Why do innocent people suffer?

[Walker]

Folks suffer a lot less when they're covered by an iron dome that repels thousands of missiles that would otherwise kill the folks.

[dattaswami]

All life is suffering and as Schopenhauer stated, life is something that should never have been. All the more reason for the expressed compassion towards all living creatures in a world where life lives upon life, symbolically the snake consuming its own tail or the ouroboros. It is a nonsensical question when one considers the nature of the world as in the plight of all living things.

You must carefully understand the meaning of the three words: smiling, weeping and enjoying. These three words are totally different from each other and have independent status of meaning. Generally, people misunderstand that smiling means enjoying and weeping means not enjoying. This is not correct. Smiling and weeping are external phenomena, whereas enjoying is internal phenomenon. While eating the sweet you are smiling. While eating a hot dish you are almost weeping since your tongue and lips vibrate and eyes shower tears. This smiling and weeping are observed externally. In eating both sweet and hot dishes, you are internally enjoying. You need not smile externally while eating the hot dish to show to the people that you are internally enjoying. You are the internal witness for your internal enjoyment. You need not smile externally to give proof for your internal enjoyment to the observers because the external public is in wrong notion that enjoyment means external smile only. If you give proof to the wrong notion, your proof is also wrong. If you are not enjoying the hot dish, you will always reject it. You cannot enjoy the sweet dishes also continuously.

 

You are certainly enjoying the hot dish between two sweet dishes. Therefore, the enjoyment is the common underlying concept in smiling as well as in the weeping. You are not enjoying the weeping because you do not have the knowledge of the concept of enjoyment in weeping. A child does not enjoy the hot dish, which causes weeping, because it does not have the knowledge of the concept of enjoying the weeping. A grown up adult has the knowledge of this concept and hence enjoys the hot dish. This same difference is the reason for the child to be reluctant to the hot dish and to get attracted for the sweet dish. The reason for this reluctance and attraction is the ignorance of the concept in the case of the child. The grown up adult is well versed in this knowledge and is also experienced for a long time in overcoming the initial reluctance to hot dish. Therefore, the adult is equally attracted to the sweet and hot dishes in the meals.

 

Unless you are equally attracted to the both scenes of happiness and unhappiness and also subsequently enjoy both the situations with equal interest, you cannot become the Yogi as said in Gita. This equality in interest and attraction is called as Yoga in Gita (samatvam yoga uchyate). This equality is misunderstood by some ignorant people as the equality in inertia and non-enjoyment of both the situations. Yogi is the person, who is equally interested and attracted to both the happy and unhappy situations and subsequently enjoys both equally. A yogi is not the person who runs away from both the situations and becomes inert equally without interest to both the situations. Yogi is the person who enjoys equally both the sweet and hot dishes. Yogi is not the person who runs away from both the dishes without interest.

 

God created this world with both happy and unhappy situations in altering fashion. Summer is followed by winter, and winter is again followed by summer. Day is followed by night and night is followed by day. This world is created for the entertainment of God in the ultimate sense. The sweet and hot dishes are prepared in the palace for the king. You are only a guest joining the king in the meals. The king is enjoying both the sweet and hot dishes equally. If you are enjoying only sweets and reluctant to the hot dishes, you are only a child and you are not the grown up adult like the king to enjoy both the dishes equally. You cannot be equal to the king in having the power of the administration of the kingdom. That point is ruled out. If you can enjoy the sweet and hot dishes equally like the king, you can become equal to king at least in this one concept of eating.

If you behave like a child and become reluctant to the hot dishes you are in no way equal to the king in any angle. Similarly, you have no power of creation, control and destruction of this world like God. You cannot be equal to God in these angles. If you become equal to God in enjoying both happy and unhappy situations, you can be claimed to be equal to God at least in this one angle. You should not say that God is only spectator and not involved in the world directly. God is involved in the world through human incarnation like Rama, Krishna etc. as any human being is involved. The word Rama means the continuous enjoyment through continuous entertainment.

If you see the life of Rama, there were several tragic scenes. Rama wept when His wife Sita was stolen. He was internally enjoying while weeping externally. This is similar to internal enjoyment of hot dish by an adult in whom you find the external signs of weeping only. It is said that Rama gives the salvation while alive (Jeevanmukti). The word Rama is said to be taraka mantra, which means that you will cross the grief. Grief is inevitable in the life. How to cross it? You can cross it only by learning the technique of enjoying it. Without understanding this meaning of the word Rama, there will be no use of chanting the word Rama continuously.

