How to Get Rid of Pain and Suffering?
Acharya Prashant: Let’s take something which you call as bad. We’ll begin with that; anything which you call as bad.
Questioner: Inadequate idea.
Acharya Prashant: Too abstract. I’ll then have to make it more abstract. Do you call disease as bad?
Questioner: Yes.
Acharya Prashant: A disease is bad when you experience the pain and suffering associated with it, only when the disease shows up in medical reports. Let’s say, there is a wound here. The wound has become infected and it is oozing pus. Now you will say this is bad, won’t you say that?
Don’t be so guarded as if you want to block my next step.
Questioner: I just said one might say it’s bad.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, what would you call as bad, because I have to start from there. What do you see all around that you would call as unacceptable? Is there anything that you dislike?
Questioner: I am just grateful. I am celebrating.
Acharya Prashant: Then everything is alright. You are home; you are home; you are home.
Questioner: I see somebody beating a child, I call it bad.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, yes. I like honest statements. He’s saying he is grateful when somebody beats up a child.
Questioner: I am not saying this.
Acharya Prashant: Then, why not said that? Why not say that when you find somebody raping somebody, you don’t like it, do you like it?
Questioner: I don’t like it.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, just say that.
Questioner: Why do you want there to be like.....
Acharya Prashant: It’s okay then, it’s okay. See, living in the fact means, an honest acknowledgment of what life for you really is like. Do you really like it if you are beaten up? Then why not simply say that? Why put it in abstractions?
So, you don’t like it when somebody beats a child, right? Okay. Now, beating a child is a gross act; it is visible. Let’s say somebody is carrying a cane and spanking a child with it. What is visible?
Stay with this, stay with this (says to a questioner). So, it is visible when the child is being beaten. And these eyes can look at that visible material act. Something goes up, something comes down, somebody cries; you can look at that. It’s a gross thing. It’s very difficult to miss it.
Now, make it more subtle; bring it down a level. Suppose the violence is not so gross, it’s a more subtle violence. What happens in a more subtle violence? Come on speak.
Questioner: Shaming.
Acharya Prashant: Shaming. Now, he is not beating, he is just accusing. He is just making the child feel ashamed using words. Words are also gross – a little less gross than action, a little less gross than action, but the words are also gross because a sensory mechanism can catch them. So, you still call it violence.
Questioner: Yes.
Acharya Prashant: If you are sensitive enough, you still call it violence. But somebody might say, ‘No, no, no! Beating is violence, this is just counselling,’ right?
You make it even more subtle. Now, the violent one is neither using a cane nor is he using words. He is just using…
Questioner: Ignoring.
Acharya Prashant: Ignoring, wonderful. So, using nothing, or just using a glance, a glance. Now, it is very subtle. Now, only the sensitive mind will say it is violence. If you are not sensitive, you will not even know that it is violence. But violence is continuing, violence is continuing. It is just that now you are not calling it violence; only 1% people are calling it violence.
What have you done? You’ve done nothing, you’ve just been apathetic to the child. Then, make it even more subtle, even more subtle.
Questioner: Thinking.
Acharya Prashant: Now, there is no possibility that anybody else can catch you. Now, there is no possibility that any law can punish you because you’ve just thought the violence. Are you getting it?
And you can think in a way, where what you are thinking is not labelled as violence. For example, you may think of converting the child to another religion. You may think of imposing your belief on the child. And you’ll not call it violence. You are saying that this is just something else. But, isn’t the same thing continuing? From the grossest of acts to the most subtlest of acts, the same thing is happening. But we are unable to see. This is what I meant when I said that this entire living is just one. It’s just that only sometimes you perceive the violence, the fear, the insecurity, the ugliness.
At other times, it is so hidden, it is so subtle to see how deeply you can violate somebody by just smiling at him. Have you come across this?
Questioner: Yeah.
Acharya Prashant: You don’t need to fire a gun at somebody. You can just smile at somebody and violate him very deeply. But you may miss it and you may say – No, violence is not all-pervasive; violence is just restricted to a part of life.
We will not acknowledge that it is all-pervasive. What will we say? It is restricted only to those moments when somebody is being beaten or somebody is being fired at. We do not see that even the basic stuff of thought is violence. The name given to it notwithstanding the very mind stuff is violence.
