Suffering
From the Gold Coast Talk 31 July 1993
You can only be unhappy about the past. It’s your past self being unhappy in the present. We’ve got to give up this dichotomy of the past in the present, this contradiction of being two things.
You can’t be the past in the present! If you’re past in the present, you’re the past and the present disappears. When the birds are singing in the present, how can the past exist? It can’t. The past is a phantom called emotion. You have to stay out of it.
If you feel unhappy, don’t think about why you are unhappy. All suffering comes from thinking. It is impossible to suffer without thought. You can know pain without thought. But pain is not suffering. Thinking about why you are unhappy is the connection between the head and the stomach. Then you suffer.
There is no suffering without thinking. To say your suffering is real is to avoid the truth. The question is: ‘Why am I unhappy’.
Why are you unhappy? If you’re unhappy in any area of your life, you can leave it. So many times we refuse to face the point of why we are unhappy, by making excuses: ‘I can’t do it … I can’t leave it.’ But you can do anything, unless you are under lock and key.
Action purifies. Fear stultifies – the fear of action, which is always in my thinking self.
Don’t Judge Yourself