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Attitude Towards Pain and Tolerance
Do we have a need for Pain?
Should we welcome or somehow seek Pain?
We should not make the mistake of looking for pain. You know the old
ascetics in India used to sleep on a bed of nails and things like that,
but that is not what Master means. The pain Master refers to is the
pain of suffering, not physical pain so much as the suffering of the
heart resulting from sympathy and compassion for other human beings.
Master has clarified this Himself when He said that there were saints
in India in the past who used to pray that all the suffering of humanity
should come to them. So it is a total suffering, not an individual one
like your headache or your stomachache, not like that.
Physical ailment is really meant for the cure of spiritual diseases
because thereby it consumes some of the samskaras and increases the
power of endurance as well. One proceeding in the proper manner will
find his spiritual condition much improved by the effect of illness.
Besides, continued thinking of God during the period of illness will
offer him a happy pastime as well.
The value of pain is when we suffer it as quickly as possible and forget
it. Then we can wait for the next dose of pain. But if you are sticking
to the first dose of pain, like a leech, you are not getting rid of
it, and it goes on and on. And all the rest of the pain we have to suffer
is still there. Therefore, one life is not enough. So you see, we must
embrace pain, give it a big kiss, crush it like that (hugging gesture
with arms) and throw it away. "Next!" Now, from such a man,
pain will run away. So you see, pain is something to be quickly finished.
The next point is that even one of the principles; maxims of Sahaj
Marg says, 'accept sufferings as a Gift of God'. The most important
reason for this is that when we are happy, when we are enjoying ourselves,
we don't think of God or the Master, but when we are suffering we always
think of God or Master. So constant remembrance is impossible when you
are happy, healthy and contented.
To amplify this there is one more reference in Lalaji's works where
He says: a saint has to have three qualities or three aspects of life.
There must be permanent illness, there must be a certain degree of
poverty, and such a person must always have critics. In the old
Arabic it is called: "Illat", "Killat"
and "Zillat". I used to wonder why this was necessary
for a saint. When your health is a little below normal we don't do so
many things as when we are healthy. When there is a little illness all
indulgences become impossible. A slightly sick person is a sensible
person. And as I said earlier it promotes constant remembrance. Coming
to "Killat", which is a little poverty; when you have
less money than you should have, you are expending sensibly and you
are careful not to waste resources. We can see the evils of a consumption-orientated
society right in front of us. The third one that we should always have
critics, makes us look at ourselves; gives us humility, and makes us
very careful in our behaviour, in our actions. So whereas a worldly
person looks for health, wealth, good name, fame, position; the saint
looks for ill-health, poverty and critical attitude from all the world.
But I have to repeat the caution that we are not supposed to seek physical
mortification as was done in the religious way, but to accept pain as
something to do with the heart and not so much with the body.
The only way in which pain can cease to exist, is while its opposite,
pleasure also ceases to exist. You can't have one and not the other.
The only time when light can cease to exist, is when darkness ceases
to exist. Both must go.
Tolerance
Master's culture is so profound that it will not permit any undue or
wanton criticism of other ways of life. To Master, everything has a
place in the universal hierarchy. He teaches that other teachers are
also doing God's work, each one at his own level. Tolerance, as taught
by Master, is not a virtue but a definite duty enjoined on the abhyasi.
No system can ascribe to itself exclusively either total importance
or total effectiveness. If a mountain has a summit, it is because it
has a base to support it!
Tolerance must be extended to all facets of one's life. After many
years of close personal association with my Master, I have come to the
conclusion that tolerance is perhaps the most important spiritual quality
as it seems to embrace, and emanate out of itself, the other virtues
such as understanding, charity, and even love itself. I have often been
told that love begets tolerance but, perhaps, the reverse that tolerance
begets love, is true.
In the widest understanding of the word, tolerance implies that everything
has a place in the universal hierarchy, and it is the understanding
of this basic truth of creation that tolerance reveals. Tolerance thus
reveals the correct perspective in the universal scheme of things. We
have been taught that good and evil coexist, that they are nothing but
different facets of the same reality. Tolerance can give us that quantum
of time which will permit us to probe below the surface and see the
underlying truth. This is a minimum benefit that tolerance confers -
time to study and understanding things.
There is a tremendous difference in Master's outlook and the outlook
of the older, the ancient teachings of the seers. They said, "Don't
react"; He said, "Absorb." When you don't react, you
become hard. The heart becomes like stone, now you can kick it, pummel
it, punch it, nothing happens to it. But when He says absorb, the heart
has to be so soft that even the tiniest prick, the tiniest barbs of
hate, you have to absorb them very much like the black holes of space.
Everything goes in and nothing comes out.
When we let the heart be free of all values, because essentially bearing
something means, don't have a value judgement that this is good, this
is bad. This is good so I accept it; that is bad so I reject it. He
is a good man so I welcome him; she is a stupid woman so I reject her
even at the gate. This man is a saint, I must touch his feet; that man
is a sinner, I must shoot him. When all these value judgements bid good-bye,
automatically our heart accepts anything. It is like an open window.
Can the open window say that this is good breeze that is coming, this
is warm breeze, let me shut myself, this is stench from the stinking
gutters, let me now stop the movement altogether? It is open to everything.
No value judgement. Once we stop thinking, once we stop judging, everything
is Divine.
So when we learn to bear everything, learn to put up with everything,
tolerate everything, we should not be conscious of what we are putting
up with. Because if the consciousness is there, then I am still discriminating
between good and bad, and priding myself on my sort of resistance which
I am building up, I am becoming more and more egotist. Master never
said, "I put up with everything," though He put up with everything.
We all know. We have all been at one time or the other, guilty of enforcing
our views, our actions, our situations, our prayers even on the Master.
He accepted everything because it was His nature. He was a window into
eternity. He was eternity itself.
So my heart must eventually grow and grow in His heart, which being
infinite, as big as the Universe, can contain not one heart, but many
hearts growing within itself. And one day if the miracle is permitted
to happen, there is no distinction between His heart and the abhyasi's.
All this is possible only by tolerance. The tolerance of the child which
does not know that 'I am tolerating anything.' It is innocent of everything.
It glories in its own existence. For it, everything is a marvel, everything
is a blessing, everything is a joy.
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