Centuries roll on, but the human problem does not change ­ the problem of suffering and the ending of suffering. Nisargadatta You do not like to suffer yourself. How can you inflict suffering on others? Ramana Maharshi One must learn to love, and go through a good deal of suffering to get it, and the journey is always towards the other soul. D. H. Lawrence He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon heart, and in our own desapair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. Aeschylus Outwardly one's life may suffer every kind of limitation, from bodily paralysis to miserable surroundings, but inwardly it is free in meditation to reach out to a sphere of light, beauty, truth, love, and power. ­ Whoever lives in the spirit lives in perennial peace. It is a happy peace, a smiling peace, but one is not lost in it. One is aware also of the suffering which exists around him or her and the world at large. Paul Brunton 2 Content 1. Suffering . 4 2. Transcending pain . .125 3. World religions on suffering . .166 4. Transcending suffering, courage .264 5. Death and suffering. 366 Good books for reading, understanding 394 Conceive the truth with the greatest might lying dormant within you, and shall you not find the strenght, you shall suffer mis­ fortune and succumb to the world of the irrational and the ignorant. You shall bring suffering to others and you shall suffer yourself. You shall be destroyer and the destroyed one. Ivica, 1979 You are me, and I am you. Isn’t it obvious that we “inter­are”? You cultivate the flower within yourself, so that I will be beautiful. I transform the garabage within myself, so that you will not have to suffer. I support you, you support me. I am in this world to offer you peace, you are in this world to bring me joy. Thich Nhat Hanh Edited ­ www.warningforseamen.info Page size of this book ­ 10,5 cm x 14,8 cm ­ 4,13 x 5,83 inch (1/4 ­ A4 paper ) 400 pages 3 Suffering Three passions have governed my life: The longings for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of (humankind). Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness. In the union of love I have seen in a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of (people). I have wished to know why the stars shine. Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens, but always pity brought me back to earth; cries of pain reverberated in my heart of children in famine, of victims tortured and of old people left helpless. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life; I found it worth living. Bertrand Russell 4 Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. That is the mystery. Katherine Mansfield Love, and all doors will open up to you. So stop asking yourself why you are unhappy, why you suffer so many setbacks, and so on. The reason is simply that you have no love. If you had love, nothing would resist you, because when you have love you do not stay there doing nothing. Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov Only love can bring about transforma­ tion in the world of corruption. J. Krishnamurti You cannot be conscious and create suffering for yourself. This is the miracle: behind every condition, person, or situation that appears "bad" or "evil" lies concealed a deeper good. That deeper good reveals itself to you ­ both within and without ­ through inner acceptance of what is. Eckhart Tolle ­ STILLNESS SPEAKS Oh, fear not in a world like this, and thou shalt know erelong, know how sublime a thing it is to suffer and be strong. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 5 It is enough to know that there is suffering, that the world suffers. By themselves neither pleasure nor pain enlighten. Only understanding does. Nisargadatta Maharaj ­ I AM THAT You suffer from yourselves alone; no one compels you. Buddha Stop hurting yourself and others, stop suffering, wake up. Nisargadatta Maharaj ­ Always remember you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think and twice as beautiful as you'd ever imagined. Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself. ­ When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety; if I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me. There is a great secret here for anyone who can grasp it. ­ Listen with ears of tolerance! See through the eyes of compassion! Speak with the language of love. 6 ­ Don't be sad! Because God sends hope in the most desperate moments. Don't forget, the heaviest rain comes out of the darkest clouds. Don't get lost in your pain, know that one day your pain will become your cure. Jalaludin Rumi 1207­1273 Look at yourself steadily ­ it is enough. The door that locks you in is also the door that lets you out. The ‘I am’ is the door. Stay at it until it opens. As a matter of fact, it is open, only you are not at it. You are wait­ ing at the non­existent painted doors, which will never open. Nisargadatta Maharaj I had to live for the truth in the light of the pure spirit, and no suffering must make me afraid, and from the moment that his hand touched mine, I knew that no suffering could make me afraid. Until now, pain had always blinded me with terror, but now I knew that I could meet and grasp it with strong hands unterrified. Preface We are pleased to announce this reprint of a work which, though written in the form of a novel, has a deep spiritual meaning underlying it. It is a story told in all ages, and among every people. It is the tragedy 7 of the soul. Attracted by desire, it stoops to sin; brought to itself by suffering, it turns for help to the redeeming spirit within and in the final sacrifice achieves its apotheosis and sheds a blessing on mankind. It is a story of initiation written in tender and beautiful language, and bears on its face the stamp of veridicity in simplicity and dignity. ­ The publishers. ­ ­ ­ Mabel Collins ­ IDYLL OF THE WHITE LOTUS ­ If one gives complete attention to this question of fear, to how one approaches it, looks at it, then one will find that the mind ­ the mind that has suffered so much, that has endured so much pain, that has lived with great sorrow and fear ­ will be completely free of it. ­ Questioner: There is so much suffering; having compassion, how can one be at peace? Krishnamurti: Do you think you are different from the world? Are you not the world? ­ the world that you have made with your ambition, with your greed, with your economic securities, with your wars ­ you made it. The torture of animals for your food, the wastage of money on war, the lack of right education ­ you have built this world, it is part of you. 8 So you are the world and the world is you; there is no division between you and the world. You ask, 'How can you have peace when the world suffers?' How can you have peace when you are suffering? This is the question, because you are the world. You can go all over the world, talk to human beings, whether they are clever, famous or illiterate, they are all going through a terrible time ­ like you. So the question is not, `How can you have peace when the world is suffering?' You are suffering and therefore the world suffers; therefore put an end to your suffering, if you know how to end it. Suffering with its selfpity comes to an end only when there is self­knowing. And you will say, `What can one human being do who has freed himself from his own sorrow, what value has that human being in the world?' Such a question has no value. If you have freed yourself from sorrow ­ do you know what that means? ­ and say, `What value has the individual in a suffering world?', that is ­ wrong. ­ I just want to know myself, not because I suffer, I go through, you know, I just want to know what I am, not according to anybody but just know about myself. So I begin to enquire, I begin to look in the 9 mirror, which is myself. The mirror says, your reactions are these, and as long as you have these reactions you are going to pay heavily, you are going to suffer. So that is all. So now how am I, an ordinary human being, knowing all my reactions, ugly, pleasant, hateful, all the reactions one has, to bring about an observ­ ation in which there is no motive to restrain, or to expand, reactions? ­ But our issue is to study the problem of suffering intelligently and wisely, to see its causes which lie, not in outward circumstances but in ourselves, and to bring about a transformation.