I wonder if you have ever realised,
for the last 5,000 years there have been wars,
killing each other, and how many people have cried, shed tears
for those who have been killed or maimed.
The speaker once was taken into a hospital by a friend,
another doctor,
where there were results of war. People had no arms and legs.
Some had no eyes.
Imagine or look how their mothers must have cried.
The pain, the anxiety, the hope
– all that constitutes sorrow.
This sorrow has existed in all the days of our life,
and we never seem to be free of it, to completely end sorrow.
So together, if you will, we’ll go into this,
because there is an end to sorrow.
Sorrow comes with the loss or the death of somebody.
My son, I have lost him.
There is grief and tears
and a great sense of loneliness.
Then, in that state of shock,
in that state of pain and anxiety, loneliness,
I seek comfort,
I want to escape from this agony.
Then I escape through every form of entertainment,
whether it be drugs, alcohol, the temple, the mosque or the church,
I want to escape from this.
So, I begin to invent all kinds of fanciful concepts,
whereas, I've lost him, he's dead, gone.
There is that pain. Can one remain with that pain?
Can one look at that pain, hold it? You hold it as a precious jewel,
not escape, not suppress, not rationalise,
but to look at the sorrow in oneself.
Not analysing it or rationalising it, not seeking the cause of it,
but as a vessel holds water,
so hold this thing called sorrow, the pain.
I have lost my son and I am lonely,
not to escape from that loneliness,
not to suppress it, not to intellectually rationalise it,
but to look at that loneliness,
understand the depth of it, the nature of it.
Loneliness is total isolation
which is brought about
through our daily activity of selfish ambitions
or ideological ambitions, competition, each one out for himself.
Those are the attributive causes which bring about loneliness.
But if you run away from it, you will never solve sorrow.
The very word ‘sorrow’
has etymologically, the same meaning as the word ‘passion’.
Most of us have no passion. We may have lust,
we may have ambition, we may want to become a rich man.
We devote our energies to all that.
But that does not bring about passion.
Only with the ending of sorrow is there passion.
It is that total energy
not limited by thought.
So, it's important to understand the nature of suffering
and the ending of it.
The ending of it is to hold that sorrow, that pain.
Look at it.
It’s a marvellous thing to know how to hold the pain
and look at it, be with it, live with it.
Not get bitter, cynical,
but to see the nature of sorrow.
There is beauty in that sorrow, depth in that sorrow.