Page 63 - Bodhayanti Parasparam Vol 6
P. 63

Suffering is the root and results are flowers
 Part-A
SUFFERING IS THE ROOT UNDERSTANDING SUFFERING:
We will first look at suffering in its ordinary sense. We call it suffering whenever we undergo a painful or unpleasant experience. Suffering can be at the physical, emotional (vital) and mental levels as when a person suffers due to chronic illness, emotional trauma due to loss of a dear one and mental anguish as a result of being unable to overcome the roadblocks encountered while trying to achieve a desired objective. What really happens though is we convert suffering of whatever level mostly into a mental one. It can be stated that for a person liberated from the mental vital and physical layers or kosas there is no suffering as we understand that term. This conversion to the mental level of suffering is due to the verbalizing and objectifying nature of the thinking, analyzing and awareness faculties we humans possess. The very statement that ‘I am suffering from or due to such and such’ is an example of this mentalization of suffering.
This is not to deny the constant interaction between thought and feeling aspects of any experience, thought trying to crystallize the usually amorphous nature of feeling, giving it a shape, casting it into a mould we are accustomed to by virtue of conditionings brought about by the influence of parents, peer-groups, tradition, societal and cultural settings in which we find ourselves. We tend to become comfortable once we are able to categorize or pigeon-hole anything which becomes a subject of our introspection. Rather, for man who is a thinking animal there is nothing which escapes this inward gaze, his constant unceasing attempt at classification, separation into neat mutually exclusive easily recognizable compartments of anything and everything. It has become
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