Why Suffer?
Edited from The Gold Coast Talk 9 April 1995
I have an intelligent question to ask you: Do you want to suffer anymore? Do you want to suffer ever again? The answer to the question must be obvious: ‘No, I don’t want to suffer.’
Why do I suffer? (Please check everything that I’m saying, in your own experience). I do not suffer because of events. I suffer because I think and because I am true to my feelings.
Life-experience is self-knowledge. My life is myself. So if I just travel along the surface of my life with a momentum of doing what I please, I’m not going to have much self-knowledge. The only self-knowledge I get is when I run into a brick wall and my momentum is stopped. That’s the moment that life provides as self-knowledge … Why you are now shocked, unhappy? Are you learning from it? Are you getting the self-knowledge of why you are suffering?
Have you learnt that I only suffer when I think? And I only think because I give in to my feelings? Have you learnt that yet? That’s what life’s about for us, who are so far down in the scale of cosmic maturity. You and I, as the consciousness of this planet, have the task of learning why we suffer. Once I know why I suffer, it’s obvious: I don’t have to suffer anymore.
Everybody blames events for their suffering. Events have to happen in this world. I, intelligence, have projected myself as an individuated body. I am extraordinarily vulnerable to events. I can lose an arm at any time, like a bee can lose its wings. I am vulnerable to so many events that can cause physical pain and that can shock me. To lose what I have is a sudden interruption of the normal expectation that everything will go on as it’s going.
But I don’t have to suffer. If I lose my house, indeed, with such a major loss I have to take a lot of action to address the situation. But action does not require thinking. Action requires looking - looking at the situation. Looking is not thinking. Thinking interprets things. Looking does not interpret things. It discovers them. Looking, you see the fact. So if I look at the situation without thinking, I will see the next probable move. And if I attempt it, and it is not the move to make, I will go still and see that fact.
I must do one move at a time. I must not allow my mind to put all the possible moves together, or I will say, ‘Oh my God, what am I going to do?’ Suddenly there’s ten alternatives before my thinking mind. So I have to be able to be still and be with the shock. I have to know that it is natural to be shocked by loss. It’s normal for the human race to think about it, but it’s not natural. Life on earth does not think about it. The animals just get the shock and take the necessary action to rejuvenate themselves. But we think about what we’ve lost and that’s when we suffer.
You’ve just got to do what you do what you do, until the action does the necessary work to finish that project, whatever it might be. It’s inconvenient. You have to put things aside to attend to this new activity. But that’s what life consists of, doesn’t it? Without activity, we’d be bored stiff. We love activity. There’s no problem with activity. We don’t suffer from action. But you suffer if you lie awake at night and think about your loss. Thinking leads to suffering.
What is suffering? Suffering is all feeling. But feeling is very tricky. It has tricked the human race through all recorded history. Feelings are a spectrum, like light. In the middle of the spectrum of feelings is boredom: can’t-be-bothered-ness; don’t know what to do; pointlessness. On one side of that I start to get an excitation: I look forward to something, like tomorrow’s dinner party. My feelings subtly become expectant and move a little faster in anticipation. And that creates a future. I can go into drugs or alcohol or sex and my feelings will get very excited and can go up and up and up. What goes up, must come down and feelings are no exception. The next day, or a couple of days after, I find that I am depressed. My feelings have suddenly swung from up to down and to the other side of the spectrum, into depression, unhappiness. Or even, as a result of drugs or broken hearts, to suicidal thoughts; all because I gave in to the feelings. All because I have been conned, and con myself, into thinking that feelings are what I am. Feelings may be what I am, but then if I am my feelings, I’m in trouble.
When I give in to my feelings, or when I act on them, I make myself unhappy. For most people, most of the time, the decisions of their life are made by feelings. They feel they should do this or that. They feel unhappy so they do something to get some excitement, to counter the feelings of unhappiness. But when you do something from a feeling of depletion, of contraction, the result will contain depletion or contraction in it.
This happens with anything that you do on the strength of your feelings. You say, from your feelings, ’Ah, I’m in love’ and you think you love somebody. It won’t be long before you’ve got the opposite: the feeling of not being loved, of not being acknowledged, because your feelings of love are not true. Love is not a feeling.
You have been taught by your Eastern Masters and all your teachers that love is a feeling. They are wrong. Do you know that the spiritual paths and spiritual ways are based in Eastern teachings? The East has no truth in it – not anymore, not for you. Anything to do with the East mesmerises and misleads you, because you love the magic of it. The basis of Eastern teachings is psychic magic - feelings. You can be controlled by your feelings. They manipulate your life.
Isn’t love enough for you? Isn’t the spiritual process enough for you, without having to have a spiritual path? I am a Westerner and say there is no spiritual path but there is a spiritual process. And a process is always now - here now, this moment where there’s no feeling or thought or future or past. What do you want - time? You want a future? Then Eastern teachings will give you all the time in the world. Your feelings will give you all the time in the world.
You’ll say to me, ‘I’m angry, I’m unhappy.’ And I’ll say, ‘Why? You don’t need to be. Finish with it now. Stop acknowledging your feelings.’ But you can’t, you’re attached to them. You weakly say, ‘I can’t help it. I’ve got to go into my feelings.’
Why? Why have you got to be your feelings? Why can’t you be intelligent, now? What feelings do you need at this moment? You need no feelings. You need no thought about some spiritual path. Life is now. Practise it. Now. You don’t practise future. You don’t practise past. Every thought you have is about the past or the future. It’s absolutely impossible to think about ‘now’. The spiritual process is now, the process of being now. For when I give up allegiance to my feelings and to thought, what have I got? My own being, now.
In your ordinary life your past appears in front of you as your circumstances. Our circumstances are the appearance of the past that we have neglected. All our feelings start to appear in our lives. So, if you have jealousy in you, he or she is coming to make you jealous. If you have greed in you, then that which is going to make you face it is coming. If you have fear in you, then it’s coming.
Events come in your life and if you think about them, you will be unhappy. Why don’t you look and see what can be done? Don’t give in to your feelings or start thinking. If you think about yourself, you will have self-consideration. You will consider your feelings and you won’t be able to see straight. You will suffer. So why don’t you be intelligent?
Suffer No More