Chapter 19 love and sorrow

Love and mourning have been closely related for centuries, sometimes with the dominance of the one and sometimes with the other.Our so-called love passes quickly, and then we fall back into jealousy, vanity, fear, misery.There is always a battle between love and mourning. If I could, I would like to talk about the end of grief, because fear, grief, and what we call love are always one.Unless we understand fear, we will not understand grief, nor love without conflict, without friction. Grief is one of the most difficult things to get rid of completely, because it follows us all the time in different forms.So I want to dig into this question.But my thoughts mean little unless each of us examines the issue for ourselves, neither agreeing nor denying it, but simply observing the facts.If we could do this practically and not just theoretically, then perhaps we would be able to understand the importance of grief, and thus put an end to it.

Love and mourning have been closely related for centuries, sometimes with the dominance of the one and sometimes with the other.Our so-called love passes quickly, and then we fall back into jealousy, vanity, fear, misery.There is always a battle between love and mourning.Before we get into the question of how to end grief, I think we must first understand what passion is. Enthusiasm is something only a few people can really feel.What we can feel is enthusiasm (enthusiasm), an emotion of fascination with something.We are always passionate "for" something: for music, for painting, for country, for woman, for man, it is always the effect of a cause.When you're in love with someone, you're in a state of great emotional ups and downs, you're affected by a cause, and the passion I'm talking about here has no cause.Passion for everything, not just certain things, yet most of us are passionate about certain people or things.I think we should see the difference clearly.

With passion without reason, all dependence can be exempted; but once passion has reason, there will be dependence, and dependence is the beginning of sorrow.Most of us are dependent; we depend on a person, a country, a belief, a set of beliefs, and when the object of our dependence disappears or loses its importance, we find our own emptiness and deficiencies.So we satisfy the emptiness by transforming the object of our dependence, and it will once again become the object of our passion. Please examine your own heart and mind.I'm just the mirror you look in.It’s okay if you don’t want to look, but if you want to look, look at yourself clearly, without emotion—not in hopes of relief from your misery, anxiety, and guilt, but Understand that such passion always brings sorrow.

When passion has a cause, it becomes lust.When you have passion for something - for a person, for a belief, or for an achievement - then out of that passion comes conflict, conflict, effort.You try to achieve or maintain a certain state, or try to regain what has been lost.But the passion of which I speak does not cause contradictions and conflicts.It has nothing to do with the cause, so it is not the effect. Listen, don't try to achieve this state, this passion for no reason.If we can pay attention and listen, with a sense of ease, when your attention is not trained but simply born out of wanting to know, then I think we can find out for ourselves what passion is.

Enthusiasm is weak in most of us.We may be lustful, we may desire something, we may want to avoid something, all of which can create a strong feeling.But unless we wake up and make our own way into this uncaused passion, we shall not be able to understand what we call sorrow.In order to understand something, you must have enthusiasm, which is the capacity for total concentration.If passion is for something—and it creates contradictions, conflicts—there is no flame of pure passion; and to end sorrow there must be flame of pure passion, to drive it out completely. We know that grief is an effect, it is the effect of a cause.I'm in love with someone and he doesn't love me - that's a kind of sadness.I want to achieve something in some area, but I am not yet able to achieve it; or if I am capable of achieving it, but illness or other factors prevent me from achieving my goal-that is another form of grief.There is the sadness of petty thought, which is always at odds with itself, endlessly striving, adjusting, groping, obeying.In relationships there is the grief of conflict and the loss of a friend through death.You all know the different forms of grief, and they are all the result of a cause.

