Part II - Chapter 11 - 5th Public Talk, Saanen - 19th July 1977 - 'Where there is suffering you cannot possibly love'

We say that love is part of suffering. When you love somebody it brings about suffering. We are going to question whether it is possible to be free of all suffering. When there is freedom from suffering in the consciousness of the human being then that freedom brings about a transformation in consciousness and that transformation affects the whole of mankind's suffering. That is part of compassion.

Where there is suffering you cannot possibly love. That is a truth, a law. When you love somebody and he or she does something of which you totally disapprove and you suffer, it shows that you do not love. See the truth of it. How can you suffer when your wife throws you away and goes after somebody else? Yet we suffer from that. We get angry, jealous, envious, hateful; at the same time we say, "I love my wife"! Such love is not love. So, is it possible not to suffer and yet have the flowering of immense love?

What is the nature and the essence of suffering - the essence of it, not the various forms of it? What is the essence of suffering? Is it not the total expression, at that moment, of complete self-centred existence? It is the essence of the me - the essence of the ego, the person, the limited, enclosed, resisting existence, which is called the "me". When there is an incident that demands understanding and insight, that is denied by the awakening of the me, the essence which is the cause of suffering. If there were no me, would there be suffering? One would help, one would do all kinds of things, but one would not suffer.

Suffering is the expression of the me; it includes self-pity, loneliness, trying to escape, trying to be with the other who is gone - and all else that is implied. Suffering is the very me, which is the image, the knowledge, the remembrance of the past. So, what relationship has suffering, the essence of the me, to love? Is there any relationship between love and suffering? The me is put together by thought: but is love put together by thought?

Is love put together by thought? - the memories of the pains, the delights, and the pursuit of pleasure, sexual or otherwise, of the pleasure of possessing somebody and somebody liking to be possessed; all that is the structure of thought. The me with its name, with its form, its memory, is put together by thought - obviously. But if love is not put together by thought, then suffering has no relationship to love. Therefore action from love is different from action from suffering.

What place has thought in relation to love and in relation to suffering? To have an insight into it means you are neither escaping, wanting comfort, frightened to be lonely, isolated; it means therefore your mind is free and that which is free is empty. If you have that emptiness you have an insight into suffering. Then suffering as the me disappears. There is immediate action because that is so; action then is from love, not from suffering.

One discovers that action from suffering is the action of the me and that therefore there is constant conflict. One can see the logic of it all, the reason for it. Only so is it possible to love without a shadow of suffering. Thought is not love; thought is not compassion. Compassion is intelligence - which is not the outcome of thought. What is the action of intelligence? If one has intelligence it is operating, it is functioning, it is acting. But if one asks: What is the action of intelligence? - one merely wants thought to be satisfied. When one asks: What is the action of compassion? - is it not thought that is asking? Is it not the me that is saying: If I could have this compassion I would act differently? Therefore when one puts such questions one is still caught in terms of thought, But with an insight into thought then thought has its right place and intelligence then acts.