[Agent Smith]

Like I said.

1. Good folks suffer
2. Good folks enjoy
3. Bad folks suffer
4. Bad folks enjoy

All of the above 4 statements are true. To make the long story short, we have the wrong idea about the world. Who concocted this cock-and-bull I have no idea, but a myth has been perpetuated across generations involving billions of people, young, old, men, women.

[Iwannaplato]

Like I said.

1. Good folks suffer
2. Good folks enjoy
3. Bad folks suffer
4. Bad folks enjoy

All of the above 4 statements are true. To make the long story short, we have the wrong idea about the world. Who concocted this cock-and-bull I have no idea, but a myth has been perpetuated across generations involving billions of people, young, old, men, women.

It serves power. If you are poor, it is justified. If you are rich, it is justified. If you suffer abuse, ultimately it is your own fault. This has benefits for people with power and they will be pleased with this idea and allow it to propagate and also they will spread it themselves.

[Agent Smith]

Like I said.

1. Good folks suffer
2. Good folks enjoy
3. Bad folks suffer
4. Bad folks enjoy

All of the above 4 statements are true. To make the long story short, we have the wrong idea about the world. Who concocted this cock-and-bull I have no idea, but a myth has been perpetuated across generations involving billions of people, young, old, men, women.

It serves power. If you are poor, it is justified. If you are rich, it is justified. If you suffer abuse, ultimately it is your own fault. This has benefits for people with power and they will be pleased with this idea and allow it to propagate and also they will spread it themselves.

Interesting.Dattaswami's little hypothesis is shot to pieces, blown clean out of the water.

[Iwannaplato]

Like I said.

1. Good folks suffer
2. Good folks enjoy
3. Bad folks suffer
4. Bad folks enjoy

All of the above 4 statements are true. To make the long story short, we have the wrong idea about the world. Who concocted this cock-and-bull I have no idea, but a myth has been perpetuated across generations involving billions of people, young, old, men, women.

It serves power. If you are poor, it is justified. If you are rich, it is justified. If you suffer abuse, ultimately it is your own fault. This has benefits for people with power and they will be pleased with this idea and allow it to propagate and also they will spread it themselves.

Interesting.Dattaswami's little hypothesis is shot to pieces, blown clean out of the water.

Well the convenience of a belief to the believer doesn't disprove it. Belief X could be true and some of the people who believe it find it convenient. And people with power likely believe some things that are both true and convenient for them.
I just think it's plain old wrong and convenient. But proving that version of Karma is true or false is not easy. How does one demonstrate the past life innocent of guilt of someone? And then past lives are hard enough already to demonstrate, though there's much more evidence than the skeptics realize. But it's far from demonstrated.

[Agent Smith]

It serves power. If you are poor, it is justified. If you are rich, it is justified. If you suffer abuse, ultimately it is your own fault. This has benefits for people with power and they will be pleased with this idea and allow it to propagate and also they will spread it themselves.

Interesting.Dattaswami's little hypothesis is shot to pieces, blown clean out of the water.

Well the convenience of a belief to the believer doesn't disprove it. Belief X could be true and some of the people who believe it find it convenient. And people with power likely believe some things that are both true and convenient for them.
I just think it's plain old wrong and convenient. But proving that version of Karma is true or false is not easy. How does one demonstrate the past life innocent of guilt of someone? And then past lives are hard enough already to demonstrate, though there's much more evidence than the skeptics realize. But it's far from demonstrated.

To be fair Dattaswami's beliefs have inconvenienced him quite a bit i.e. his intentions are noble but, it seems, he finds the various corollaries of his own ideas hard to digest. Sic vita est.

We need to be more imaginative; not that we aren't but, clearly, the ideas in circulation are not up to the mark.

[Iwannaplato]

To be fair Dattaswami's beliefs have inconvenienced him quite a bit i.e. his intentions are noble but, it seems, he finds the various corollaries of his own ideas hard to digest. Sic vita est.

We need to be more imaginative; not that we aren't but, clearly, the ideas in circulation are not up to the mark.

I don't know what his intentions are, even if the thoughts in his head about his intentions are noble, and I don't even know if that is true. A lot of gurus have similar spiritual and philosophical positions to DS...and at the same time messed around with all sorts of mean-spirited ashram politics and shenanigans that would make the worst high school look like a loving community...let alone sexual abuse and more.

He may mean well. He may not. He may convince himself that his motivations are selfless or good but really they are self-serving at root. I don't know.