Yoga / Value of Distress

This was inspired by Gautam Buddha.

Distress as we experience in a human body, has little value for the purpose of inspiring someone, to make the effort to become liberated. For one thing, if liberation means complete avoidance of distress, that would be impossible to attain. This is due to the fact, that any distress may be a complication, or a mixture, of different unwanted features on several levels. Sorting these and removing their respective causes in a complicated manifestation like this, is an impractical objective.

The ascetic would have to sort each portion of the distress, according to the level it occurred on. Then, he would have to find solutions to each, separately. If for instance, a distressful condition occurred in a physical body, it may be that it has a psychological parallel. To solve that, the ascetic would have to act to remove the physical aspect, and then act for the removal on the subtle part. In addition, the physical or subtle operations may have complications which require simplification.

Distress, when it is unwanted, will not inspire someone to become liberated. He may declare distress as his motive but that does not mean that he can become liberated on that basis. An ascetic should study this. He/She should do what is needful to remove himself/herself from distress as an impetus.

Buddha said this.

“Distress should be investigated, but its research will not yield liberation. This is why I abandoned it during my austerities.”