What Can Unite Us in a Divided World: Father Šebestián and Sonam Lundrup on Love, Silence, and Inner Peace

We often associate Christmas with calm, silence, and slowing down. Reality, however, is often quite different. Instead of peace, we deal with gifts, cleaning, family visits, and the pressure to meet everyone’s expectations. We focus more on what should be than on what we actually need in that moment.

Christmas is also traditionally linked to Christianity. I was curious about how this time is viewed in other spiritual traditions—and whether it is possible to find common ground across different worldviews. That’s why I invited Buddhist monk Sonam Lundrup (Jan Brázda) and Franciscan priest Father Šebestián to a special Christmas episode of Talks 21.

The goal of our meeting was not to engage in a religious debate or compare who is right. Rather, we wanted to explore what these paths have in common.

We spoke about love without expectations, about silence, gratitude, and inner peace, about how to work with fear and difficult life situations. And also about the fact that despite different labels and different languages, we are often striving for the same thing—to live meaningfully, in peace, and with respect for ourselves and others.

You can listen to the full Christmas episode of the Talks 21 podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or directly on my website.

What to Take Away from the Episode

• Peace doesn’t begin when the world around us quiets down, but when we stop running away from ourselves.

• Love is not an emotion, but a state of mind—a wish for the well-being of others without expecting anything in return.

• Self-denial does not have to mean loss; rather, it means making space for what truly matters.

• Sometimes silence helps more than always having a ready answer.

• The enemy is not necessarily someone “out there,” but often our own fear, anger, or inner restlessness.

• We can change the world around us only to the extent that we are willing to change ourselves.

• Silence is not emptiness, but a place where we can begin to truly listen.

• Gratitude is not a denial of hardship, but the ability to see good even in the midst of it.

• Intuition is not magic, but sensitivity to subtle signals we usually drown out.

Love Is a Choice, Not a Feeling

One of the first questions we explored in the conversation was surprisingly simple: What is love, really? Is it grand romantic gestures, strong emotions, and words that sound good? Or is it rather how we behave in moments when we don’t feel like it—when we are tired, irritated, or disappointed?

Bhikshu Sonam speaks of love as a state of mind—a wish for the good of others without expecting anything in return. For him, it is not an emotion that comes and goes, but a way of relating to people and the world in everyday situations. Father Šebestián adds a perspective from the Christian tradition, seeing love as the fundamental direction of a human being—something our deepest self naturally longs for.

Both perspectives meet at one important point: love is connected to acceptance and the ability to step back from one’s own ego. This led us to the topic of self-denial, which, for a long time, evoked more resistance than understanding in me. As a child, I perceived it as something that deprives a person of joy—as a call to voluntarily give something up.

The conversation with both guests helped me reframe this view. Self-denial did not appear here as loss, but as release—as the ability to let go of something smaller to create space for something greater. Not as punishment, but as a conscious choice. Not as an escape from life, but paradoxically as a path to freedom.

Love in this sense is neither easy nor comfortable. But that is precisely why it has power. And perhaps that is exactly what we need today—especially at Christmas.

Why We Need Moments of Silence in Our Lives

We often associate silence with calm. But in the conversation, it became clear that for many people, silence can be uncomfortable. When external noise fades, we are left alone with ourselves—with our thoughts, fears, and questions we may not have answers to. That is why we are so good at filling silence.

With music playing all day long, constant phone checking, series, videos, or podcasts. We live in a world that is almost continuously noisy. And silence is gradually disappearing from it.

Bhikshu Sonam says that this is precisely why silence may be one of the most valuable gifts of our time. Not only inner silence, but silence around us as well. Without it, according to Sonam, we lose the ability to perceive what is truly happening within us and tend to react automatically rather than consciously.

And while silence is something worth seeking in everyday life, Christmas can be a good opportunity to begin. To invite silence into our lives not as an unwelcome guest, but as a tool for better understanding ourselves and others.

Change Begins with Each of Us

Many people today feel that society is divided. All it takes is opening the news, scrolling through social media, or listening to conversations at the family table. Different opinions, emotions, and fears often lead more to defending one’s own position than to understanding others.

But the conversation offered an important reminder: change does not begin “out there,” but within each of us. Not by convincing others, but by how we treat them. Whether we can respect an opinion we disagree with. Whether we can listen without the immediate need to respond or defend ourselves.

On this point, both guests agreed. Without personal responsibility, no real change can happen. It is not always easy. A divided world cannot be repaired by one opinion or one conversation. But it can gradually change depending on how each of us treats others.

Why It Makes Sense to Practice Gratitude

We also discussed gratitude. Being grateful does not mean overlooking difficult or painful things. Gratitude is a skill that needs to be consciously trained.

Bhikshu Sonam points out that without this training, our mind naturally tends to focus on what is missing, what doesn’t work, or what could go wrong. If we leave it like that, contentment will not appear on its own.

According to him, gratitude is not a denial of reality but a way to notice what we already have in life. Father Šebestián adds that gratitude is closely linked to humility—to the awareness that many things we take for granted are not self-evident.

Gratitude, then, is not an emotion, but a habit. Something that can be practiced in very ordinary situations and that has a surprisingly strong impact on how we experience everyday life.

Listen to the Christmas Episode of Talks 21

In this article, I have only touched on part of the topics we discussed with our guests. We also spoke about death and suffering, about how to face difficult life trials when they cannot be avoided, and where to look for direction when one feels lost. We talked about intuition—the inner voice—and how to recognize when it makes sense to endure—and when it is time to let go.

This Christmas episode of Talks 21 is an invitation to slow down and reflect on what truly matters in life. If any of these topics resonate with you, I recommend taking the time to listen to the full conversation on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts or directly on my website. You may find answers to questions you have been asking yourself for a long time. Or perhaps the calm that so often escapes us in the Christmas rush.