Suffering Is an Intellectual Exercise

Yeah, just the arising of the thought.

Then, what is belief?

When you take the thought to be reality - agreed? When you say, a six colored horse is walking across the next room, then? That’s a thought. What would be belief or not belief?

Not true is not belief.

Yes, yes, we will look at that but for a moment just like this thought comes and to not give it assent and to not give it truth value one (or something) is to not belief. Let us say that ‘Garima is going to come to Satsang in a while’ and if I hadn’t set up the whole thing and if I had just said [it] like that, you would say ‘yeah, okay’. So, you take that to be reality. You take that to be something that is going to happen, really. Now, but do you actually know it? Is your belief automaHcally equal to knowing? But it pretends as if it is and that causes all the trouble. That is the only source of trouble actually. We believe that ‘life should be this way; it should not be this way. That I am this body-mind.’ We believe many things. All of them are made up. What do we actually know? So as long as we keep confusing our beliefs to be our knowing, then you noHce that all our beliefs carry this history, this story and story means individuality, it means suffering. Now for some of you it feels too strong when you have to let go of these concepts about life, about reality; that it must be this way and must not be this way. So, that’s why someHmes we try to sneak into these…freedom or empHness but sHll holding to some idea that this we want to take through with us. But this must be true. But no belief is true. It is not true in terms of what it is phenomenally represenHng the world to be. And it is definitely not true with what it is conveying that you are. [Silence] If it was true then the objecHve world would inherently mean something or not, but these are only interpretaHons. [One] philosopher said that ‘There are no facts, only interpretaHon’. There is actually one fact, if by ‘fact’ we mean that ‘it is true’. But that fact cannot be spoken. It is your very Self. It is the Truth of your Reality. Everything else is interpretaHon and because we have a broad variety of interpretaHons to choose from, that is why we end up ge^ng into conflict, ge^ng into trouble.