Speaking Tree - Look for the Causes of Suffering

Speaking Tree - Look for the Causes of Suffering:

Dostoevsky's statement, "In suffering look for happiness," will appeal to many people because many are suffering. And one can tolerate suffering only if one goes on looking for happiness; if not today then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. Suffering can be tolerated only through hope. Then one can suffer his whole life, just looking for happiness. Being impressed by Dostoevsky’s statement is dangerous. One should not look for happiness but look for the causes of suffering, because that is the way to come out of suffering.

And the moment you are out of suffering there is happiness.

You can wait for infinity and happiness will not come to you, unless you destroy the causes of suffering. I would say, "In suffering look for the causes of suffering. "  Jealousy, anger, inferiority complex -- what is causing these? And the miracle is: if you can go into your suffering as a meditation, watching, to the deepest roots of it, just through watching, it disappears. You don't have to do anything more than watching. If you have found the authentic cause by your watching, suffering will disappear; and if it is not disappearing, that means you are not watching deep enough.

So it is a very simple process and with a criterion: if your watching is deep enough. just the way you pull out a plant to look at its roots, it dies, because the roots outside the earth cannot survive. Suffering can exist only if its roots remain in the unconscious of your being. Happiness has not to be found somewhere else; it was always with you, but the cloud of suffering was covering it. Happiness is our nature. For suffering you have to make much effort, for happiness you don't have to make any effort.

Just stop making the effort to create suffering. In fact, everything of authentic value is achieved by relaxation, by silence, by joy. The idea of sacrifice and hard work will create more suffering for you. But once the idea gets settled in your mind, your mind will go on telling you that you are suffering because you are not working hard enough, that your sacrifice is not total. Hard work is needed to create things. Sacrifice is needed when you have something of value, truth, love, enlightenment.

Sacrifice is not in finding the truth; sacrifice is when you have found it -- then you will be in trouble. Sacrifice is not in finding love, but when you have found it you will be in trouble. Then either compromise or sacrifice. Cowards compromise. People who have guts sacrifice -- but sacrifice is not a means to attain anything. Dostoevsky lived miserably and has always written that existence has no meaning, no significance, that it is accidental, that there is nothing to find -- no truth, no love, no joy.

All his conclusions are wrong. But the man was tremendously capable, a great genius. Even if he writes things which are wrong, he writes with such art and such beauty that millions of people have been influenced by him. The danger is: words can be beautiful and the message can be poison. His insights are deep -- to find more suffering and misery in life. He is determined in all his works to prove that life is an exercise of utter futility. He influenced the contemporary philosophical movement of existentialism -- he became a pioneer.