Sunday, July 12, 2009

Suffering

Suffering is of two types – Physical suffering and psychological suffering. Physical suffering is to safeguard us from the environment. If we do not have physical suffering, we will not come to know the imbalances in our body and will not be able to take any corrective action. In such case, our body will decay soon and cannot support life. Hence physical suffering is essential for our survival.

The other suffering is psychological suffering. Almost all of our sufferings are psychological suffering. The feeling of depression is the indication of psychological suffering. Every one of us feels depressed multiple times in a day. We feel depressed in almost all the relationships in our daily lives. This is the psychological suffering. If our response to these suffering is that this is the way of life, then we are wrong. If we console ourselves with such statements, then we are ignorant of real life. There is another way of life. In that way of life, we need not suffer psychologically on multiple times in a day. There is no suffering means there is a joyful way of life. To have the joyful way of life we need not change anything outside, we need not get anything to possess. What we need to do is just understand the new way of life and bring in the necessary inward changes within us so that the sufferings are eliminated. Joy remains with us.

If we look in to suffering, the cause of suffering is fear, desire, attachment, and such qualities. If we can be free from desire and attachment, there will not be any suffering in our life and the life will be filled with everlasting joy.

We have already seen the mechanism of fear, desire, and attachment, and concluded that these are unwanted constructed qualities, yet taken a deep root within us. Hence, even though we theoretically understand these qualities are unwanted qualities, we are not in a position to discard those qualities. That is, even though we recognize the fact, we are not able to implement those facts in our life. Yes it is not easy to implement as long as we stay as we are. One thing is certain. If we recognize these facts at least in theory, we are far ahead of the vast population which is under deep psychological suffering, without even knowing the cause of those sufferings. Since we are aware of the cause of our sufferings, which are fear, desire and attachment, our tendency will naturally directed towards eliminating those qualities from us. That is a great step taken in the right direction.

For ending our sufferings, we have to recognize the facts that we are the result of conditioning from the time of creation, both physically and psychologically. To be free from psychological suffering means, free from psychological conditioning happened for millions of years. If we are able to recognize this fact, another great step is taken towards ending of suffering. If we ignore the fact that we are the result of millions of years of psychological conditioning, none of our effort will be fruitful towards ending suffering. If we refuse to recognize or not able to understand this fact, there is no meaning in any of our effort towards ending suffering or achieving peace or whatever it may be. On the other hand, we must be aware enough to recognize the reality as and when we approach reality from any direction. In other words, we must be alert to recognize the facts. We will be able to recognize the fact if and only if we are free from the projection of our mind.

To progress in this direction, we need to have complete freedom. Freedom from anything and everything! Of course, such a freedom is not easy to achieve as long as we remain as we are now. We may discuss about freedom another day. Once we understand freedom and how it helps us to forgo fear, desire and attachment, then our tendency will naturally be directed towards freedom. Once this happens, we are very near to ending all our sufferings and taste everlasting joy.