Page 67 - Bodhayanti Parasparam Vol 6

Suffering is the root and results are flowers
thing becomes useful and pleasing when its set up is right and becomes painful and ugly if it is wrong. The same is the case with afflictions.
We intensify and perpetuate suffering due to the clouding of our discriminative faculty which has become clouded by the hankerings of the mind that we have become quite blind to the real values of life. In fact everything in life is for our ultimate good; only we have to learn to turn them to our advantage.
We should also note here the fact that the constant attention towards the afflictions and brooding over them strengthens them, our attachment increases towards them and we get trapped in their intricacies. This is due to the misutilization of the thought power in us.
It helps a good deal in our dealing with sufferings if only we could recognize that suffering is as fleeting as the state of happiness it replaces;pleasure and pain alternate. The pessimist says pain is the interval, a rather long one at that between two pleasure states whereas the optimist holds the opposite view. This too shall pass away is the universal criterion to be adopted while we face life events.
The best course would be to regard sufferings and afflictions as opportunities provided to us for developing submission and forbearance. Home is the training ground for the grihasta for whom putting up patiently with the day-to-day events of life is the highest form of penance and sacrifice. Instead of anger and resentment he should develop a meek temperament.
The earnest seeker after liberation and realization would be impatient to get rid of all the coverings and bondages caused by the samskars formed in the course of so many past lives. The so- called sufferings are the only means for the exhaustion of the samskars through bhoga.
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