Suffering Is Optional (with subtitles)
Satsang with Mooji Silent Retreat
Tirunvannamalai 17.10.2010 Session 2
[Questioner] I wanted to ask you how to deal with anger?
I couldn't ... I was like completely angry.
I was, you know, no silence,
just completely shaken like a tree.
When I wanted to ask you,
how do you deal with anger?
[Mooji] If anger comes and it somehow finds expression
there is even in that, not ...
There are times you can control, you want to, you choose to,
and you can control something rather than suppress it,
if you're aware enough. But if it comes, let it come also,
it's expressed, and no guilt about it.
That can happen, it comes out.
But somehow I am unable to store it
in memory, or something,
because I feel I've allowed or given permission
for everything to be whatever it is.
So it's not, Oh, I want, or I don't want. Let it happen.
Some beings have realised, 'This body doesn't belong to me'.
I don't even have a life that I can say is mine!
But it's the result of a kind of introspection, a seeing comes.
[Q.] I think it comes to the question actually.
In the letter the question was,
'Do I really know that that's me?'
[Mooji] Do you really know that what is 'me'? That what is 'you'?
[Q.] That I'm not the body. That I'm ...
[Mooji] This is possible for you to know.
It is possible for you to know.
The whole purpose of this inquiry
is to be clear about these things.
Not rationally, intellectually, theoretically, mentally.
But actually there is a power to the inquiry.
There is a power.
It's not a set of assumptions or projections.
It's going to be as a valid way of seeing and experiencing
something to be true as anything else.
In fact, maybe for the first time, you are recognising
that many thoughts you have about yourself and life,
you inherited them from somewhere else. It's not your own.
You never even considered
many of the things we're saying even.
And just by itself it's showing up.
'Oh! I've held that belief for a very long time
and look at that, it's not mine!'
It's only that a relationship is formed with that
and somehow it was brought in and held to be 'me'.
It was not original to you. It came later.
And so it can go like all other things, they can go.
Meaning, they go, their importance for you,
their relevance for you, that will change,
because there's nothing eternal about that.
And what a discovery that you're not stuck
in an eternal relationship with your thoughts!
[Q.] I'm discovering that, and the body can be hurt.
[Q.] It can be hurt. It's not me. [Mooji] Yes.
[Q.] Those things can happen.
[Mooji] The body can be hurt, but it's the mind that suffers.
Pain is there. It's part of the reality.
It is there for saint and sinner, pain is there.
It's the pain-body, pleasure-body.
But suffering has another quality to it,
an emotional quality, psychological quality.
So I feel that suffering is more optional.
How one sees, and how you meet your pain.
I think I shared with you the discussion that took place
between one person who sat with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
and he was saying to the Master, 'Sir, I've been listening to you
and I'm deeply touched by what you say,
but if I am to be honest, he says,
'I have to confess that I'm always experiencing suffering.
I'm always experiencing suffering'. And Maharaj says, 'It's not true.
It's not that you are experiencing suffering.
It's that you are suffering your experiencing'.
What an amazing insight! It's not that you are experiencing suffering,
because there's nothing called suffering.
But it's that you're suffering the way you experience.
And find out why!
Because the feeling was strong,
'Life is happening to me! Something is happening to me!'
Not that it's merely happening, but it's happening to me.
And immediately 'I' becomes a kind of vulnerable.
Becomes
vulnerable.
When observed, when 'I' is consciousness
all things are moving in the presence of that seeing,
but it's not pulled into an identification
so there's more space.
So, by the time ... You're not pulling any parachute too early.
That's why I say, something just watches
and just see how it pans out,
and gradually you come to see.
But left by itself life just takes care of life somehow.
But the panic button goes off for the mind
and it goes, 'Oh no, no, no!'
because it's always projecting the worst scenario.
This is the trademark of the mind.
So you project the worst case scenario
and then you pull the alarm bell quick, quick!
Because you don't want to meet your projection.
And all of this is a movie
being made in your own head, quite often.
In the place of consciousness there's more space
and one just watches what happens in the body
or how the mind is moving,
and for a while there's very acute attention on that,
and gradually that is kind of subsiding, and that is also seen.
And you've not done anything.
You've neither done, nor undone anything.
That is called Self-mastery.
And then somehow the real silence that is always here
is not eclipsed any more by this agitated energy,
this personal energy which is always pulling the screen.
Something just relaxes in the open space again.
[silence]
There's a saying,
'It's not good to bite, but it's good to be bitten'.
It does something.
Perhaps something might have taken
six months to get processed
but in six seconds 'puff', it's out
with an intense experience which is not pleasant,
but it does the job.
It evicts something much more swiftly
than if you were being fed chocolates for six months,
and rubbing shoulders, and somehow, 'puff' it's gone!
So can you open to life in all of its different flavour,
sometimes very sweet, sometimes sharp!
'Life takes care of life.
Can you open to life in all its flavours?'
Video Extract from Satsang: 'Unveil the Satguru Within'
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