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student came to me -- he was just going to appear in his final M.A. examination. He asked me, "How can I be peaceful? How can I be silent? Help me. I desire peace. I am so disturbed, so tense."
I asked him, "Why do you desire peace?"
He said, "I want to achieve the gold medal. The examination is about to happen. I am a first class student but this is going to be my last examination and I desire the gold medal. And if my mind is so tense, how can I achieve it? So help me to be peaceful."
Look at the contradiction! And this is happening to everyone. I told him, "If there was to be no examination, if you had no desire to achieve the gold medal, if you had no ambition to be first class first, would there be any disturbance within you? Would your peace be disturbed?"
He said, "No. Why should it be? Then there would be no problem. I would be at peace. But right now the examination is there and I desire the gold medal. So help me to be peaceful."
Ambition is destroying his peace. He goes on clinging to his ambition and still he desires peace. Peace in the service of ambition is impossible; it is contradictory. Ambition cannot be peaceful. The greed to succeed cannot be peaceful.
If you desire peace, desire peace for itself. Don't make it a means to something else. It cannot be made a means. When this sutra says DESIRE PEACE FERVENTLY, it means peace as an end not as a means. No one desires means. Ends are desired and, because of the ends. means are desired. But peace can never be made a means. All that is beautiful, all that is true, all that is good, all that is deep in existence cannot be made into a means. It is always the end. But we desire even God as a means. No one desires God for his own sake; we desire God for some other purpose. Then, the desire is false.
That's what I mean when I say that no one desires peace unless he desires it for its own sake. You can attain it easily if you desire it as an end. Desire it for itself and it happens, because in the very desire for peace, ambition falls; in the very desire for peace, anxiety disappears; in the very desire for peace, anguish disappears. If you go on being ambitious
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