If you look at all the pleasures you get in life, they all come with a 'tax'! This tax is sorrow. Every event, however pleasant, causes pain in the end. Greater the joy; greater is the pain. Longing for an event or waiting for a pleasurable event is again painful. Memories of pleasure also bring pain. Before you want something, the feverishness of wanting it, is painful. When you have it, the fear of losing it is painful. When it is gone, the memory of its joy is painful.
So a Viveki, an intelligent person, whose wisdom has awakened, sees the whole thing as pain. There is nothing that is not painful. You say love is so beautiful, but love is also painful. How close can you get? Bodies can get closer, but still there is no satisfaction. The soul is not satisfied by the physical bodies coming closer. It wants something more; it wants to merge, vanish and disappear. That is love!
Nipping The Bud Of pain
When you realise that everything is pain, then what do you do? You have to do something to stop this pain. The root cause of pain needs to be eliminated. The pain, which has not yet come in life and, which has not sprouted should be nipped off, right at the beginning. How do we do that? Forgetfulness of oneself, as separate from one's environment, is the main cause of pain.
There are three things - the self, the seer and the seeing. Lack of perception causes pain. If you say, 'This is me', then there is a problem. "We keep our life somewhere else; we don't keep our life in us. Life is not in one's self, life is somewhere else." For some people, their life is in the bank account. If the bank closes, then that person will get a heart failure. Whatever you give more importance to in life, that becomes the cause of pain. So when you see the difference, that the seer is separate from its surroundings, it helps in eliminating the pain.
Through meditation, you can experience that you are not the body. But that doesn't mean that you have to run away from this world. This world is here for your enjoyment. However, while enjoying it, don't forget yourself. The realisation that you are separate from yourself is Viveka.
Mind Matters
A deeply absorbing collection of profound, yet simple talks on the matters of the mind given by Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
