Why Is There Suffering?

You don't suffer from reality. You suffer from your imaginations, from your self-deceptions. You suffer from the trance into which you have fallen. Nobody suffers from reality. If people do so, then they only suffer from their arbitrary interpretations of reality.

You suffer from an idea, this idea is called "I". "I" is an idea! Who are you when this idea of "I" doesn't exist? Who are you in the stillness of yourself? You don't need this idea of "I". You just need it to suffer. "I am the body" - this is an idea. "I am this feeling" or "I am Cedric" - these are ideas. The whole of humanity suffers from an idea, nothing else. How is it possible that humanity suffers, but for inexplicable reasons, doesn't have enough passion to end this suffering? How powerful an idea can be!

But how real is it? What substance does it have? Fall into the stillness of yourself, into that which is deeper than any idea that arises. You need not be concerned about anything else. You need not learn any techniques, you need not learn anything at all, to know who you really are. Just your attachment to these thoughts has to be given up.

When you are in stillness, when you relax deep into the inner space, you realize that ideas have no substance. When ideas have no substance, the world has no substance either. Everything you know, everything you believe, has no substance. Therefore, as it has no substance, it also has absolutely no importance. No-mind is the key.

It is not about giving up smoking. It is not about learning to reform your weaknesses, to give up your supposed vices. It is not about giving up relationships and withdrawing into solitude. It is not about throwing your money away. It is about realizing beyond all ideas that you are in any event, "That " which you have always been and which you will always be: That which is beyond birth and beyond death.