Pain and Suffering...

Pain is physical, suffering is mental. Beyond the mind there is no suffering.

Pain is essential for the survival of the body, but none compels you to suffer. Suffering is due entirely to clinging or resisting;

it is a sign of our unwillingness to move on, to flow with life.

As a sane life is free of pain, so is a saintly life free from suffering. A saint does not want things to be different from what they are; he knows that, considering all factors, they are unavoidable.

He is friendly with the inevitable and, therefore, does not suffer. Pain he may know, but it does not shatter him. If he can, he does the needful to restore the lost balance, or he lets things take their course.


-Nisargadatta Maharaj