If it is Optional to Suffer, why do we still Suffer?

Questioner: There is a well-known saying, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” My question is, Is suffering really optional? Whenever I go through persistent issues, I suffer, even after knowing.

Acharya Prashant: Yes, suffering is always optional.

But you cannot have your world and the rest of what you are, and not have suffering. You want to avoid suffering, but you do not want to avoid the rest of your life, you want to continue with that. You want to continue with your ways and yet not suffer. That is impossible. Your demand cannot be met.

Suffering comes from the same center, from where the rest of your life comes. If you want to do away with suffering, you will have to do away with the rest of your life as well. That you find too big a price to pay.

Are you prepared to change your ways, and your patterns? Are you prepared to plunge headlong into a truthful life? Do you commit yourself to the right?

We talk of suffering only when suffering becomes manifest. We talk of trouble only when trouble becomes large and expressed and unavoidable. At other times, we ourselves keep fomenting trouble. Ours is a situation of a man who wants to maintain his customary lifestyle, diet, routine, all his habits, his patterns and yet not have the diseases that are a result of that lifestyle. It is impossible.

If you have a particular lifestyle, how will you escape the disease related to that lifestyle? That disease is not new, that disease is that lifestyle itself, expressed now.

Do not look at the two as two, the two are one. The fact that you live the way you live and the fact that you suffer, are one fact. You cannot have one of these two and avoid the other. As long as you are this face, as long as your eyes look this way, as long as your choices are this way, how will you not suffer? And to the extent you are changing, your suffering too is changing. To the extent you are adamant about retaining yourself, your suffering also gets retained.

Is this clear?

Suffering is not an isolated fact, suffering is intermeshed. Suffering is just life in another name. Suffering is just our patterns expressed. Suffering is just the unmanifest calling itself out, manifesting itself in a gross way.

Forget about suffering, totally ignore that. Look into those areas of your life where you think you are “not suffering” and change them. And you will have no incentive to change those areas. Why? Because you are not suffering there, but that is where you need to change.

Thirty days you live in a particular way and on the 30th day, you get a heart attack. Most people will want to change the 30th day of that month. Why? Because on that day, they experienced the suffering. But what should they actually change? The remaining 29 days are what you should change.

So, change those portions of your life where you think you are not suffering and you will not feel like changing them. Yet, have some resolve and faith and change them. What you think is right with you, is exactly where you are going wrong. All that which you take as your decoration, as your accomplishment, as your cleverness, that is exactly where your hell is. But those 29 days do not bother you because then you are enjoying, eating, consuming.

Getting it?

Questioner: “Prevention is better than cure.”

Acharya Prashant: But how do you prevent when you do not know what is the cause of the disease? Your lifestyle offers you so many pleasures, those pleasures themselves are the cause of suffering and pain and heart attack. But to let go of pleasures is difficult.

In fact, when you ask a question like this and you get an answer like this, it is totally contrary to your expectations. You see, you had come to ask for ‘freedom from suffering’, instead, the fellow is advising you ‘freedom from pleasures,’ now that is a double whammy. That is not only a loss but a compounded loss.

Not only is he not telling you how you can be free from suffering, but instead, he is actually taking away from you, what you consider as the essence of your life. He is saying, “Forget the suffering, give up the pleasure” and you are already vexed with suffering. That is too bad. You don’t want to accept the solution. Don’t accept it.

Change those areas that appear alright. Change that which you do not feel like changing because it looks good.

Getting it?

What looks bad takes away all your focus, all your energy, and in the bargain that which is really bad, comfortably gets to remain hidden. “Jo theek chal raha hai wo badlo.”

They say that the squeaky wheel also gets the grease. Here, in reality, things have to be dealt with differently. Maya will not squeak that she is Maya, she will remain hidden in all the silent spots, in the wheels that do not squeak.

If you want to be alright, change all that which appears to be alright. That’s where your troubles are hidden.

Maya is quite somebody, she does not attack you on your weaknesses, she attacks you on your strengths. Where you think your strengths lie, that’s exactly where you would be attacked and demolished and enslaved. Where you think your confidence lies and whatever you are sure of, that’s exactly the place where you are being defeated.

It’s not your doubts that are important. Be cautious of that which you are sure of. Whatever you are sure of, is surely false. So, look there, look there. Changed that which is not at all calling out for a change.

Questioner: Aacharya ji, how to find out that the things we are sure of are false?

Acharya Prashant: Just examine. Confidence cannot be a substitute for examination, examine.

Questioner: How to examine it?

Acharya Prashant: You might be examining at the wrong places. You cannot get a thing where it is not. You do not examine the places where the trouble might really lie, and that is the trouble. You are searching at the wrong place. Your search is genuine and fanatic, but it is misplaced.

You have lost it on the top floor and you are looking for it in the basement. You are looking for it sincerely, I do not doubt that, but your sincerity is a misplaced sincerity.

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