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“We’ve been talking about balance—that the game is not to push away the world, the game is not to get caught in it—the game is to, as Christ said, ‘Be in the world, but not of the world,’ to be simultaneously empty and full, to be somebody and nobody. It’s all these paradoxes you have to embrace. There’s nothing to do, so get on with it.” – Ram Dass
#ramdass #spirituality #love
For most people, when you say that suffering is grace, it seems off the wall to them. It’s important to make a distinction between our own suffering and the suffering of other people, because even if we understand the way in which suffering is grace – that is the way in which it can be a vehicle for awakening – that is fine for us, but it’s quite a different thing to look at somebody else’s suffering and say, “It’s grace.”
Grace is something that an individual can see about their own suffering and then use it to their advantage. It is not something that can be a rationalization for allowing another human being to suffer. You have to listen to the level at which another person is suffering, and when somebody is hungry you give them food. As my guru said, “God comes to the hungry person in the form of food.” You give them food and then when they’ve had their belly filled, then they may be interested in questions about God.
Even though you know from, say, Buddhist training, or whatever spiritual training you have had, that the root cause of suffering is ignorance about the nature of dharma, to give somebody a dharma lecture when they are hungry is just inappropriate methodology in terms of ending suffering.
So, the hard answer for how you can see suffering as grace, and this is a stinker, really, is that you have got to have consumed suffering into yourself. There is a tendency in us to find suffering aversive, and we want to distance ourselves from it. So if there are suffering people, you want to watch them on television or meet them but then keep a distance from them. Because you are afraid you will drown in it. You are afraid you will drown in a pain that will be unbearable. And the fact of the matter is you have to. You finally have to. Because if you close your heart down to anything in the universe, it’s got you.
To deal with suffering, you have to consume it into yourself. You have to be able to keep your heart open in hell. You have to look at what is, and say “Yea, Right.” It’s bearing the unbearable. And in a way, who you think you are can’t do it. Who you really are can. So that who you think you are dies in the process.
- Ram Dass