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subscribe Tell a friend The center of suffering
When you see a most lovely thing, a beautiful mountain, a beautiful sunset, a ravishing smile, a ravishing face, that fact stuns you, and you are silent; hasn't it ever happened to you? Then you hug the world in your arms. But, that is something from outside, which comes to your mind, but I am talking of the mind, which is not stunned but which wants to look, to observe. Now, can you observe, without all this upsurging of conditioning?
To a person in sorrow, I explain in words; sorrow is inevitable, sorrow is the result of fulfillment. When all explanations have completely stopped, then only can you look, which means you are not looking from the center. When you look from a center, your faculties of observation are limited. If I hold to a post and want to be there, there is a strain, there is pain. When I look from the center into suffering, there is suffering. It is the incapacity to observe that creates pain. I cannot observe, if I think, function, see from a center - as when I say, "I must have no pain, I must find out why I suffer, I must escape." When I observe from a center, whether the center is a conclusion, an idea, hope, despair, or anything else, that observation is very restricted, very narrow, very small, and that engenders sorrow.
To a person in sorrow, I explain in words; sorrow is inevitable, sorrow is the result of fulfillment. When all explanations have completely stopped, then only can you look, which means you are not looking from the center. When you look from a center, your faculties of observation are limited. If I hold to a post and want to be there, there is a strain, there is pain. When I look from the center into suffering, there is suffering. It is the incapacity to observe that creates pain. I cannot observe, if I think, function, see from a center - as when I say, "I must have no pain, I must find out why I suffer, I must escape." When I observe from a center, whether the center is a conclusion, an idea, hope, despair, or anything else, that observation is very restricted, very narrow, very small, and that engenders sorrow.