The Creation of Pleasure and Pain : 6.

The causes of our suffering are we ourselves, but we do not create these causes wantonly, with conscious deliberation. We are led along a wrong path by mistaken notions, erroneous judgments of our own selves, and consequently of other persons and things in the world. Now we are awake to a tremendous fact that the cause of suffering in the world is not the object but the relationship of the object with ourselves. It is not merely this physical relationship of objects with us but a psychological relationship, which means to say, a mental relationship, which again amounts to saying that our personality itself is the cause of our suffering, due to certain misapprehensions. We ourselves, our personalities, cause the suffering. This is another discovery that we make.

But what do we mean by 'this personality who causes the suffering'? Is it the eyes, the nose, the ears, the sense organs, the body, the limbs? What sort of thing is it in the personality that causes our suffering or creates a mistaken notion about the things of the world? “Which is the psychological organ that troubles you?” is a question in the spiritual diary. Some people say, “The eyes trouble me,” some people say, “The ear is my trouble,” some say, “The tongue is my trouble,” and so forth. These are the ways in which they fill up the spiritual diary. Some people say that the street is their trouble. God knows what they mean by that. “The bazaar is my trouble, the street is my trouble.” They mean to say that certain things which they see in the streets and the bazaars distract their mind. That is why they say the street is the trouble. Likewise, we very charitably say the eyes are the trouble, or the tongue is the trouble because it asks for delicious dishes, and so on. This is how we sift the evidences in this process of judging the ultimate cause of our pains and sufferings in the world.

Swami Krishnananda

To be continued  ...