VBT – Meditation 91.5
Suffering Gives You Depth
If there is really no suffering you will be poor for it, because suffering gives you depth. A man who has not suffered will always remain on the surface. Suffering gives you depth. Really, if there is no suffering you will be saltless. You will be nothing, just a boring phenomenon. Suffering gives you tone, a keenness. A quality comes to you which only suffering can give, which no happiness can give. A man who has always remained in happiness, in comfort, who has not suffered, will not have any tone. He will be just a lump of being. There cannot be any depth. Really, there cannot be any heart. The heart is created through suffering; through pain you evolve.
If a man has only suffered and he has not known any happiness, then too he will not be rich, because richness comes through opposites. The more you move in opposites, the higher, the deeper you evolve. A man who has simply suffered will become a slave. He who has not known any moments of happiness will not be really alive. He will become an animal; he will just exist anyhow. There will be no poetry, no song in the heart, no hope in the eyes. He will settle down to his pessimistic existence. There will be no struggle, no adventure. He will not move. He will be simply a stagnant pool of consciousness, and a stagnant pool of consciousness is not conscious – by and by he will become unconscious. That’s why if there is too much pain you fall unconscious.
So just happiness will not be of much help, because there will be no challenge. Just pain will not be of much growth, because there will be nothing to struggle, to hope, to dream; there will be no fantasy. Both are needed, and life exists between both as a very delicate tension, a subtle tension.
If you understand this, then you don’t choose. Then you know how life functions, how life is. This is the way, this is the way of life – it moves through happiness, it moves through suffering and gives you tone, and gives you meaning, and gives you depth. So both are good.
I say both are good. I don’t say choose between the two – I say both are good, don’t choose. Rather, enjoy both; rather, allow both to happen. Be open without any resistance. Don’t cling to one and don’t resist the other.
Let no-resistance be your motto: I will not resist life. Whatsoever life gives to me, I will be ready to take it, available, and I will enjoy it. The nights are also good and beautiful, and suffering has a beauty of its own. No happiness can have that beauty. Darkness has its own beauty; day has its own beauty. There is no comparison and there is no choice. Both have their own dimensions to work in.
The moment this consciousness arises in you, you will not choose. You will be just a witness, and you will enjoy – this choicelessness will become bliss. This choicelessness will become bliss. Bliss is not contrary to suffering; bliss is a quality which you can bring to anything whatsoever – even to suffering.
A Buddha cannot suffer, but that doesn’t mean that suffering doesn’t happen to him. Remember, suffering happens as much to Buddha as it happens to you, but he cannot suffer because he knows the art of enjoying it. He cannot suffer because he remains blissful. Even in suffering he remains festive, meditative, alive, enjoying, open, non-resistant. Suffering happens to him, but he is not touched. Suffering comes and goes, just like a breath coming in and going out. He remains himself.
The suffering cannot push him aside. The suffering cannot push him off his feet. Nothing can push him – neither suffering nor happiness. You exist like a pendulum: everything pushes you – everything. You cannot even be really happy, because happiness will also kill you. You get so involved in it.
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