BENGALURU: Sorrow has to be understood and not ignored. To ignore it is to give continuity to suffering; to ignore it is to escape from suffering. To understand suffering needs an operational, experimental approach. To experiment is not to seek a definite result. If you seek a definite result, an experiment is not possible. If you know what you want, the going after it is not experimentation. If you seek to get over suffering, which is to condemn it, then you do not understand its whole process; when you try to overcome suffering, your only concern is to avoid it.
To understand suffering, there must be no positive action of the mind to justify or to overcome it: the mind must be entirely passive, silently watchful so that it can follow without hesitation the unfolding of sorrow. The mind cannot follow the story of sorrow if it is tethered to any hope, conclusion or remembrance. To follow the swift movement of what is, the mind must be free; freedom is not to be had at the end, it must be there at the very beginning.
“What is the meaning of all this sorrow?” Is not sorrow the indication of conflict, the conflict of pain and pleasure? Is not sorrow the intimation of ignorance? Ignorance is not lack of information about facts; ignorance is an unawareness of the total process of oneself. There must be suffering as long as there is no understanding of the ways of the self; and the ways of the self are to be discovered only in the action of relationship. “But my relationship has come to an end.”
There is no end to relationship. There may be the end of a particular relationship, but relationship can never end. To be is to be related, and nothing can live in isolation. Though we try to isolate ourselves through a particular relationship, such isolation will inevitably breed sorrow. Sorrow is the process of isolation.
“Can life ever be what it has been?” Can the joy of yesterday ever be repeated today?
The desire for repetition arises only when there is no joy today; when today is empty, we look to the past or to the future. The desire for repetition is desire for continuity, and in continuity, there is never the new.
There is happiness, not in the past or in the future, but only in the movement of the present.