Now, we never face grief, we always try to rationalize it, give it an explanation, or we cling to dogmas, beliefs that satisfy us, that give us temporary solace.Some do drugs, others drink, or pray—anything that reduces tension, grief, or pain.Grief and endless attempts to escape are the fate of each of us.It never occurs to us that we should be completely over with our grief, so that our minds will not at all times be clouded by self-pity and despair.When there is no end to mourning, if we are Christians, we worship the Passion of Christ in our churches.Whether we go to church, or worship symbols of suffering, or try to rationalize our grief, or drink to forget our worries, the result is the same: we are avoiding the truth of our pain.I am not talking about physical pain, which can be easily treated by modern medicine.I'm talking about grief, the psychological pain that robs us of clarity, of beauty, of love and compassion.Is it possible for us to end all grief?

I guess the end of the mourning has to do with the intensity of the passion.Enthusiasm is possible only when there is total abandonment of the ego.Enthusiasm cannot flow unless our minds are completely dead.What we call thought is the memory of various forms and experiences, and as long as this restricted response exists there is no enthusiasm, no intensity.Enthusiasm has intensity only when the "I" has completely disappeared. You know, there is a sense of beauty that has nothing to do with beauty or ugliness.Not that mountains are not beautiful, or that there are no ugly buildings, but that beauty is not the opposite of ugliness, not the opposite of hate.And the self-renunciation I mentioned is a kind of beauty without reason, so it has passion.Is it possible to go beyond causative effects?

Please be sure to pay attention to the meaning inside and not the literal meaning. You will find that most of us are reacting all the time.Reactions are patterns in all of our lives.Our response to grief is one response, our explanation of why we grieve is another response, and our avoidance of it is another, but our grief still doesn't stop.Grief ends only when we face the reality of grief, when we understand and transcend cause and effect.Trying to dissolve grief through special training or deliberation, or the use of various methods of avoiding grief, does not awaken the beauty in us, its vitality, the passion that includes and transcends grief.

What is grief? When you hear this question, how do you answer it? Your mind immediately tries to explain why you are sad, and this search for an explanation awakens your sad memory.So you are always verbally recounting past or future situations, trying to explain the cause of what we call sorrow.But I think one has to go beyond all of this. We know all too well what causes grief—poverty, illness, setbacks, lack of love, and so on.And when we explain the causes of grief, we don't end it, and we don't really grasp the depth and importance of grief, just as we don't understand what we call love.I think the two are related - grief and love - and to understand what love is, one has to understand the scope of grief, which is vast.

The ancients spoke of the end of grief, and they suggested a way of life to end it.There are many who have learned that way of life.The monks of the East and the West have tried, but they have only made themselves more insensitive, their minds and hearts have been closed.They live within the walls of their own minds, hidden within walls of masonry, but I really don't believe they have gone beyond and felt the immensity of sorrow. To end grief is to face the reality of loneliness, dependence, pursuit of fame and fortune, and thirst for love. It is to be free from the childishness of self-concern and self-pity.And when man has transcended all of this, and has perhaps put an end to individual grief, there is still a vast, universal grief, which is universal grief.One can end grief by facing the facts and the reasons for grief - and that must happen in a mind that is completely free.But when man transcends all of this, there is still a great sorrow of ignorance in the world -- not ignorance of lack of information, lack of book knowledge, but man's ignorance of himself.This lack of self-knowledge is the root of ignorance that leads to the sadness that still exists throughout the world.And what is grief actually?

You will find that there are no words to explain grief and no words to explain what love is.Love is not dependence, love is not the opposite of hate, love is not jealousy.And when one is free from jealousy, envy, dependence, all conflict, pain -- when all is over, there remains the question of what is love, what is sorrow. You will understand what love is and what sorrow is only when your mind has rejected all explanation, and is no longer imagining, no longer looking for reasons, no longer dwelling on words, no longer recalling pleasures and pains.Your mind must be completely quiet, without words, symbols, or concepts.And then you will find -- or it will come automatically -- that what we call love, what we call grief, what we call death, they are all on the same plane.Between love, sorrow, and death, there is no longer any distinction; and without distinction, there is beauty.But in order to understand and be in that state of ecstasy, there must be a passion for total self-renunciation. Sanin August 5, 1962