Who is a sage? A sage is one who is extremely sensitive, who is able to catch even that which we normally ignore. He is able to go to the fact of that which we just dismiss as usual. We call it usual, when we meet somebody and just smile. The sage stops; the sage says – No, no, no, there was something in it. Was this smile real? Was this coming from a reason? Did it rise from the heart? And he won’t just accept it as one of those casual things. That is the sage.
Questioner: Mystic and a sage. Here the sage is a mystic or mystic is another man?
Acharya Prashant: I mean the same. Why create unnecessary categories? We have so many categories already.
Questioner: A mystic is something who is beyond…
Acharya Prashant: I mean the same. Beyond the beyond is just no more mind. So, just no beyond the beyond. My task is to simplify, not complicate further.
Questioner: But life will become hell if you are, because if you will think things as they are sleeping to the reality. I don't know if you are living in bliss. Life is not just bliss, it has hell as well.
Acharya Prashant: The saint is one who has realized that life is not also hell, but just hell. And when he realizes that this that we call life as just hell, he says this cannot be life. Then he comes to real life and that is not hell. I won’t call it bliss; I’ll just say that it is not hell. If you are suffering, you need not be told how beautiful and blissful hell is. If you are suffering, all that you need to be told is that freedom from disease is possible. No positive, affirmative statement needs to be given. If you are really crying out of pain, do you need to be given dreams of the pink of health? You only need to be assured that this pain is not your nature, and that is all.
Questioner: So, do you think that you will tell it in some few days or you will tell it now, how to realize?
Acharya Prashant: I will never tell it. Why must I tell something that you already know?
Questioner: That’s what you do for hours because all you say…
Acharya Prashant: I keep non telling. You already know so much. My job is to?
Is anybody there who has already not been told a lot of things? They need to be now untold. Do not ask for more telling.
Questioner: Then you will feel it’s tough than gold because you cannot keep on sitting back.
Acharya Prashant: Don’t be too sure of that. Those of you who have coming here, they know, I can keep sitting like this.
Questioner: Because you are keeping yourself involved because your situation is like that you are attending.
Acharya Prashant: I don’t.
Questioner: But you are blinking and your body is restless and be loved.
Acharya Prashant: Who told you that you must sit like this (sitting straight) and it should not move. Even when the body is sitting like this, if you have an instrument sensitive enough, it will detect movement. I am letting my body move just like that, you know like that leaf on that tree. Look at the tree, it’s there. Look at that leaf, see how it is dancing. Why am I not entitled to dance?
Questioner: Okay, then you will be a different person to everybody who comes.
Acharya Prashant: Do you want to be okay? Why talk of everybody and everybody okay and me different person and this and that?
Will the patient talk about everybody else in the hospital?
Questioner: That’s true.
Acharya Prashant: So, off to your bed.
Questioner: But I shall treat you as a surgeon and me as a patient. We would like something more juicy and something more.
Acharya Prashant: Oh, it will be a very juicy medicine, don’t worry. Even the operation will be very juicy. Juicy brain surgery.
Questioner: So, if I see a man who is beating his child on the street, is it wrong to think that maybe both of them are lucky, sort of fortunate to have the experience of pain and suffering, because the man beating the child is suffering, and the child is suffering. But both of them have something to grow from after that, right?
One of them has the suffering of anger and things and things that they’ve done wrong to grow from. So, they’re in such a privilege.
Acharya Prashant: Who gave you this model that people grow from doing all this rubbish? What is this thing about growing?
Questioner: Pain is an opportunity to become liberated.
Acharya Prashant: Yes, yes, see this, see.
Questioner: You are not understanding my point.
Acharya Prashant: No, no, wait see.
Questioner: It’s misunderstanding here. It’s not that what I am saying that it’s desirable because desire is a whole different.
Acharya Prashant: You are thinking. You are thinking, right? You are uttering a statement that meant that both are growing, this and that. Do you see that this statement is a model? You are seeing, do you see that this is a preconceived notion.
Whenever you are thinking about a situation, you are missing that situation.
Whenever you look at something and think, ‘Oh! he is beating him and it is good for both of them and they are growing; here, you missed it! Because in thinking and concluding, thus you have missed the happening.
Questioner: I am not saying, I wouldn’t intervene. If I saw someone beating a child, I would step in, I would stop the man even if I am feeling good. No, no, I am not saying I wouldn’t interfere because my body is there. My body exists. It’s my duty to interfere because if I see something happening.
