Life’s not suffering, it is bliss

A HOUSEWIFE has sent all her children to school and is cleaning her house. She hears the door bell and opens the door. Two preachers are at the door and ask her whether they can have a few minutes with her to teach her how to live her life eternally.

She says no, thank you, I don’t think I can stand any more of this life, forget about living it eternally, and slams the door shut.

We all feel life is a curse and is a result of our past karma. Again and again people ask why our life is like this; please teach us a way not to have another birth. You feel life is suffering, punishment, an effect of past karma. There are only two groups in this world, wise and otherwise.

The wise ones feel that life is ananda, bliss, that their being is bliss, their consciousness is ananda. Thousands of enlightened masters have said this time and again. When you ask them how, each one offers his own method. One says you be a vegetarian, another says you fast, another says you practice this meditation or that, another says you marry, another do not marry and so on. If two rishis say the same thing, it is said, one is a fake. Each expresses in his own way the path to enlightenment and bliss. But they all concur that consciousness is bliss. If all agree it means that this fact is essential.

In daily life we find that it is misery, it’s a punishment. There is a gap between our experience and that of masters, between the wise and otherwise. Somewhere we have lost the essence of life. We have misunderstood the basic principle of how to live.

The last word of science, said Einstein, is the first word of spirituality. Like there is no gap between matter and energy outside, inside us there is no gap between your body and mind. Ordinary people identify with their body and mind. Spiritual seekers lose this clarity. They know they suffer through identification with body and mind, and this increases their suffering. There is one more suffering, how to disconnect and how to reach liberation.

Not only are you not body and mind, but there is no need to disconnect from body and mind. There is nothing you need to do. Bliss is continuously happening within you without gap of time and space. As long as you associate your bliss with a particular time or a particular space you will lose the bliss. The gap between sufferings becomes bliss for you. Being in the present allows for this bliss to happen continuously within you.