Suffering and Attention

Suffering is an inescapable part of our life. There isn't a single human being in the world, whether he is a monk in the Himalayas, or a man in the street, or a very successful person, each one of us suffers. And we make others suffer. That's our cycle. There isn't one human being who has not cried, shed tears and experienced the pain of loss. When someone believes something contrary, we are willing to despise him, criticize him and make him suffer. This is going on.

So there is sorrow at the individual level due to all these sufferings--- my son is dead, my husband has left me, I am lonely, etc. Then there is sorrow at the macro level, of seeing another person suffer, the sorrow of those who cannot read or write, those who are extremely poor, etc. Sorrow is not sentimental, rather it is a dreadful thing, and all of us are pained by it!

Now the question is, can this sorrow ever end? Probably we have never asked that question! We have never faced it; we all want to escape from it, take a drug in order not to suffer, or get drunk. Instead of facing the sorrow directly, we try to cover it through words, through some kind of hope and so on. Facing the sorrow and living with it means to give one's whole attention to it.

Attention is like fire; when complete attention is given, any of these things like sorrow, loneliness, pain, anxiety, tears, etc., goes, disappears. Giving complete attention to feelings of sorrow or suffering burns them.

Where there is ending of sorrow there is passion which is not lust, but part of love. Where there is love there is compassion. And where there is this extraordinary passion of compassion there is intelligence, and that intelligence acts to diminish the suffering.