"Complete peace equally reigns between two mental waves"
About this Quote
“Complete peace equally reigns between two mental waves” lands like a quiet technical diagram disguised as poetry. Sivananda isn’t praising tranquility as a mood; he’s pointing to an interval, a measurable gap in the mind’s usual turbulence. The key word is “between.” Peace, here, isn’t something you manufacture by muscling thoughts into submission. It’s what is already there in the brief suspension after one thought crests and before the next begins.
The phrase “equally reigns” matters because it refuses the common hierarchy we build between “good” thoughts and “bad” ones. Sivananda’s subtext is that mental content is secondary; the mind’s fluctuations are inevitable, but the stillness that underlies them is impartial. Whether the previous wave was desire, fear, or devotion, the silence after it is the same silence. That’s a quietly radical claim in an age (including his own) of moralized psychology, where inner life gets graded like homework.
Contextually, this sits in the lineage of yogic and Vedantic models that treat thought as vritti - a modification of mind-stuff - and liberation as disidentification from those modifications. The sentence works because it shifts the target: stop chasing permanent calm and start noticing the micro-pauses you’ve been skipping over. It’s a practical instruction smuggled inside metaphysics: attend to the gaps, and you discover peace isn’t an achievement. It’s the baseline your attention keeps interrupting.
The phrase “equally reigns” matters because it refuses the common hierarchy we build between “good” thoughts and “bad” ones. Sivananda’s subtext is that mental content is secondary; the mind’s fluctuations are inevitable, but the stillness that underlies them is impartial. Whether the previous wave was desire, fear, or devotion, the silence after it is the same silence. That’s a quietly radical claim in an age (including his own) of moralized psychology, where inner life gets graded like homework.
Contextually, this sits in the lineage of yogic and Vedantic models that treat thought as vritti - a modification of mind-stuff - and liberation as disidentification from those modifications. The sentence works because it shifts the target: stop chasing permanent calm and start noticing the micro-pauses you’ve been skipping over. It’s a practical instruction smuggled inside metaphysics: attend to the gaps, and you discover peace isn’t an achievement. It’s the baseline your attention keeps interrupting.
Quote Details
| Topic | Meditation |
|---|
More Quotes by Swami
Add to List
