Why do we promote our suffering as if it is the worst?

Anwser Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
to promote our suffering as if my suffering is the worst what is the psychology behind this there are many reasons I would say to some extent when we are small children or babies we learn to get our needs met by being unhappy when a baby cries that is when the parents come and offer attention so now of course if a person is growing with loving parents then the parents give attention other times also but if the parents are negligent are not so attentive then the child knows if I have to get my parents I have to cry so sometimes psychologically it may happen that we feel that I will get attention only when I will get my needs fulfilled by being unhappy that’s an unhealthy attitude so people will give me attention when I tell them how much distress I am going through so that could be from the childhood it comes up that’s one possibility another is that actually the the nature of the mind in the condition stage is that it is attached to material things so it is attached to material pleasure always thinking of material objects so when there are there are pleasant objects then we think a lot about them and we could say material pleasure and material pain are like two sides of the same coin so to the extent we are attached to material pleasures and we delight in those pleasures to that extent we will obsess over material suffering just like say I come from India where people are mad for cricket now say India wins a very important cricket match and people delight, dance and sing and drink and they do all sort of celebration and next day India loses the cricket match they can’t say oh I am detached from cricket it doesn’t work like that they may say I am fed up with cricket but inside they will be miserable so to the extent we delight in say in victory in sports to that extent we will be miserable when we suffer so pleasure and pain are two sides of the same coin, we can’t have one side of the coin so if we overall decrease our material consciousness that means when things go right in our life also, we don’t exult over that too much and yeah it’s good that things are going right, Prabhupada says that when things are going right for a devotee devotee says Krishna is so kind that Krishna is giving me better opportunities to serve him but the devotee’s focus stays on serving Krishna not at all, now I have arrived now I have done, now I have become a big person just see what I have done if we start delighting in good things in our material life then to that extent we will suffer when bad things are there, so it’s at one level it could be a childhood impression other level it is general materialistic consciousness and to some extent one of the defining realizations for spiritual growth is to recognize the democracy of misery the democracy of misery means in democracy everybody has equal rights, so everybody has equal rights to misery nobody is exempt from it, if the purport of 9.233 9.233 he is saying about so he says that even the low born can practice bhakti then what to speak of the high born and therefore the conclusion so in this temporary miserable world just practice bhakti so there Prabhupada says it is a fact that in this world there are differentiations, there are wealthy and poor, there are good looking and not good looking, there are intelligent and less intelligent people but the fact is this world is not a happy place for anyone so to the extent we can understand this democracy of misery to that extent we can stop obsessing over the specific misery that we are going to and look for the universal cure, the universal cure is spiritual growth so does it answer? any other comments?