Ay Zindagi

This one inspired by Rekha's post on faith.

Why is there suffering/pain in a tough situation ?

Sri Sri says "Suffering is a product of limited knowledge"

What limited knowledge ?

The Part I course says " Accept situations and people as they are"

When in pain or suffering, the last thing I want to do is accept. After all who wants pain ? The best solution is to try and escape it and to enable this, the mind is ever willing to :

• jump into the glorious past
  
• jump towards a non-existent future OR
  
• take flights of imaginary fancy .
• keep asking the eternally unanswerable question "Why ?"
  

None of this helps and muddles the mind even more.

Question to self : Isn't it easier to just accept ?

Another way is resistance.

• This is NOT happening to me
• This is not happening to ME.
  
• THIS is not happening to me

Another point of the Part I course says "What you resist persists".

When I resist obviously the suffering persists . And what am I resisting ? The flow of life ? I am but a little boat caught up in this ocean of samsara which throws up perfect storms now and then. Of what use is my resistance ?

Question to self : Isn't it easier to not resist, live the knowledge and just BE ?

Guruji says that when we are faced with a storm - to gulp it in its totality and then we realize that there is really no storm .

Reminds me of a beautiful song from the movie Sadma :

Aye Zindagi Gale Lagale
Hum ne bhi
Tere har ik gam ko
Gale se lagaya hai Hai na ?

Roughly translated :

Oh Life Embrace Me
I've embraced all the suffering you've given me
Haven't I ?

When no knowledge works, faith does ...infinite faith does WORK - especially when the Storm is a long one.

Jai Guru Dev,