We are both source and sustenance of suffering. Buddha cited attachment as its root, meaning our attachment as human beings to things, things from the greatest to the slightest, from the material to the conceptual, from what we believe real to what in the end proves illusory. Our first instincts are to avoid and to end suffering, and we spend the rest of our lives running this gauntlet. We grasp and clutch, possessed by our possessions, driven by "woman and gold" as Ramakrishna termed lust and greed, yet restlessness and discontent, frustration and the incessant gnawing prompt still more grasping after transitory things - such a vicious circle! And we are so thick-headed and slow to awaken. Liberation for most of us requires round after round of failed attempts to find freedom in things, in a gauntlet of temporary surcease run to exhaustion. The big boys like Buddha and Jesus and Ramakrishna can assist with method, but run it we must until, completely spent, we surrender every trace of selfhood in a final swoon across the finish line, free at last.
"Bound souls who constantly dwell with 'woman and gold' do not think of God even for a moment. How can you expect noble deeds of them? They are like mangoes pecked by a crow...." - Ramakrishna
"Bound souls who constantly dwell with 'woman and gold' do not think of God even for a moment. How can you expect noble deeds of them? They are like mangoes pecked by a crow...." - Ramakrishna
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