Other's Sufferings are Worse than Our Own

SMALL STORY

(His Divine Holiness Bhagavan Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam has delivered almost 20,000 hours of recorded talks till date. As part of the talks, He shares simple small stories that give powerful cognitive shifts to the listener. Following is one such story.)

A small story:

A man was feeling very burdened by his suffering. Every day he would pray to god, 'Everybody is so happy, why do only I have to suffer?' One day, he was really depressed and prayed, 'I am not able to bear my pain anymore. Please take it away! Even if I have to take someone else's pain in exchange, I am ready to do that.'

That night he had a dream where he saw god telling everyone in his village to bring all their sufferings to Him. So everybody gathered their sufferings in big bags and they all rushed to god.

Then god said, 'Now you can keep your bags together around me.' Everybody was very happy to get rid of their sufferings and dropped off their bags.

Then, as they had asked in their prayers, god said, 'Ok, now you can take any bag.' Suddenly, everybody including this man, rushed to take his own bag! Not only him, but all others were doing the same thing.

For the first time, each one had seen others' sufferings and they were glad their bag was not as big as those around them. Also, each person had become used to his own sufferings. Nobody wanted to risk taking somebody else's unknown suffering instead of their known!

The man suddenly woke up and prayed to god, 'Thank you for opening my eyes! I know what I have is good for me. That is why you have given my circumstances to me!'