Questioner: What if somebody is really happy? Like you said they are blessed. When you see people that are happy, let them be happy and blessed. So, what do you do when the child is beaten and you consider that it is a blessing.
Questioner: So, my point is, it is ultimately not bad or good, there’s the duality of bad and good. We say this is bad, this is good. Ideally, I would not have an emotional reaction, but I can use logic to say, ‘Oh! this is the best thing to do.’
Acharya Prashant: It is neither bad nor good. Then you must complete the statement: It is neither bad nor good and not even in absence of both of them. Surely, you are using a model given by somebody. But it is an incomplete model. It is not A, not B and not even in absence of both A and B.
So, which means that you can have no feelings or thoughts about that situation; which means that you cannot even say that I am grateful and blissful that it will lead to growth; which means that you look at it and let the action happen through you. Gratefulness is not the thought of gratefulness. Joy is not the thought of joy. Truth is not the thought of truth.
But several teachers teach this thing - that whatever you look at, you take it as a great happening in some great growth as another step of the drama; all these are just thoughts. And when you are thinking about something, you don’t even know that thing.
Living in the fact means a body is beating another body to take the analogy you gave. A body is beating another body because the body which is the mind, is feeling that it is distinct and hence being violent and the rest of that. So, let this body also interfere. That body was violent towards that body. Now, this body feels the need and the dislike to interfere.
Gratefulness means not having any sense of like or dislike.
If I like something, what I am saying is, I dislike the absence of this thing. So, if you are liking something, you cannot be grateful. Liking something and gratefulness are very very different. If you like something, do you know what you are saying? You can only like this much, right? (showing a palmful). And if you like this much, then you are disliking everything which is outside of this.
So, when you see somebody beating a child, you neither have to like nor dislike. You just have to let the right action overpower you. You just have to let the right energy overwhelm you, flow through you; and then you do what must be done. And forget everything about gratefulness. When you have forgotten about gratefulness, you are truly grateful.
What happens is, that the great words of the seers become concepts in the hands of incompetent teachers. They turn joy and gratefulness and God and love into concepts. And they teach those concepts – that love is about saying, you know I am related to you; you know I am forgiving you. And gratefulness is about saying, ‘Ah! Even if it appears weird, yet it is so beautiful. It will lead to growth.’ – None of that!
Questioner: Is that so in that kind of case, I don’t want to point at you or anything. Is it kind of self-delusion as we go into that pattern to make things to be?
Acharya Prashant: You know, when a six-feet, six-inch man with two guns on either side is beating up a child, it becomes quite necessary that you just say, ‘Oh! this is just, I need not interfere. The child is growing.’
You want to do that and the teacher gives you a nice tool to make you feel good while doing that. Otherwise, you would have felt guilty. Otherwise, you would have felt as if you absconded from your duty. Now that teacher has given you a tool to escape. So, now you are escaping and it is a holy escape, it is a holy escape now.
The spiritual man is neck deep into action. He is not an escapist.
Questioner: What if I’ve been beaten in my life a lot. I’ve been subjected to violence and then I look at it as well, if I hadn’t under this, then maybe I wouldn’t be here.
Acharya Prashant: Who is thinking all this? Who is thinking all of this? The product of violence is thinking all this. Had you not been the product of violence, would you still be thinking this way? Had you not been a product of all your past end experience, would this thought still come to you? Does any thought come to us irrespective of whatever our past has been like?
Questioner: No.
Acharya Prashant: So it is the whole flow, the whole output of all that child beating, of all that violence and everything else that now comes to this thought. Do not ever try to imagine how you would be had you not been what you are, because you can imagine that only as you are. We often attempt that, don’t we?
How would I be, were I not what I am? Now you can never imagine that imagination will fail because all your imagination proceeds from the center of what you currently are. So, don’t even attempt that.
Gratefulness is any way our natural state. We don’t have to be grateful. We can only not be grateful. When we decide to be anything, we are then not being grateful, because in saying that I want to become that, that could be anything – good, great, wonderful, or grateful. When I say, I want to become grateful, what I am saying is that I am not alright with that which is. And if I am not alright, with that which is, am I grateful?
Questioner: No.
Acharya Prashant: So, the very attempt to become grateful is an act of ungratefulness. If I am really grateful, I will not try to be grateful or feel grateful. If I am trying to be grateful, I am so ungrateful.
