A lesson on life

(Kadamba Kanana Swami, 2 June 2012, Lecture SB 5.13.5)

Worms are eating your insides, right now! You feel the pains here and there. Worms are eating your liver. Worms are eating your heart. They eat your heart out while you sit there. There are even worms living in your brain, I read about this!

It's not that we are enjoying. We just accept the suffering when we are in these bodies as normal. It's normal that I'm sweating right now, it's just normal because it's warm. It's normal that I have a headache leftover from all the travels that had over the last years. It's normal that I have some pain between my shoulder blades because I'm 60 years old. It's normal that I have an in-growing toenail, it's completely normal. As I'm talking to you, I was just mentioning the toe because the sock is causing pressure on my toenail. I'm tolerating it but I suffer and so do you. If you carefully investigate our existence, we are all suffering.

From a philosophical point of view, we are always suffering. Sometimes we are aware of it and sometimes we are not, you know what I'm saying!? It's like we're suffering but sometimes we are not aware of it. Now, I'm experiencing this suffering, I'm not going to dwell on it – my toe, my sock, my toe, my sock. I'm dwelling on Krsna, I'm dwelling on the soul. I'm dwelling on the relationship that we have with the soul. But we are not in denial of the fact that the bodily existence is offering us suffering, it is, and therefore we want to get out of here!