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.
