(Kadamba Kanana Swami, Dec 2011, Sasolburg, Johannesburg, South Africa)
When we are taking up a spiritual path, then we also have a tendency to suffer. Spiritual people also go through so many things, but their aim is not to contribute towards that suffering, and not to cause suffering to any other living beings. Those are their objectives.
As I have explained earlier, that in this world, we are all experiencing some degrees of suffering, because the fundamental nature of life also has suffering within it – ageing, disease, death…just to name a few fundamental things, which have nothing to do with externally created things.
Nature also has a lot of cruelty intent. In the animal kingdom one animal attacks another and so on and they are not free from suffering. So suffering is there in this world. Spirituality means that we are not aiming to add to this suffering, because isn’t a word like ‘salvation’ found in all religious traditions? To relieve people from the suffering, is the objective and we are not going to contribute towards suffering. Then we say, that whatever suffering we are going through, then that is through previous choices and activities. So it is said that the living being came to this world in the first place, because he turned away from God!
