Amanaska

“That depends on which section of humanity we’re talking about. We can’t pretend that humanity is a homogeneous mass. No. In my view, 40 percent of humanity will deny that sorrow is a significant problem to which we must direct our attention, that will be their take. And therefore, they will dismiss the whole proposition of sorrow and the question of sorrow as irrelevant -this 40 percent.

“You may disagree with me. You might say 30 percent or 50 percent, but we can keep our differences, but one section is like that. Now, another section is more mature than the first section. What they say is that we’re not laughing at your proposition and the question about the significance of sorrow and man having to deal with it because we’re been struck down by sorrow in the past. And fortunately, we have recovered from it. So another section of humanity, it’s not going to be as dismissive of suffering as the first section we dealt with. They will say that, yeah, you are legitimate in talking about suffering. We know that it’s part of human reality. We were struck down by fate and we were in a very bad way for several years of our lives. Fortunately, with the help of various religions and piecemeal solutions we have recovered and we’re doing daily prayers and we do our poojas and sometimes we talk to our Guru or go to the Church Father, and we’ve also been to the table of the counselor and the therapist. We’ve been through all that.

“But right now, it’s not a burning problem for us. Right now, once again, we have become happy with life. So it’s not a problem in the present, but it was a problem in the past. But we do understand your concern that you must deal with it right till the very end. So we vote for that, but we are not ready enough or aggrieved enough to join the discourse with you. That’s the second part, they amount to 50 percent. So, 40 percent section one, 50 percent section two and the remaining is only 10 percent.

“And again, as I said, some people may say 10 is too much. It could only be five percent or two percent, whatever it is. The two percent, I would say, are very mature in that they have been hit by suffering so hard that they could not postpone attending to the problem of suffering, so they devoted time, they devoted energy. They started reading the scriptures, they went to many Masters all over the world, to China, to India, to Japan and to some Semitic Masters, and they have done their homework. And what they say is, “While the problem of suffering is very real and we’re working on it, what is new to us from you, is that you are saying that the suffering can be eradicated once and for all. Now that’s a new way of thinking. Then you have experienced it”.

“I have experienced it for sure. That’s why I am talking in this vein. What I see might appear very audacious and very foolhardy, but at least I am sincere and I’m authentic. That’s why I’m talking.

“And so, what you’re saying is a little too daring for us, but I can understand that we have to deal squarely with the problem of suffering and we have been doing a lot of homework and we like to listen to you and we like to go with you. We like to travel with you, and we may not entirely agree with you and please give us the freedom to be skeptics and walk away if it doesn’t suit our temperament. But we do agree that you have posed a very profound question a very sensible question, and we have to double up to answer that question”.

“That’s a minuscule two percent or five percent or 0 percent. And so there are different sections of humanity who are going to respond differently to the whole proposition of the importance of having to attend to suffering. And there is no unanimous support on this and different individuals will take different perspectives on this. But on the whole, the times in which we live, the Covid times, for example, when death has practically been walking in the streets, I think there are enough signals coming to man now, that man has to face this problem squarely, and if he is not going to face the problem squarely now, when at all, is he going to do that? Because the challenge is knocking on the door”.

– Sankara Bhagavadpada