Peace is attainable but we have to make some sacrifices, says Eric Harrison. And perhaps now is the perfect time to start.

Peace comes in many forms from the transient to the eternal, from the trivial to the sublime. "Peace at last!" says the mother when the kids are finally in bed. Peace in politics means the cessation of hostilities, which would seem like Heaven to the inhabitants of Sudan or Iraq. Moral peace comes from doing what you feel is right and being true to yourself. You can also be at peace if you philosophically accept your fate without complaint.

Yet peace is often a contaminated product. There is the spiritual serenity of detachment and indifference: "Everything passes, so why worry?" Religions guarantee peace beyond the grave if you behave yourself, and the opposite if you don't. Gurus offer permanent peace as a shining, but somehow just-out-of-reach, ideal. Finally, travel agents sell peace as part of the package at tropical resorts.

In a perfect world, we would feel mentally at peace every time we were physically at rest. Peace is utterly natural, yet to the chronically stressed, it may seem as unattainable as the moon. One thing is certain however - we can always be more peaceful than we are. The search for peace starts with the biological process of relaxation, and we all relax sometime. Is there some secret formula that allows us to move on from physical relaxation to mental stillness?

There are two archetypal images of peace. The first is that of the seated Buddha with his eyes open. The second, closely related, is that of the yoga chick, with her eyes closed, sitting cross-legged on an empty beach. These two images tell us volumes about how to be peaceful. If we analyse them, we find that peace is not free or automatic. It comes at a price, and is dependent on certain conditions.

The Buddha is depicted as being alone, inactive, mentally still and alert (that is, with eyes open). We also assume he is leading a simple, non-materialistic life in nature. These illustrate four key ingredients of peace - solitude, stillness, silence and simplicity. The more we can achieve any of these, even for a minute or two, the more peaceful we become.

At some deep level we know all of this. We can see that our lives are commonly too crowded, busy, noisy and complicated. These are four key ingredients of stress. Even if we understand this, peace still seems impossible: "I can't leave my kids, my mortgage, my Internet, my city lifestyle, and just do nothing!" Important as peace is, we don't want it at the expense of everything else. In 1993, I met 150 other Western meditation teachers at a conference in California. Most of us had spent years in retreat, or been monks or nuns in the past, and had known inconceivably beautiful states of mind as a result. Yet, nearly all of us had finished with that lifestyle and re-entered the modern world. There are higher goals than tranquillity alone. A search for mental clarity at all costs is somewhat immature and unbalanced.

I left that contemplative life behind in 1985, but with a burning question: 'Could I maintain those calm, clear states of mind in the midst of a career, relationships and the city?' 'Could I balance inner peace with the quite contrary demands of love and work?'

I found that I could, but what came easily in the wilderness took ingenuity and effort in the city. In the midst of a crowded life, we can always be a little more alone, silent and still, if we value and cultivate those qualities. We can find islands of peace in the turmoil, and peace in our minds, even if it seems absent from the world around us.

SOLITUDE

Peace is about solitude. It is naturally antisocial. Perfect peace is almost narcissistic in its self absorption. We find peace when we walk away from others, if only for a few minutes, and feel ourselves to be alone. People are crucial to our wellbeing but we find peace on our own.

Solitude is not about abandoning people. It is about being mentally alone whenever we are physically alone. We can be fully alone while walking, going to the toilet, doing housework, sitting in a bus or falling asleep, if we know how. More commonly, we hold lengthy conversations with and about people in our heads all day long, whether they are present or not. When you go to the toilet, are you truly alone? Or do your parents, children, friends, workmates and various TV celebrities all squeeze into the cubicle with you?

Whenever you don't have to engage with people, you can be mentally alone. When you walk through a park on the way to work, you can be as alone as a yogi in the Himalayas. It all depends on how you direct your mind. If you are truly in the park and in your body, you can find peace in every step.

STILLNESS

The seated Buddha is making a statement. He has nothing to do, nowhere to go and very little to think about. For this reason, some people find a meditation class an extremely odd experience. For perhaps the first time in their lives, they sit still and literally do nothing for maybe 20 minutes. They even give themselves permission not to actively think (which is easier said than done).

Peace is about inactivity, about doing nothing and letting the body and mind return to balance. This is why peace is so good for our health. Every day we oscillate between activity and rest, wakefulness and sleep, and we typically find peace in the rest and repair part of that cycle. This is why the idea of perfect peace is a myth: we can't do nothing forever.

Although it is easy to sit down and physically stop, our minds can still be restless. We typically entertain ourselves with TV or reading or absentminded rumination, without our minds ever coming to a halt. We can relax and even fall asleep this way, but we won't be truly peaceful.

The mind only becomes calm and still when it focuses on one thing at the expense of everything else. This is what meditation trains us to do. Focusing is a subtle skill, and not what people usually take it to be. It is not exclusive since we still notice peripheral thoughts. It is intermittent, since we are bound to lose focus periodically. Although focusing is an act of will, it is not strained or brittle, since it grows out of the comfort of physical relaxation. The paradox is that even poor focus is so much better than eternally chasing our thoughts. Focusing automatically relaxes us by simplifying our mental activity. It illuminates the detail of whatever we pay attention to, so we come to know it deeply, beyond words and concepts. In meditation, focusing can take us into trance and bliss. In everyday life, it makes us fully conscious and self aware. In any case, the immediate payoff for good focus is a calm, still, observant quality of mind. This is vastly different from merely being relaxed or spacing out.

SILENCE

When the inner chatter weakens or stops, a remarkable new world appears. You hear the birds. You sense your body. You know what you truly feel. When the words fade, so do the past and future and all their gloomy/hopeful stories. You live within the vivid, unpredictable beauty of the present moment, if only for moments, here and there. You feel the uncanny mystery of life itself, beyond any explanation.

Inner silence leads to a mode of deep thought that we can call contemplation. Our everyday thought is typically fast, linear and reliant on words. It scrambles from one thing to another all day long, and rarely comes to a conclusion. It can't stop and it can't listen.

Contemplative thought, on the other hand, emerges from a calm mind and body. It is familiar with silence. There are spaces between the words in which our feelings and our imagination can talk to us. The understanding and insights that arise tend to be visceral and pictorial rather than verbal.

"In stillness and silence, the soul grows wise", said Thomas A Kempis. Peace is valuable in itself, but it is also the basis of direct understanding, or wisdom. St Benedict called this process 'divine listening'. Only in silence can you hear the still, small voice of God, and that is true even if you are an atheist!

A SIMPLE LIFE

In theory, the Buddha led a simple life. He begged for his daily food and had no thoughts for the future (In reality, he was a empire builder). We can't do that, but we should at least see the price we pay for our complicated lives. Given our individual temperaments, there is only so much complexity we can handle and still sleep well at night.

Just as our bodies have to digest the food we eat, so our minds have to process whatever we take in. We pay for the junk food and chocolate, and we also pay for every skerrick of junk information. We can easily become more peaceful if we reduce the input. Just try to do without newspapers, TV, radio and unnecessary conversations for a day or two, and see how much calmer you feel.

Peace is dependent on solitude, stillness, silence and simplicity. All of these are internal qualities and far more attainable than we might assume. As peace is so quiet and subtle, it is hard to see its value. In fact, it is crucial for good health, and a calm, clear, intelligent quality of mind.

Perfect peace may seem impossible, but we can all be more peaceful than we usually are, even in this minute, if we feel it is worth cultivating.