains, from something very dark and disconnected to where I am today, when love and peace have become almost my sole focus. It’s quite magical and almost impossible to comprehend…’

Peace is a gift we cannot help sharing. Its generous, life-giving waters don’t just permeate our life, but always flow outwards.

The Quiet Power of a Peaceful Presence

In a wonderful book called The Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta, the Indian monk Swami Prabhavananda tells a story about his own teacher, Swami Brahmananda – a story about the quiet transforming power of inner peace.

‘In one of our monasteries,’ he writes, ‘there were a number of young postulants, not yet trained, fresh from school. When they had been together a short time, their old tendencies began to assert themselves, and the boys formed cliques and quarrelled.

A senior teacher of our order went to investigate. He questioned everybody and soon discovered the ringleaders. Then he wrote to Swami Brahmananda, who was the head of our order, that these boys were unfitted for monastic life and should be expelled. My master answered: “Don’t do anything about it. I am coming myself.”

When he arrived at the monastery, he did not question anyone. He simply began living there. He insisted on only one thing, that all the boys should meditate in his presence regularly every day.

The boys soon forgot their quarrels. The whole atmosphere of the place became uplifted. By the time Swami Brahmananda left, two or three months later, harmony had been established in the monastery. No one had to be expelled. The minds and hearts of the postulants were transformed.’ (1)

It is a simple story. No one was reprimanded. Nothing harsh was imposed.

What transformed the community was simply the presence of a person who lived in peace, whose peaceful presence invited others into that same peace. With the aid of daily meditation, the atmosphere began to change. Gradually the agitation that had divided the young men gave way to harmony.

Becoming a Place of Peace for Others

This same insight and experience is to be found in all the great contemplative traditions of the world. Listening to the story recounted by Swami Prabhavananda, I am reminded of the great nineteenth-century Orthodox Christian monk St. Seraphim of Sarov.

Seraphim taught that the most powerful way to help the world is to allow peace to take root deeply within ourselves. ‘Acquire inner peace and thousands around you will find salvation,’ says Seraphim. (2) We might remember the root meaning of the Greek word commonly translated as ‘salvation’ is healing.

And we don’t have to become a monk or nun in order to become a place of peace for others. Another person in the practice community wrote to us saying:

‘Although I feel I am in the eye of a storm that I’m struggling to see a way out of, since doing my meditation practice, I have begun to feel less anxious, calmer, more grounded and clear-headed.

I have even had a couple of close friends comment recently: “I feel a change in you… you are lighter, not as heavy, no longer consumed by your situation… you walk lighter in the world… shining more… you are inspiring me.”’

The Gift of Peace We Share

Peace naturally radiates from a more peaceful heart. And this peace becomes a gift to those around us. Swami Prabhavananda quotes a passage from Hindu scripture that expresses this truth simply and directly:

‘The one in whose heart God has become manifest brings peace, and cheer, and delight everywhere they go.’

Such a person becomes the peacemaker that Jesus speaks of in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:9). Their presence brings peace, quiet healing and reconciliation wherever they are. Peaceful attention can ease another person’s suffering. Calmness can soften tension. A mind grounded in stillness can open a space for clarity where there has been confusion.

Such are the ways the fruit of meditation spreads far beyond our own inner life. We can enjoy and benefit from the peace we cultivate in meditation. But this peace never belongs only to us. It gives itself away.

The Small Rain Upon the Tender Herb

When I was living at the Benedictine monastery of Prinknash Abbey, there were a few passages of scripture that I looked at most days. One of these is perhaps the most beautiful description I know of what a true peacemaker (and true spiritual teacher) is like:

Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak;

and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.

My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew;

as the small rain upon the tender herb,

and as the showers upon the grass.

The words of a peacemaker do not fall like thunder or command. They do not overwhelm or dominate. Their presence is like life-giving water.

In the same way, the peace we cultivate in meditation offers out its gift quietly, gently. Like dew. Like the small rain upon the tender herb. Like the showers upon the grass.

Its presence can transform everything it touches.

This blog is based on one of the teachings given in a recent online meditation group gathering. You are warmly welcome to join one of our future gatherings.

Swami Prabhavananda, The Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta (Vedanta Press, 1992), page 27.
Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Jesus Prayer (Catholic Truth Society, 2024), page 47.
Swami Prabhavananda, The Sermon on the Mount According to Vedanta (Vedanta Press, 1992), page 27.
Deuteronomy 32:2, King James Version (slightly amended).