Pain Must Have A Stop

[Guest guest]

Meister Eckhart says,

 

`We need not fear all the pain and trouble that could come, because

it is going to have an end ... We are to be so dead that neither good

nor evil affect us ... Life cannot be perfected until it has returned

to its secret source, where life is Being, a life the soul receives

when it dies down to its roots, so that we may live that life yonder

which itself is being.'2

 

This is not to imply that one should actually court pain or seek it

out, for that would be a kind of morbid and pathological practice.

But when pain comes as the inevitable effect of previous karma one

should be resigned to God - that is, one concentrates the mind on God

rather than on the pain or the ego-reaction of depression,

frustration, anger, etc. Thus pain is transformed and sublimated. The

pains and unhappy circumstances that may come to a man of spiritual

knowledge are like events that happen at a distance and do not relate

to him, for he has become detached from the vehicles wherein pain

inheres - the body and mind. It is as if these were happening to

someone else while his true Self within is at peace and is blissful.

 

It may be that those who have many desires and attachments say that

this is a pessimistic viewpoint for it negates all that they hold

dear - the empirical self and the phenomenal world of maya. And the

doctrine of karma makes them responsible for their own limitations

and misery, whereas they would rather blame something or someone

else - the family, relatives, the state, country, social, economic,

or political systems etc. and they are unfortunate victims of a

hapless fate. But maya is an explanation of the status of the

phenomenal world just as it is, and karma is the law of cause and

effect working within it. For the man of wisdom who knows the Self

alone is dear, the maya viewpoint naturally follows and it is a happy

and blissful one, for what it negates is that which is the cause of

misery and bondage, i.e. ignorance, desire and attachment. It is

stated in the Panchadasi:

 

The sufferings of the three bodies (gross, subtle and causal) are

caused by the desire of the enjoyer for the objects of enjoyment.

These sufferings affect the three bodies, but the Self is not

affected by them.

 

The sufferings of the gross body take the form of disease due to the

disequilibrium of the bodily humours; desire and anger and other

passions are the sufferings of the subtle body; and the source of the

sufferings of both the gross and subtle bodies is the causal body.

 

When the jiva is recognised to be identical with the immutable,

Kutastha, the sufferings of the bodies cease to affect him and no

experiencer remains.

 

- Swami Yatiswarananda

 

To be continued...