PEOPLE REALLY SUFFER ALL THE TIME

 
Ninety-nine percent of human suffering is not necessary. Through obstinate ignorance people inflict suffering upon themselves and their fellowmen, and then, strangely enough, they ask, "Why should we suffer?" Suffering is generally symbolised by scenes of war: devastated houses, broken and bleeding limbs, the agonies of torture and death; but war does not embody any special suffering.

People really suffer all the time. They suffer because they are not satisfied — they want more and more. War is more an outcome of the universal suffering of dissatisfaction than an embodiment or representative suffering. Through his greed, vanity and cruelty, man brings untold suffering upon himself and others.

Man is not content to create suffering only for himself, but he is relentlessly zealous in creating suffering for his fellowmen. Man seeks his own happiness even at the cost of the happiness of others, thus giving rise to cruelty and unending wars. As long as he thinks only of his own happiness he does not find it. In the pursuit of his own individual happiness the limited self of man becomes accentuated and burdensome.

When man is merely selfish he can, in the false pursuit of separate and exclusive happiness, become utterly callous and cruel to others, but this recoils upon him by poisoning the very spring of his life. Loveless life is most unlovely. Only a life of love is worth living.