Fw: [RamanaMaharshi] suffering & morality - [4]

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- Viorica Weissman

RamanaMaharshi

Saturday, August 25, 2001 5:58 PM

[RamanaMaharshi] suffering & morality - [4]

Q: We see pain in the world. A man is hungry. It is a physical

reality, and as such, it is very real to him. Are we to call it a

dream and remain unmoved by his pain?A: From the point of view of

jnana or the reality, the pain you speak of is certainly a dream,

as is the world of which the pain is an infinitesimal part. In

the dream also you yourself feel hunger. You feed yourself and,

moved by pity, feed the others that you find suffering from

hunger. So long as the dream lasts, all those hunger pains are

quite as real as you now think the pain you see in the world to

be. It is only when you wake up that you discover that the pain in

the dream was unreal. You might have eaten to the full and gone to

sleep. You dream that you work hard and long in the hot sun all

day, are tired and hungry and want to eat a lot. Then you get up

and find your stomach is full and you have not stirred out of your

bed. But all this is not to say that while you are in the dream you

can act as if the pain you feel there is not real. The hunger in the

dream has to be assuaged by the food in the dream. The fellow beings

you found so hungry in the dream had to be provided with food in

that dream. You can never mix up the two states, the dream and the

waking state. Till you reach the state of jnana and thus wake out

of this maya, you must do social service by relieving suffering

whenever you see it. But even then you must do it, as we are told,

without ahamkara, that is without the sense 'I am the doer', but

feeling, 'I am the Lord's tool.' Similarly one must not be

conceited and think, 'I am helping a man below me. He needs help. I

am in a position to help. I am superior and he is inferior.' You

must help the man as a means of worshipping God in that man. All

such service too is for you the Self, not for anybody else. You are

not helping anybody else, but only yourself.Sri Ramana Maharshi