Suffering...

A word of clarification may still be desirable. Standing in my real nature, I stand
as one with the whole world, and their suffering becomes mine. Is this not infinitely
superior to your keeping others separate and trying to sympathize with them, much
less to love them? You preach to others to ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ and never
tell them how to do it. Love is a sense of oneness with the object of your love. Is it
ever possible to be one with another at the body level or at the mental level, where the
sense of separateness persists? No. You can, at the most, sympathize with them in
their suffering. And what is the result! You succeed in inviting some suffering to
yourself also, without alleviating the suffering of others.
All these remedies at the physical and mental levels are adopted without enquiring
about the Truth of the suffering, and therefore serve only to hide or cover the so called
suffering for the time being.
The ultimate remedy is to examine whether the suffering is real or not. This is what
the sage does. He examines it impartially, from the standpoint of Truth, and finds it all
a dream, being confined to one state alone. Thus, for the sage, the suffering loses all
its pangs. He invites the so called sufferer to wake up from his dream, and to see that
the suffering is an illusion. This is the only permanent remedy for all ills.
But I do not deny that your social service activities have one redeeming feature
about them. It helps the helper to attenuate his own ego, by giving him an opportunity
to sacrifice his own comforts. But, it has to be said, the method is long and arduous,
and the pitfalls are innumerable.

excerpt from 1383. SOCIAL SERVICE AND THE SAGE
Shri Atmananda from Spiritual Discourses: