Why do some people experience more pain than others?

[Guest guest]

I have glimpses of how psychological, existential pain is created by the ego. It

is homemade, and it can be unmade. But what about physical pain: why is it

there? Is it a necessary part of dying? I do not feel I am afraid of death as

much as I am afraid of physical pain, senility, old age.

 

Psychological pain can be dissolved; and only psychological pain can be

dissolved. The other pain, the physical pain, is part of life and death; there

is no way to dissolve it. But it never creates a problem. Have you ever

observed? -- The problem is only when you are thinking about it. If you think of

old age you become afraid, but old people are not trembling. If you think of

illness you become afraid, but when the illness has already happened, there is

no fear, there is no problem. One accepts it as a fact.

 

The real problem is always psychological. The physical pain is part of life.

When you start thinking about it, it is not physical pain at all; it has become

psychological. You think about death; there is fear. But when death actually

happens there is no fear. Fear is always about something in the future. Fear

never exists in the present moment. If you are going to the front in a war, you

will be afraid, you will be very apprehensive. You will tremble, you will not be

able to sleep: many nightmares will haunt you. But once you are on the front --

ask the soldiers -- once you are on the front, you forget all about it. Bullets

may be passing and you can enjoy your lunch; and bombs may be falling and you

can play cards.

 

You can ask Gurudayal. He has been in the war, he has been to the front, he has

been a soldier; he knows: the fear is about the future. Then the problem is not

physical -- because the fear exists in your psychology. When the pain is actual,

physical, there is no problem about it. Reality never comes as a problem; it is

only the ideas about reality that create the problem.

 

So the first thing to be understood is: if you can dissolve the psychological

pain, no problem is left. Then you start living in the moment. "Psychological"

means: of the past, of the future, never of the present. Mind never exists in

the present. In the present reality exists, not the mind. Mind exists in the

past and the future, and in past and future reality does not exist. In fact,

mind and reality never come across each other. They have never seen each other’s

face. Reality remains unknown to mind, and mind remains unknown to reality.

 

There is an old fable.... Darkness approached God and said, "Enough is enough!

Your sun goes on haunting me, chasing me. I can never rest; wherever I go to

rest he is there, and I have to run away again. And I have not done any wrong to

him. This is unjust. And I have come to you to get justice." It was perfectly

right; the complaint was true. And God called the sun and asked the sun, "Why do

you go on chasing this poor woman, darkness? What has she done to you?" The sun

said, "I don’t know her at all. I have never seen her. You just call her in

front of me; only then can I say something. I don’t remember ever having done

any wrong to her, because I don’t know her. We are not familiar. Nobody has ever

introduced us to each other, we are not even acquainted. It is for the first

time from you that I am hearing about this woman, this darkness. You call her!"

 

The case remains pending -- because God could not call darkness before the sun.

They cannot exist together, they cannot encounter each other. When darkness is,

the sun cannot be; when the sun is, the darkness cannot be. Exactly the same is

the relationship between mind and reality: the psychology is the problem, the

reality never is a problem. You just dissolve your psychological problems -- and

they are dissolved by dissolving the center of them all: the ego. Once you don’t

think yourself separate from existence, problems simply evaporate, as dewdrops

disappear in the morning when the sun rises, not even leaving a trace behind.

They simply disappear.

 

Physical pain will remain, but again I will insist that it has never been a

problem to anybody. If your leg is broken, it is broken. It is not a problem.

The problem is only in imagination: "If my leg is broken, then what am I going

to do? And how am I to avoid, or how am I to behave and work my way so my leg is

never broken?"

 

Now, if you become afraid about such things you cannot live, because your legs

can be broken, your neck can be broken, your eyes can go blind. Anything is

possible; millions of things are possible. If you become obsessed with all these

problems which are possible....

 

I am not saying they are not possible. They are all possible. Whatsoever has

happened to any human being, ever, can happen to you. Cancer can happen, TB can

happen, death can happen; everything is possible. Man is vulnerable. You can

just go outside on the road and you can be hit by a car. I am not saying don’t

go outside on the road. You can sit in a room and the roof can fall. There is no

way to save yourself totally and perfectly. You can be lying down on your bed,

but do you know that ninety-seven percent of people die on a bed? That is the

most dangerous place! Avoid it as much as you can; never go to bed. Ninety-seven

percent of people die in bed. Even travelling by airplane is not so dangerous;

it is more dangerous to be in bed. And remember, more people die in the night...

so, remain trembling. Then it is up to you. Then you will not be able to live at

all.

 

Psychological problems are the only problems. You can become paranoid, you can

become split, you can become paralyzed because of fear -- but this is nothing to

do with reality. You see a blind man walking on the road perfectly well;

blindness in itself is not the problem. You can see beggars -- their legs

broken, their hands gone, and still laughing, still gossiping with each other,

still talking about women, making remarks, singing a tune.

 

Just watch life: life is never a problem. Man has tremendous capacity to adjust

to the fact, but man has no capacity to adjust to the future. Once you try to

protect yourself and secure yourself in the future, then you will be in a

turmoil, in a chaos. You will start falling apart. And then there are millions

of problems -- problems and problems and problems. You cannot even commit

suicide, because the poison may not be the right poison. In India you cannot

rely on anything! They may have mixed something into it; it may not be poison at

all. You may take it and you will lie down... and you will wait and wait and

wait -- and death is not coming. Then everything creates a problem.

