Why Suffer Needlessly? || AP Neem Candies

Acharya Prashant: A monk met me once, I was in Dharamshala at that time. Had a very long conversation with him, he had come to visit. It’s a cold place, Dharamshala. And the fellow would be, always in just one piece of cloth. I said to him, “Why are you doing this to yourself?” He replied, “Suffering is necessary.” I asked him, “Are you sure that this kind of suffering will lead you somewhere?” But he was very determined. He was a senior monk and he had done that all his life. It was very difficult for him to accept that all the suffering that he had accumulated, rather earned over his lifetime, was needless. It’s needless!

Technology is good. Science has provided man with medicine. All that is not just hot air, all that is meaningful. If you are having a great headache, don’t tell me that your peace won’t be disturbed. If modern medicine can help you get rid of physical disorders at least, that helps. No point quoting again and again, that you are the Atman, and nothing but the Atman, so no migraine or no headache affects you.

Those who have headaches and migraines know that these do affect them. Keeping the migraine upon you, and saying that suffering helps, and suffering cleanses and purifies is non-sensical. Give it up!

And then there is legitimate and genuine suffering that comes to you in the process of self-realization. You will have to go through it.

I will give an example. You think of yourself as a very worthy man, you think of yourself as an honest man. You think of yourself as a loving father, or a loving son, or a loving husband. Or you think of yourself as a devoted wife, a caring mother, or a loving daughter. Something.

The more you open your eyes in the spiritual sense, the more you realize that you have been exploiting others, just every bit, as much as others have been exploiting everybody else.

And then, it is not pleasant to come up with this realization. One suffers. What I am saying is that awareness brings suffering.

You cannot wake up and not suffer. This is what I am calling ‘genuine suffering’. And many people prefer not to wake up, just because they want to avoid genuine suffering as well.

And I assure you, what you call ‘self-realization’ is never going to be pleasant. It’s not going to be blissful or something. It’s always a bit of a heartbreak. One sees the futility of one’s life, one sees how tremendously misled one has been. And all that hits the ego. One gets hurt. It is never pleasant to get hurt. But one has to pass through that.

One has to let that suffering come, and one has to stand very vulnerable to it. One has to bow her head down. One has to say, “I see that I have been not only blind, but I have been needlessly blind. All my life, I have just deceived myself.” One’s self-esteem falls into pieces. One has to be prepared for all that. And all that entails suffering.

You will not reach Truth with your ego intact.

Read the full article here: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/articles/suffer-but-suffer-rightly-1_da800e7

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