Theos-Talk Archives (January 1994 Message tl00047)

I am forwarding the following article from soc.religion.eastern, which
I found very interesting. I have also received the rather voluminous
latest issue of the Buddhist electronic journal 'GASSHO' which has
come in two parts, and which I'll be glad to e-mail to anyone who wants
it. All the best/Arvind

In article efr@pdx1.world.net, rps@qsun.att.com () writes:
>              *    *    *
>
> Q: But we see pain in the world. A man is hungry. It is a physical
>    reality. It is very real to him. Are we to call it a dream and
>    remain unmoved by his suffering?
>
> Ramana:
>    From the point of Gyana or Reality, the suffering that you
>    speak of is certainly a dream, as is the world of which that
>    suffering is an infinitesimal part.
>
>    In a dream you have when you are asleep you yourself feel
>    hunger and see others also suffering from hunger. Moved from
>       pity, feed the others who are hungry. So long as the dream
>    lasted, all this suffering was quite real as the suffering you
>    see in the world is to you now. It was only when you woke up
>    that you discovered it to be unreal. You might have eaten
>    heartily beforegoing to sleep, but you dreamt that you had been
>    working hard inthe hot sun all day and were tired and hungry.
>    Then you woke up and found that your stomach was full and that
>    you had not stirred from your bed.
>
>    But all this is not to say that while you are in the dream you
>    can act as if the suffering you feel in it is not real. The
>    hunger in the dream have to be provided with dream food.
>    You can never mix the two states: the dream and the waking
>    state.
>
>    Similarly, till you attain the state of Reaization and thus wake
>    out of this illusory, phenomenal world, you must do social
>    service by relieving suffering whenever you see it. But even so
>    you must do it without "ahankara" that is without the sense of:
>    "It's-I-who-am-doing-it." Instead you should feel: "I am the
>    Lord's instrument." Similarly you must not be conceited and
>    think: "I am helping a man who is below me. He needs help and I
>    am in a position to give it. I am superior and he is inferior."
>    You must help him as a means of worshipping God in him.
>
>    All such service is serving the self, not anybody else.
>    You are not helping anybody else, but only yourself.
>
> ---raj