The following is an excerpt of a satsang between the Gnani Purush A. M. Patel, also known as Dada Bhagwan and spiritual aspirants.

"The Lord (Mahavir) does not consider worldly pleasure and pain as pleasure and pain. He calls it ‘vedaniya (that which is to be endured)’. Pleasure is 'shata vedaniya' and pain is ' ashata vedaniya'."

Questioner: Why has the Lord called it vedaniya?

Dadashri: Because when the intensity of the suffering (pleasure or pain) increases, a person begins to get tired of it. If you had to eat the same food every day, you would get tired of it. That too is vedana (suffering), is it not? Shata vedaniya or pleasant suffering is a result of punya (merit) karma and ashata vedaniya i.e. unpleasant suffering is the result of paap (demerit) karma. Everyone at a wedding is enjoying except for Chandulal.  His face looks like he just drank some castor oil! Why? It is because the ashata vedak (the sufferer of pain; the entity that experiences pain or pleasure) within him is miserable. This vedak prods and pushes Chandulal in all directions; it gathers all kinds of scientific circumstantial evidences of pain and misery. There is no God or planets up there that bring misery. There is no one up there, sitting idle giving you misery. It is the vedak, the sufferer of pain and pleasure within that does everything. The Soul is not involved in this. Besides the soul, there is an army of other things within too. In this army there are policemen, soldiers, superiors, etc; they are all in this army!

Questioner: Dada, the Gnani Purush does not have these two ‘vedaks’, does he?

Dadashri: No, the Gnani too has them, but He remains the ‘seer’ and the ‘knower’ of shata and ashata vedaniya; He remains the seer and knower of the experience of pleasure and pain. Whenever someone insults or defames you, You have to tell the vedak within, “This is happening because of your pending karmic account.”  The real You (the Self) are the seer and the knower and are in eternal bliss and so You have to live as a neighbor with the non-self within. These are all temporary adjustments. When a person has a toothache, why does he not worry that it will hurt him forever? There is a time for everything. The pain will stop when the time is right. No circumstance will last longer than forty-eight minutes; that is the order and regularity (niyam) of this universe.

There is no happiness in any situation (avastha). Situations and circumstances are constantly changing. If there is happiness in the park, you still have to come home. Instead, it is better that you remain in the location of misery and pleasure will arise. A person who walks in the scorching heat under the sun is bound to find pleasure even under the sparse foliage of the acacia tree.  If a person does not appreciate the shade of an acacia tree, just make him walk under the sun for a few hours, and then he will. Happiness is the end result of all clash filled activities of the world. After an exhausting day’s work, one feels pleasure in merely sitting under a fan and leisurely drinking tea! On the other hand, the boss who spends his entire day in the comforts of his own home does not appreciate the fan or a cup of tea. All worldly pleasure is the reward of fatigue, mental or physical. Eternal bliss, elemental bliss (sanatan sookha, tattvik sookha) is such that it remains forever and it is independent.

There are situations where a wife hurts her husband and where a husband hurts his wife. Now why do they suffer pain? It is because they inflict relatively lesser pain than necessary. Now if they were to inflict more pain than necessary, they get used to it, they accept it and along with this acceptance, there is a relative sense of relief and happiness. The knowledge (relative gnan) at the end of such prolonged pain, tells them that this is going to continue (like the wife who now is oblivious of her husband’s nightlong snoring) and therefore ‘happiness’ arises.

It is a wonder that the Emperors could not find happiness living in palaces, whereas a poor man finds happiness living in a shack! Happiness should be everlasting; once attained it should not leave. That is bliss. Bliss should be like that which this ‘Dada’ is experiencing; it does not leave for even a second. Dada is constantly in inner bliss.

Questioner: Why do human beings (jeeva) look for happiness elsewhere, outside?

Dadashri: Teenagers would not go to restaurants and fast food places if they received wonderful meals at home. They go out to eat because they are not satisfied with the meals at home. Similarly, people look for happiness elsewhere because they are not satisfied with the happiness they have. Every living being is wandering around looking for happiness beyond the senses (ati-indriya sookh, eternal happiness). One has not experienced the bliss of the Self. How long can temporary happiness, projected happiness (kalpit sookh) last? One can attain bliss; happiness that is beyond the senses, when one meets the Gnani Purush. Projected happiness; worldly pleasures can give one satisfaction (santosh) but it will not make him content to the point where there is no further demand (trupta) for it. Until one attains Gnan (awareness of one’s real Self), one lacks the awareness of what is right and what is wrong as far as liberation is concerned. The intellect (buddhi) will show one what is right and what is wrong in worldly affairs. It simply will not be able to know what is right and what is wrong in matters of liberation. In this regard the intellect will fear its own death.

This world exists in an orderly manner. It is meticulously regulated. No living being, except man, experiences mental anguish. Of all beings that depend on breath to live (prani), man is the only being who suffers mentally. Other animals, when they get hungry, they experience the pain of hunger, but that pain is quelled as soon as they get something to eat. They do not have any greed. Only humans have greed. They not only consume what is in their own ‘pasture’, but they raid the neighbor’s ‘pastures’ too.  Miseries arise out of greed.

A human being runs to the doctor when his leg is hurting. Do birds and fish have doctors? They just have to suffer. Do they indulge in any sensual pleasures (vishaya)? They eat because of the instinct to eat, but they do not indulge in the pleasures of the tongue.  If they had pleasures of eating and drinking, they too would have toothaches or would have to wear glasses. Animals too have problems with old age, but they have to suffer them silently.

Farmers make their bullocks work all day long but they put a muzzle around the bullocks’ mouths so that they would not graze on their farms. The bullock understands that he is not allowed to eat. One farmer in his eagerness to watch a movie at night put down some nice grass for his bullock to eat but forgot to take the muzzle off. What can the poor bullock do? He felt the hunger pangs but what could he do?  Whom could he tell? The farmer returned from the movies late at night and went straight to bed without checking on his bullock. The bullock kept stomping his feet on the ground all night long.  In the morning when the farmer woke up, he realized that he had forgotten to remove the muzzle!”