A beautiful story from the life of Buddha:

Devadatta, a cousin of Buddha, joined Buddha’s order of monks. He was hungry for power and status. He wanted to become the head of the order of monks. But Buddha would not allow such an immature person, who was running after status instead of enlightenment, to lead his mission. So Devadatta harbored jealousy and ill feelings towards Buddha and even made several attempts to kill him.

Once Devadatta persuaded the royal elephant-keepers to release a fierce elephant on to Buddha’s path. The elephant was intoxicated and let loose on the streets where Buddha used to walk regularly. The mad elephant ran wildly. People panicked and fled in all directions. The elephant came upon Buddha.

Buddha kept walking, radiating the same peace and calm even in the face of this danger. His bliss and peace was not at all affected by the threat of the wild elephant. The elephant came rushing towards Buddha in a mad fury.

Once it reached Buddha, it immediately calmed down completely. Its wild nature simply dissolved in Buddha’s enlightened presence. Buddha touched the elephant’s forehead and stroked it gently. Calmed by the patting, the elephant bent on its knees and bowed down to Buddha. The people watching the whole scene were simply shocked!

The effect of the peace radiated by a person who is fully satisfied and blissful within himself is similar to the waves that happen in a lake when you throw a stone into it. Everything in the lake is touched by the effect of the stone. The waves of bliss radiating from a peaceful person naturally and automatically touch the people, animals, trees, and rocks, affecting everything nearby. To make the whole world blissful and happy, you don’t have to do anything. Just change your center.

Existence itself is pure, intelligent energy. This loving Existence desires that each of us succeeds and experiences fulfillment in life. When we realize this, we can simply let go of our fears, desires, jealousies, pains, and depressions and relax into the loving arms of Existence.

When you are seeing a horror movie, your world will be filled with fear. But if you just change the channel to say a comedy movie, you can see how your whole world changes! When the inner awakening happens, the higher emotions happen. It all finally boils down to your own experience of what is happening. If you want to save the world, all you need to do is save yourself! Everything is actually happening in this world – great spiritual sessions where enlightenment is being shared and at the same time terrorist training camps where violence is being shared.

According to what you tune with, the world that you attract and see will also appear to be. You will attract the same type of people and situations in your life. Even one person struggling for enlightenment, seeking, raises the consciousness of at least a million people. Not only are we all connected to each other socially, the great Truth is that we are all part of the Whole, the Collective Consciousness. We are not individual islands.

Our thoughts, our emotions, and our feelings not only affect us but they affect the rest of the world also. We are all waves in the ocean of Existence. Existence itself is pure, intelligent energy. This loving Existence desires that each of us succeeds and experiences fulfillment in life. When we realize this, we can simply let go of our fears, desires, jealousies, pains, and depressions and relax into the loving arms of Existence. If we realize this great Truth, we will see how each of us is a unique and irreplaceable part of the grand orchestra of the universe, of Existence. Instead of looking at each other as enemies, if you start looking in, you will realize that the enemy within is causing all the trouble. As such, there is no enmity with others. The other is just a blissful part of Existence like you. We think negatively because we are unaware. Our thoughts affect the people around us and also the whole world. Harsh words, angry feelings, suppressed emotions, and suffering all directly contribute to the creation of unrest in the world. Individual stress, hatred, and violence cause an increase in the collective stress, hatred, and violence in society! This leads to a decrease in human awareness resulting in more acts of violence against nature. We need to break this cycle, otherwise it will cause more calamities, both natural and manmade, because the wheel of nature cannot sustain any more violence. So global peace, as such, has no meaning. It is the peace and bliss inside the individual that will directly result in global peace. The individual’s inner satisfaction, increase in awareness, creativity, and intelligence will automatically lead to global peace, prosperity and harmony.

source: Living Enlightenment