Suffering and the World - The Mother

🍀 Is it the world which is ignorant or is it we?

Ah! Then I must ask you, “What do you call the world?” Is it the earth or the universe?

The universe.

Then, the whole universe is not ignorant — there are parts of the universe which are not ignorant. When you say “we” you iden- tify yourself with the universe or with mankind? Because this is a very important question. We say the world is unhappy because it has forgotten its origin, that is, its divine origin. You say, child, that we are unhappy because “we” are ignorant — the “we” is men. Consequently, unhappiness has come into the world with men — here is something serious! That is, with man mind has come upon earth, you see, for man is a mental animal, and with the mind has come misery. The mind is capable of objectifying, and so it finds that such and such a thing is miserable — without the mind there would be no such discovery and no unhappiness. So, there is no unhappiness for animals nor for plants, and yet less for stones. Are we agreed on this: there is no unhappiness for animals, plants and stones? We say unhappiness has come with the mind which has become conscious of it. Mark that I am trying to lead you to something which is not so stupid, for in the ancient Teaching it was said, “Change your consciousness and what appears to you unfortunate will not so appear to you any longer.” The Buddha taught that if you are free from desire, things that seemed to you unfortunate would no longer seem to you unfortunate at all. Therefore, we come to this: it is the thought you have about it which makes you consider this or that thing unfortunate. If you thought an event happy, it would become happy for you; and that is what it is, in fact. In most cases when the thought has accepted that a thing ought to be, for whatever reason, it is no longer unhappy; when the thought has not accepted this, it finds this unhappy. So, as long as you are in the field of emotions, of sentiments and thoughts, all this is true. That is, the notion of “unhappiness” has entered the world with the capacity to consider that things were unfortu- nate. You follow the logic? Thus, plants do not suffer because they do not know that they suffer and animals do not suffer  because they do not know that they suffer. You are sure of it? Aren’t you?

  🌸 The Mother ( Question and Answers, Volume-4, page no.292-293)