If you look at all the pleasures you get in life, they all come with a 'tax'! This tax is sorrow. Every event, however pleasant, causes pain in the end. Greater the joy; greater is the pain. Longing for an event or waiting for a pleasurable event is again painful. Memories of pleasure also bring pain. Before you want something, the feverishness of wanting it, is painful. When you have it, the fear of losing it is painful. When it is gone, the memory of its joy is painful.

So a Viveki, an intelligent person, whose wisdom has awakened, sees the whole thing as pain. Their is nothing that is not painful. You say love is so beautiful, but love is also painful. How much close can you get? Bodies can get closer, but still there is no satisfaction. Soul is not satisfied by the physical bodies coming closer. It wants something more; it wants to merge, vanish and disappear. That is love!

Pain and Love are the two sides of the same coin

There are two expressions in love - One is 'I want to disappear into you' and 'I want to eat you and you disappear'. But lovers don't know, why they are saying it. They say, 'Oh, you are so sweet that I want to eat you up'. Love takes you to cannibalism! If that was possible, each one of us would do that literally! Reduce our girlfriends or boyfriends into a small toy and gulp them down. So there is no more worrying about, where they are going, whom they are looking at, who looked at them ....

Your mind is constantly engaged in finding, where your friend is, what they are doing, whom did they meet, what did they say ... Lovers become watchdogs after a while! Love creates tremendous amount of pain, and so does separation. A wish creates tremendous amount of pressure in the mind. And then trying to please one creates pain. To know and understand, whether they are pleased or not, also creates pain. You want to know, how the other person's mind is. But that's not possible, because you still don't know your own mind!

Knowing, what is somebody else's wish and sitting on it is painful. If you experience some feeling of love and joy, suddenly that person is not there, it's even more painful.

To do spiritual practices, one needs to put effort, and that's painful. Not doing it creates more pain. If you really look from the eyes of the wise, there is nothing in this creation that is devoid of pain. Pain is the tail of everything in this world; it comes along with anything you take. Anything you take, you get a free coupon - pain.

Nipping the bud of pain

When you realize that everything is pain, then what do you do? You have to do something to stop this pain. The root cause of pain needs to be eliminated. The pain, which has not yet come in life and, which has not sprouted should be nipped off, right at the beginning. How do we do that? Forgetfulness of oneself, as separate from one's environment, is the main cause of pain.

There are three things - the self, the seer and the seeing. Lack of perception causes pain. If you say, 'This is me', then there is a problem. "We keep our life somewhere else; we don't keep our life in us. Life is not in one's self, life is somewhere else." For some people, there life is in the bank account. If the bank closes, then that person will get a heart failure. Whatever you give more importance to in life that becomes the cause of pain. So when you see the difference, that the seer is separate from its surroundings, it helps in eliminating the pain.

Through meditation, you can experience that you are not the body. But that doesn't mean that you have to run away from this world. This world is here for your enjoyment. However, while enjoying it, don't forget yourself. The realization that you are separate from yourself is Viveka.