 

Mulla Nasrudin was going to commit suicide. He came across an astrologer on the

street, and the astrologer said, "Mulla, wait. Let me see your hand." He said,

"What do I have to do now with astrology? I am going to commit suicide! So there

is no point; now there is no future." The astrologer said, "Wait. Let me see

whether you can succeed or not." Future remains. You may not succeed, you may be

caught by the police, you may misfire. There is no way to be certain about the

future -- not even about death, not even about suicide. What to say about life?

Life is such a complex phenomenon; how can you be certain? Everything is

possible and nothing is certain.

 

If you become afraid, this is just your psychology. Something has to be done to

your mind. And if you understand me rightly, meditation is nothing but an effort

to look at reality without the mind -- because that is the only way to look at

reality. If the mind is there it distorts, it corrupts. Drop the mind and see

reality -- direct, immediate, face to face. And there is no problem. Reality has

never created any problem for anybody. I am here, you are also here -- I don’t

see a single problem. If I fall ill, I fall ill. What is there to be worried

about? Why make a fuss about it? If I die, I die.

 

A problem needs space: in the present moment there is no space. Things only

happen, there is no time to think about it. You can think about the past because

there is distance; you can think about the future, there is distance. In fact,

future and past are created just to give us space so that we can worry. And the

more space you have, the more worry. Now in India they are much more worried

because they think, "Next life... and... and" -- ad infinitum -- "what is going

to happen in the next life?" A person is doing something and he does not think

only about the consequences that are going to happen here now; he thinks, "What

karma am I going to gather for my future life?" Now he will become even more

worried; he has more space. And how is he going to fill that space? -- he will

fill it with more and more problems. Worry is a way to fill the empty space of

the future.

 

The questioner says, "I have glimpses of how psychological, existential pain is

created by ego. It is homemade, and it can be unmade."

 

Just understanding it intellectually won’t help; you have to do it. Do it, and

then the next question will disappear. Do it, and then you will find there is

not any problem left. "But what about physical pain?" Now this is how problems

arise. Intellectually you have understood one thing, but that doesn’t make any

sense. The next question immediately brings your reality to the surface: you

have not understood. It is as if a blind man goes on groping with his stick; he

finds his path by it. And then we say, "Your eyes can be cured, but then you

will have to drop your walking stick. It is not needed." The blind man will say,

"I can understand that my eyes can be cured, but how can I walk without my

stick?" Now, intellectually he has understood that eyes can be cured, but

existentially, experientially, he has not understood it -- otherwise the next

question wouldn’t arise.

 

Sometimes people come to me and they ask one question, and I say, "You go on;

you ask the next too." Because one question may not show the reality; they may

be just showing their intellectual understanding. But with the next question

they are bound to be caught. They are bound to be, because with the next

question, immediately they will miss. The first part of the question is perfect,

but you have got the point only through the mind. It is not yet chewed well, it

is not yet digested. It has not become blood, bones, marrow. It is not yet part

of your existence. Otherwise you can never ask, "What about the physical pain?"

-- because the very question is psychological. Physical pain is not a problem --

when it is there, it is there; when it is not there, it is not there.

 

A problem arises when something is not there and you want it to be there, or

when something is there and you don’t want it to be there. A problem is always

psychological: "Why is it there?" Now this is all psychological. Who is to say

why it is there? There is nobody to answer. Only explanations can be given, but

those are not really answers. Explanations are simple. It is very simple: pain

is there because pleasure is there. Pleasure cannot exist without pain.

 

If you want a life absolutely painless, then you will have to live a life

absolutely pleasureless. They come together in one package. They are not two

things really; they are one thing -- not different, not separate, and cannot be

separated.

 

That’s what man has been doing through the centuries: separating, to somehow

have all the pleasures of the world and not have any pain; but this is not

possible. The more pleasures you have, the more pain also. The bigger the peak,

the deeper will be the valley by the side. You want no valleys and you want big

peaks. Then the peaks cannot exist; they can exist only with valleys. The valley

is nothing but a situation in which a peak becomes possible. The peak and the

valley are joined together. You want pleasure and you don’t want pain.

 

For example: you love a woman or you love a man, and when the woman is with you

you are happy. Now, you would like to be happy whenever she is with you, but

when she goes away you don’t want the pain. If you are really happy with a woman

when she is with you, how can you avoid the pain of separation when she is gone

and she is no longer there? You will miss her, you will feel the absence. The

absence is bound to become pain. If you really want that you should not have any

pain, then you should start avoiding all pleasure. Then when the woman is there

don’t feel happy; just remain sad, just remain unhappy -- so that when she goes,

there is no problem.

 

If somebody greets you and you feel happy, then when somebody insults you you

will feel unhappy. This trick has been tried. This has been one of the most

basic tricks that all of the so-called religious people have tried: if you want

to avoid pain, avoid pleasure. But then what is the point? If you want to avoid

death, avoid life -- but then what is the point of it all? You will be dead.

Before death, you will be dead.

 

If you want to be perfectly secure, enter into your grave and lie down there.

You will be perfectly secure. Don’t breathe, because if you breathe there is

danger... because there are all sorts of infections.... There is danger, so

don’t breathe, don’t move... just don’t live. Commit suicide; then there will be

no pain. But then why are you searching for it? You want no pain and all

pleasure. You demand something impossible: you want that two plus two should not

be four. You want them to become five, or three, or anything, but never four.

But they are four.

 

Whatever you do, howsoever you deceive yourself and others, they will remain

four. Pain and pleasure go together like night and day, like birth and death,

like love and hate.

 

-Osho-