Amateur footage of the Tsunami in Otsuchi Japan
Chapter Eleven | The Symptoms of a Sadhu: […] There are three types of suffering in the material world: adhyatmika, adhibhautika and adhidaivika. Adhyatmika refers to the body and mind. Today I have a headache or some pain in my back, or my mind is not very quiet. These are sufferings called adhyatmika.
There are other forms of suffering called adhibhautika, which are sufferings imposed by other living entities. Apart from this, there are sufferings called adhidaivika, over which we have no control whatsoever. These are caused by the demigods or acts of nature, and include famine, pestilence, flood, excessive heat or excessive cold, earthquakes, fire and so on.
Nonetheless, we are thinking that we are very happy within this material world, although in addition to these threefold miseries there is also birth, old age, disease and death. So where is our happiness? Because we are under the spell of maya, we are thinking that our position is very secure. We are thinking, “Let us enjoy life,” but what kind of enjoyment is this?
Obviously we have to tolerate suffering. One of the characteristics of a sadhu is tolerance. Everyone is tolerant to a degree, but a sadhu’s tolerance and an ordinary man’s tolerance are different. This is because a sadhu knows that he is not the body. According to a Bengali Vaisnava song: deha-smrti nahi yara samsara-bandhana kahan tara.
If we properly understand that we are not the body, although we may suffer, we will not feel the suffering as acutely. For instance, if one thinks, “This is my car,” and is very attached to it, he suffers more when it is wrecked than a person who thinks, “It can be repaired, or I can leave it.” It is a question of mental absorption.
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