I was reading one of Swami Vivekanand's lecture on Vedanta (Complete Works Vol. 3 -- Lectures from Colombo to Almora). He talks about the powers within us, the Advaita philosophy of tat tvam asi. During this, he says something like (I do not remember the exact words) ...we are brave, we are the One, the all-encompassing, the all-suffering... On one hand he says that we are The One and hence are not bound by anything, on the other hand he says that we are also the "all-suffering".
This post is not to debate the sanctity or validity of Advaita. The point in my mind is whether a courageous person needs to be all-suffering?
This is a very interesting point and something deep inside me totally agrees to this... suffering is not easy... one needs a lot of courage and determination to suffer and come out of it... Success always passes through the path of suffering in one form or the other... It does require humongous courage to endure suffering...
Thus bravery is not brashness, it is not arrogance... it is actually highlighted by the tenacity of an individual to endure the harshest... Each person has different ways of fighting... Everyone may not rise violently against it. In fact, violence may not be a possible option in most situations... but the fact the he/she maintains their balance through the thick of it all makes them brave and courageous...
Running away is another option.... but we all know that it is harder to endure suffering than to get out and run away... (Again the question arises, how to define limits to suffering before giving up? Or is there any limit at all? -- Will take this up some other time...)
It definitely requires courage to suffer....
"A champion should have both will and skill. But the will should be stronger than the skill"
- Mohammad Ali
5 comments:
Complete the argument dude. it ended too abruptly.
Hi Vibhu,
I was not arguing here... just discussing whatever came to my mind... if you think this is debatable, lets thrash it out :-)
-Mohit
Suffering is not necessary in order to be courageous; in fact, it has little to do with it, I think. Suffering is an attitude, it is a fight in which we refuse to accept whatever is confronting us. Gandhi's life was not one of 'suffering', at least not the way he would have looked at it. At the same time, for another individual, to have the courage of Gandhi might imply a lot of "suffering". Courage depends upon the strength of your beliefs, suffering depends on their weaknesses.
Hi Piyush,
Nice comments. Yes, I agree with your observations. Maybe we should define "suffering" as a -ve mental reaction to -ve situations. Then, as you say, "courage would depend upon the strength of your beliefs but suffering would depend on their weaknesses".
However, it does require immense courage to endure -ve situations and emerge from them... something which not all possess. Maybe Vivekanand was referring to this during his lecture...
joy without pain..hmmm...1 without 0....yin and yang...duality....or tao?
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