10 years ago, I traveled around Europe. One of the places I visited was Versailles Palace in France. Versailles Palace is just out of Paris.
The palace was the home of royal kings and queens, the famous King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette being the last king and queen to live there.
Versailles Palace is ENORMOUS!!
The palace building contains 700 rooms, with extravagant interiors, paintings, curtains, hallways and ballrooms, and more rooms!
And then when you come outside, there is the Garden.
The Garden of Versailles is 800 hectares (1,120 soccer fields) and has 200,000 trees, 50 fountains, a grand canal, statues, fields, and immaculate grassed lawns.
It is like a dream land.
It takes 1 hour to walk from the palace building to the back of the ‘garden’.
When I was there, I wanted to walk to the back of the garden, where Marie-Antoinette’s cottage was. However, I eventually stopped because it just went on forever!
The past kings and queens lived here. It was their estate, a play land, and a dream away from the poverty experienced by people in not so far away Paris.
Although the kings had everything, living in lavish luxury, in the end, they just disappeared, like a puff of smoke.
There is a song that says:
“that even if you live your life in a mansion with lush fields, it is nothing but a dream-like illusion when you pass away”
When I was at the palace, I fantasised about how great it must have been, being a royal, relaxing by the canal without a care in the world.
However, we live inside our own minds.
And inside the human mind, there is no peace because we live by our own greed.
Even the kings would have had enemies, feeling unsatisfied, disgruntled, and frustrated when things didn’t go their way. And then one day, they just disappeared.
This is because we are not living one with the world, we are living inside our own mind world.
In Christianity, it says God is within you, and Heaven, which is God’s Land is within you.
In Buddhism, it says Buddha is within you, and the Land of Bliss, which is Buddha’s Land is within you.
In Islam, it says Allah is within you, and Paradise, which is Allah’s Land is within you.