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Ram Dass: You Have No Moral Right to Take Away Someone’s Suffering
How our insistence to help people who are suffering just creates more suffering…unless you do it this way.
There’s this Ram Dass quote that has stuck with me for years: “You have no moral right to take away someone’s suffering.” I first heard it a few years back, listening to one of his lectures on Youtube, but I didn’t really understand it. I stumbled on it again recently, while doing research for a book about suffering. So, I thought, I’d better figure it out. After logging dozens of hours rewatching lectures, I think I’ve got the gist…
“To understand those Buddhist teachings about suffering, doesn’t mean that you can use that as a rationalization for other people’s suffering. Say, ‘Well, they’re suffering because of their minds.’ That forces you to deal with an interesting paradox. That you understand that, for an awakened person, suffering is actually grace because suffering shows you where the mind is caught and in that sense, it is an extremely useful gift. But you can’t go up to someone who’s suffering and say, ‘It’s an extremely useful gift.’ You really don’t have any moral right to lay it upon another person. [sic] It wouldn’t work, anyway. What you can be is an environment…for people to let go of their suffering if they’re ready.”
How to Piss Someone Off Who’s Suffering
Walk up to a depressed person and tell them it’s all in their head. Walk up to someone who’s disabled and tell them to be grateful for it. Walk up to someone who’s starving, oppressed, homeless, a victim of this or that kind of violence, etc, and tell them they’re so lucky to have all this suffering in their lives.
On one level, I believe, as Ram Dass says, that suffering is grace. I believe it’s something to be thankful for. I believe it’s all okay, in the cosmic sense. But catch me on the wrong day and I will have forgotten all that. And if someone else says it to me, forget…
