Eckhart Tolle On The True Source of Suffering

So while you're here, if you have little. Little things that take you out of your comfort zone. For example, the chairs are quite close together, so you may find this isn't so comfortable. I came in this afternoon and I tried the chairs and I sat next to someone. I just wanted to see what it feels like. And it could take you just a little bit out of your comfort zone. And you could say, I wish I had more space. But you don't. As you can. And here you can start with little things like that. That's just what is in the present moment. If your mind comments on it and says this isn't how it should be, then you can see that ultimately is what takes you out of the comfort zone. It's not the fact that there is not that much room on the left and your right, that the ultimate comfort zone is not the physical. There's a physical element to it, yes, but there is a larger element to it that is mental, that is the mind. So in many, many situations, when you're taken out of your comfort zone, the physical element is. There may be some where the physical is very strong, but in many other situations, the physical element, where something that's actually happening is not the main thing that takes you out of the comfort zone. It's the mind, the mental commentary about what's going on that really brings about this state of frustration, of anger, of resentment, of complaining, of wanting to argue. If you cannot tell the difference between what it is that causes your frustration and your unhappiness, is it the situation? And I've often said it, but I'm not the first person to say it. I believe the first person was probably the little known philosopher Epictetus. Epictetus, who lived like 2,000 years ago. And he was the first to literally point out, look at your. When you're unhappy, are you unhappy because of what's going on? Or are you unhappy because of what your mind is telling you about what's going on? And that is such a fundamental truth that even nowadays millions on the planet have no idea of that. How powerful that realization could be to transform your life. This one realization, that a large part of your happiness, the larger, the greater part of your happiness, is not caused by situations around you or conditions or even people. The greater part of your unhappiness is caused by a mental commentary about situations or other people or conditions that you find yourself in. If such a fundamental truth for. About the origin of unhappiness, such a fundamental truth, nobody teaches that at schools. That would be the most important thing for anybody to learn in such a simple thing, because anybody can verify it in their own experience immediately. The moment they become upset, the moment you kind of happy says, that's to do with my reaction. And my reaction is, what? Then my mind is commenting, what, what is it? What's. And the confusion of mistaking your mental commentary for reality is a very serious mental illness. So you cannot say that here's the situation, here's what I'm saying to you about the situation. And then once you have a mental commentary, you experience emotions that reflect what your mind is saying. And if you. And then once this happens and you realize, oh, then you realize the. As the Buddha said, I teach suffering and the end of suffering, which means I show you how suffering arises and I show you how suffering can come to an end. He's talking about psychological suffering, which is a huge part, the greater part of human suffering. Really all suffering is psychological. This is just pain. Pain, physical pain, physical discomfort that of course exists. Unhappiness is mind made. So the little thing to. Once you realize that, and this is something perhaps that you could tell your relatives or family members or friends who are not open to anything so called spiritual, at some point you might be able to mention something when they get upset, you have to be careful with how you do choose the right moment or you better to tell them what you realize. Don't tell them you should do this or you should do that. Give them a little story about what happened to you when you were getting upset about something and what you suddenly realized. And when you dropped your mental commentary about the situation, the situation was actually okay. Okay as it was. So little stories can sometimes be better than telling a person that they should change something that they are doing. And of course that implies something very deep. Once you realize this truth, it implies that gradually you relinquish unnecessary commentaries as you go through your daily life. Gradually you let go of adding unnecessary mental commentaries to what's going on around you and every. And suddenly there's a total shift in how you experience life without the, as I sometimes call it, without the excess baggage of ultimately dysfunctional mental commentaries that make the life of millions of people on the planet miserable. The mental. I know that pain exists on a physical level, but there's a huge amount of suffering in humans, everywhere, in all cultures. It does not have to be like that. So and so the implications are vast. At first you recognize, yes, it's just a mental commentary as you're standing in the lineup at the supermarket and you got irritated and then you notice irritation is a form of unhappiness. A minor form of unhappiness. Why am I unhappy? I'm unhappy because I don't want to be standing here and waiting for so long. I'm unhappy because these people are so inefficient and they haven't been trained properly. That's why I'm unhappy. I'm unhappy because I don't want to be doing my shopping after a day's work. Why should I have to do that? That's why I'm unhappy. I'm unhappy because there's not enough time now for me to get home into the cooking. There's not enough I want. I'm unhappy because I rather be somewhere else relaxing than standing here in this awful place surrounded by these dreadful people. That's why I'm unhappy. It all sounds so plausible, and yet you have mixed up mental stuff with the simplicity of a situation of standing somewhere in the vertical position and looking around and breathing. What is wrong with this moment? I'm standing here, I'm breathing, and I'm looking around at the people and the things and the stuff. It's full of good things that you can buy. You don't have to go out hunting and stuff like that. I'm looking at all this magnificence of stuff. What's wrong with. And I'm standing here and okay, I wish I could stand here for a little longer. You're no longer confusing mental stuff with the actual situation. And when you. When you realize life then becomes. Flows with much greater ease when you relinquish these unnecessary and absurd commentaries. That also means the amount of thinking that you do as you go through your daily life diminishes somewhat. Because a lot of the overthinking that people do is of the complaining, negative kind, where they have negative commentaries about things that are happening in their lives. That contributes an enormous amount to the overthinking that people do. Overthinking means an excessive amount of thinking that fulfills no purpose except to strengthen a false sense of self by strengthening the illusion of separation between yourself and the rest of the world, between yourself and others, but otherwise fulfills no useful purpose except to strengthen your ego and to make you more unhappy and by making you more unhappy, strengthening your ego. Because the greatest egos are unhappy. The more unhappy you are, the bigger the ego. Happy egos find it difficult to survive. So the happiness in the presence of the ego, in the presence of happiness feels threatened. And the ego therefore cannot tolerate happiness for very long. And if the ego is put in the unfortunate position where everything is so nice around for a little while, that what possible cause could I have to be unhappy in this situation? It will come up with some mental stuff. We will project another situation that's going to happen that's going to make me unhappy, or it will project an end to this situation. It might project even just a story in your mind where you're arguing with somebody and so it will always find the unhappiness that it needs to survive. Sam.