Pain is the greatest curse of the soul. For those who are suffering, it is dreadful. Even if you are all right now, how do you know that you won’t some day be a victim? So long as there is any possibility of suffering, you must try to remove its causes by the roots.
There are three factors behind man’s sufferings: first comes delusion; second, the effects of man’s own wrong actions; and third, the effects of mass karma, such as the destruction of both good and evil individuals when Hiroshima was bombed.
Delusion causes identification with the flesh. From the beginning of life, the child thinks of his body as himself, that he and the body are one. This is why he cries if you pinch him, and why he likes it when you soothe his hand. The delusion of identification with the body came with the creation of man, and that identification increases by pampering the body.
In India our training is different than here in the West. We are taught to conquer the flesh, to mentally rise above body consciousness. If you love the body too much, you become unduly sensitive; you suffer whenever the body is uncomfortable. You have been taught to suffer, because you have been taught to depend too much on physical comfort for happiness. The desire for all sorts of comforts is a major source of pain. This is why the saints say we should not be attached to anything. If plain food is served, don’t miss your favourite savoury dishes. Never be so attached to anything that you become dissatisfied or unhappy or pained over the absence of it.
Human beings suffer because they relate to an ego: the consciousness of self as a physical being. Animals suffer much less than man because they are not egoistically identified with the body. They cannot relate to an ego as humans do. We also relate to others according to the degree of our identification with them. Seeing a stranger with a broken leg, you say, “How unfortunate!” You feel sympathy for him, but you are detached from the pain of his injury. If you had broken your own leg, you would be suffering with the pain. In the same way, a mother who sees her neighbour’s child killed doesn’t feel as sorrowful as she would if it were her own child. In each case, identification is the cause of suffering. You identify yourself more closely with your own body than with someone else’s; and you relate more readily to those persons or things that are nearest and dearest to you than to those that are not personally close to you.
Extract from the book “The Divine Romance” by Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda
