Difficult Circumstances

The world has very many ways of shaking us, if it can. Don’t be discouraged when you seem to lose your equilibrium for a while, under the pressure of circumstances. It’s just the world being true to what it is. And that is to test your equilibrium.

Every time you are able to maintain equilibrium and neither get excited nor depressed, you will be more intelligent. And it seems to me that eventually, by grace, circumstances don’t come at you anymore. Or perhaps it’s just that you don’t need that anymore. 

But unless you’ve heard this, and it’s been demonstrated to you, you will think that your difficult circumstances are some sort of penalty, some sort of punishment. ‘What have I done wrong?’ But it’s not that at all. That’s a wilful way of looking at things. The world of circumstances is not a punishment. It’s an assistance for us to become more intelligent.

You haven’t done anything wrong. The only thing that was ever 'wrong’ is that you were born! And me, too. Being born leads to suffering and problems. The point is to rise above the problems, somehow or other; to attend to the difficulties with action instead of thought. Action purifies. Thought corrupts.

Edited from a talk during the afternoon of 4 November 2000.




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