The Book on Solace - Softcover

Bô Yin Râ

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0915034050 ISBN 13: 9780915034055

Publisher: Kober Press, 2000

Synopsis

This book considers the experience of grief, bereavement, and despair from the perspective of our timeless life, from which all physical ordeals and pains appear in a profoundly different light. While not denying the reality of suffering and anguish in the sphere of mortal life, the book explains why grief and sorrow have no basis for existence in the dimension of the Spirit's light. That is to say, all grief is strictly limited to physical mortality, is subject to the law of time, and an inevitable consequence of life in earthly form. All grief, however, can be borne and overcome by seeing it in its true nature: as a defect inherent in our mortal life. Thus, it even can be turned to our benefit; for it may reawaken and intensify our inner life.

The Kober Press's translations of the books of Bô Yin Râ are the only English translations authorized by the Kober Verlag, Switzerland. The Kober Verlag publishes the books of Bô Yin Râ in the original German and has protected their integrity since Bô Yin Râ's lifetime.

Contents: On Grief and Finding Solace. Lessons One Can Learn from Grief. On Follies to Avoid. On the Comforting Virtue of Work. On Solace in Bereavement.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER ONE On Grief and Finding Solace

There surely are not many who have made their way across the heights and through the valleys of this earthly life of whom it might be said that they had never been in need of solace in their grief.

But, then, those few most likely wanted inner depth; for it is certainly no proof of special moral strength if one does not, at any time, feel need of comfort in one's sorrow.

When tempests have disturbed an ocean's calm, its surging tides need longer to subside than will the ripples of a shallow pond. So, too, a human soul of depth and substance tends to be profoundly stirred by all of life's ordeals--indeed, may suffer their effects long afterward--while shallow souls, who are not troubled very deeply, will overcome their anguish from one day to the next.

Thus, only souls whom grief and pain have shaken to their roots have truly need of solace; souls who are at risk of seeing their despair embitter every source of future joy in life.

There are more human souls in need of comfort on this earth than there are poor who need material help; and of that kind of poverty the world has certainly more than enough.

Regrettably, it only is in days of grief that many gain a fleeting sense of their potential depth; because in times of joy, whose influence could truly be no less profound, they will content themselves with superficial trifles.

It is quite true that, in the light of higher insight, all suffering in mortal life reveals itself as falsehood, rooted in illusion. But even falsehood, in the end, must serve the victory of truth. So too, all grief, of which the earth engenders such excess, is ultimately destined to assure the triumph of abiding joy.

And herein finally resides the true strength of all solace; if solace would be more than simply persuasion, aimed at making you forget your grief.

But seeking to forget your pain will only make its spurious claims the more unfailingly deceive you.

If you intend to make your anguish serve the truth, you certainly shall not desire to forget it.

Instead, you need to learn courageously to face, and then to overcome the grief that has befallen you. To overcome, however, does not mean you should forget. And it would gain you even less if cowardly you turned to flight in order to escape your grief. In short, if you attempted to dispel one falsehood by succumbing to another.

Be assured, the world's great masters in the art of living have never timidly avoided pain and grief.

They had the strength to bear affliction, but equally could rise to the experience of great joy. They recognized that every grief becomes a pledge, indeed, a precondition of ensuing joy--if but one's consciousness of pain is liberated from the spell of falsehood, of illusion.

You surely cannot keep your life protected from all grief. You can, however, change the way you face its pain, and thus deflate its falsely granted moral "worth." And, truly, all the pain that you must bear in life is set before you only as a task--that you devalue its imagined "merits."

This approach alone will free you from your compulsive servitude to grief and cause you to become its conqueror and master.

Only thus shall you experience grief in such a way that it must benefit your inner growth, whereas before its pain had threatened to destroy you.

It is, surely, not too difficult to deal with grief in mortal life if you regard it from that point of view. On the other hand, you never shall grow strong enough to overcome your pain if you lack courage to confront it.

Only those who have the strength to suffer grief in every fiber of their soul shall also, in the end, grow able to discern that all its pain in truth reflects a lie.

Then only will they know how to dispel their grief, and thus attain the highest kind of solace, whose light they shall see rising from the inmost certainty of having found the source of all-sustaining truth.

And only comfort of that kind is worthy of the name of solace, which is to be the topic of this book. I here intend to show you how one may come to find such solace--within one's inmost self--and then shall have no further need to be consoled by others.

No consolation you receive from others can ever free you from the shackles of your grief--unless such comfort teaches you how you may break those chains yourself. And how that inner art is learned, and put to use, the present work will teach you.

Edition details

• Publisher: Kober Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0915034050
• ISBN 13: 9780915034055
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108