World Peace Starts with Individual Transformation – Isha in Uganda

World Peace Starts with Individual Transformation – a message from Sadhguru

"These days, people are saying, 'We are going to make peace in the world.' People are always thinking in terms of solving the world's problems with belief systems or kindness or goodness. It is not going to happen. These things have been talked about for thousands of years and nothing has come out of it. Trying to save the world with your kindness is like a dam has burst and you are trying to fix it with a band-aid. Maybe you will have the satisfaction that you did something, but you are not serious about fixing the problem.

Good intentions are fine, but there have always been people with good intentions on the planet. Ninety percent of the population has good intentions, but they are disorganized. Two to three percent of the people have their own devious intentions and they are organized. This is always the reality in the world. Two to three percent of the population have devious designs for everybody around them, but this small percentage are highly organized. Because they are organized, they are the people who take the world in whichever direction they want. Forces of anger and hate have always been well organized on the planet, while forces of love and compassion have always remained disorganized. It is time we learn to organize forces of love and compassion. 

Anger gets easily organized, but to organize peace and love, to organize concern and care, takes enormous effort because it takes individual transformation. This is not about going onto the street for a day and shouting in a peace rally, nor is it about sitting in a five-star hotel talking about peace in the world and then going home and forgetting about it. If you want to transform individual human beings, it is a lifelong work. And even if you work for your whole lifetime, you can be sure the work will not be complete. If you wear your life out doing this, still all that you would have done is just a drop in the ocean. Only if you are ready for that, you must take up individual transformation. If you are thinking of completing something before you die, then you should not take up this job. Just shout in a peace rally, throw stones at somebody, cause a revolution and think it is done. But it will never be done. Everything will be back to square one again.

Yes, politically, internationally, something needs to be done for immediate purposes, but if you are thinking of a long-term peace program in the world, then at least all the leadership in the world should know how to be peaceful. If you cannot keep your own mind peaceful, if you cannot control your brain – a bucketful of water in your hands – where is the question of you marshalling the oceans? It does not arise.

So if you are really concerned about peace, then it takes individual transformation. Only if you are willing to transform yourself and every human being, only then will this effort produce results in the long term."

Isha in Uganda

Uganda has been in the news recently for various reasons. We thought we’d share an incident that an Isha meditator from Kampala wrote to us about. In a local village to hire a chain saw, he came across a pleasant surprise.

I encountered a little gem the other day. I needed to hire a chain saw for my forest timber work and someone suggested a local man, a Ugandan named Stephen Akugizibwe, who I met for a chat. He sat down at the village bar table to talk and introduced himself as a nature guide, a businessman and Yogi (!). I raised my brows in kind interest as this was the last thing I was expecting to hear in my little local trading centre.

He explained that he did Inner Engineering last year in Kampala, does his sadhana twice daily and has cured himself of chronic malaria and back problems through regular practice of Shambhavi Mahamudra. I asked about his diet and he also proudly announced that he grows his own medicinal plants and eats a good portion of raw vegetables and fruit, a novel diet among the local poor staple of maize flour and cooked beans. I want to get to know him more and hear more, it is great to see Sadghuru’s seeds yielding such good results on the local African soil.

– Lech Zielinski, Isha Volunteer, Uganda

Click Here to read more about Isha in Uganda.

Below: Sadhguru speaks at TED about personal transformation and the experience of an all-inclusive consciousness.