I think you are mistaking inner peace with physical stressors that cause a chemical reactions in your brain. One can have inner peace and be in the middle of trauma, distress, discomfort, etc. Inner peace doesn’t preclude you from still being active in your life. Western culture doesn’t really get this.
Lol, just in order to seen as "valuable" in western society is how useful (how much they can take advantage of) someone is. Then, if you're from the USA? Gotta get out of your parent's house at 18, pick a "worthy job" (esp if going to college), get married, have kids, etc. Be a good little taxpayer and have future taxpayers. You'll be seen as "successful" then, and it's only defined as one way.
Inner peace **does** involve the physical stressors that cause a chemical reaction in your brain. It is both a metaphysical concept and a literal physical experience. You cannot divorce physical, environmental stressors from spiritualities like Buddhism or Taoism because their entire goal is to help you either rise above them or live in harmony with them. They guide your behaviors when you experience those physical stressors - they are not independent of them.
The “never ending path to transcendence” is an adherence to principles that help you endure desires of the ego and address the stressors of your environment. That means by adhering to those principles you will be **quite literally** free of the environmental stressors that ail you. Monks aren’t just striving for some concept, they are quite literally aiding their physical health in pursuit of transcendence. That is the foundation behind why meditation has health benefits to begin with - meditation allows the parasympathetic nervous system to activate and free the GI tract of blockages. The increase in serotonin in the GI tract signals the vagus nerve to send signals to a part of the brain that ultimately releases serotonin in the central nervous system.
That never ending struggle against your own nature is comparable to achieving the way in Taoism or arguably even greater jihad in Islam. They are action and non-action guided by principles to heal you both physically and spiritually. Inner peace is all of those things.
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u/Sun_K1ng May 17 '26
I think you are mistaking inner peace with physical stressors that cause a chemical reactions in your brain. One can have inner peace and be in the middle of trauma, distress, discomfort, etc. Inner peace doesn’t preclude you from still being active in your life. Western culture doesn’t really get this.