Why Suffering?

Physical suffering is a fact of life.  Sickness, disability, hunger and poverty are not restricted to national boundaries.  Most people have experienced one or more of these at some point in their lives, including the natural disasters that occur worldwide.

Mental suffering, however, takes many forms.  It can be fueled by emotional experiences and attachments.  This type of suffering is often different for each individual, according to each one’s history and beliefs.  Many books, lectures and philosophers have postulated on human suffering through the ages.  Yet, people complain daily about their own or others’ suffering.

Sadhguru offers powerful insight into understanding human suffering.

Sadhguru: “There are two ways people can suffer. Generally, people think in terms of physical suffering and mental suffering. Physical suffering could be caused in different ways but 90% of human suffering is mental, which is caused within ourselves. People create suffering for themselves everyday – suffering anger, fear, hatred, jealousy, insecurity and so many other things. This is the maximum suffering in the world.

Why is humanity suffering? Let us understand the mechanics of suffering. Today morning, did you see that the sun came up wonderfully well? The flowers blossomed, no stars fell down, the galaxies are functioning very well. Everything is in order. The whole cosmos is happening wonderfully well today but just a worm of a thought worming through your head makes you believe it is a bad day today. Suffering is happening essentially because most human beings have lost perspective as to what this life is about. Their psychological process has become far larger than the existential process, or to put it bluntly, you’ve made your petty creation far more important than the Creator’s creation. That is the fundamental source of all suffering. We have missed the complete sense of what it means to be alive here. A thought in your head or an emotion within you determines the nature of your experience right now. The whole creation is happening wonderfully well but just one thought or emotion can destroy everything. And your thought and emotion may have nothing to do even with the limited reality of your life.

What you call as “my mind” is not yours actually. You don’t have a mind of your own. Please look at it carefully. What you call as “my mind” is just society’s garbage bin. Anyone and everyone who passes by you stuffs something into your head. You really have no choice about whom to receive from and whom not to receive from. If you say, “I don’t like this person,” you will receive a lot more from that person than anyone else. You really don’t have a choice. If you know how to process and use it, this garbage is useful. This accumulation of impressions and information that you have gathered is only useful for survival in the world. It has got nothing to do with who you are.

When we talk about a spiritual process, we are talking about shifting from psychological to existential. Life is about the creation that is here, knowing it absolutely and experiencing it the way it is; not distorting it the way you want. If you want to move into existential reality, to put it very simply, you just have to see that what you think is not important, what you feel is not important. What you think has nothing to do with reality. It has no great relevance to life. It is just chattering away with nonsense that you have gathered from somewhere else. If you think it is important, you will never look beyond that. Your attention naturally flows in the direction of whatever you hold as important. If your thought and your emotion is important, naturally your whole attention will be right there. But that is a psychological reality. That has nothing to do with the existential.

Suffering is not showered upon us, it is manufactured. And the manufacturing unit is in your mind. It is time to shut down the manufacturing unit.”