sufferings qna

[Guest guest]

Question: 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?

 

Maharshi: 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.