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Recorded at the Vedanta Society of Western Washington on October 20, 2013.
Swami Bhaskarananda considers whether suffering should be regarded as a curse or as something that can serve a constructive purpose in spiritual life. He begins by noting that human experience unfolds in pairs of opposites—joy and sorrow, light and darkness—and illustrates how our understanding of one depends upon knowledge of the other. Drawing on Western reflections and the example of Helen Keller, he shows that suffering can be transformed by a change in mental attitude, and that what appears as one person’s happiness may simultaneously be another’s distress.
He then turns to Indian philosophical perspectives, especially the Sankhya view that suffering arises from the entanglement of spirit with matter, and that freedom comes through disentanglement and the peace of bliss beyond pleasure and pain. He also summarizes Gautama Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, emphasizing that recognizing suffering can mark the beginning of serious spiritual inquiry. Finally, he explains how devotion and selfless service to God can lessen suffering by weakening the sense of personal doership, so that life is approached as God’s work rather than one’s own.
