Why does cruelty and suffering exist in a love-based reality?
My belief is that the ground of being and all manifestation is love. But my mind can’t reconcile what appears to be the basic cruelness of nature and the suffering it imposes on it’s creatures with this basic belief. I recently watched a documentary about the very loving primates, the Bonobos. Aside from their unusually gentle and loving ways, they showed a primate who lost it’s mother and discussed how the natural response from the group was to psychologically banish it’s orphans. When other primate children in the group treated the orphan roughly, their mothers would step in and rough up or bite the hand of the orphan till it bled. It was apparent that the orphans great loss would result in living a life of being ostracized and abused. Suffering in humans can lead to awareness. What is the purpose of this apparent injustice and suffering seen throughout nature and in humans in a love based reality? This greatly disturbs me. Thank you
Jeddah: What you are witnessing here is trying to be understood rationally by the mind. Notice there are certain assumptions operating that are all based in a thought reality. It is the very struggle of rationalising that is painful. It is the apparent conflict between these assumptions that causes you such distress. How would it be to sit with such happenings without the mind’s interpretation? Immediately you notice a spacious quality enter. This spaciousness allows you to be in the same space as the primate event without the angst. No longer are we looking through the lens of right and wrong, kindness and cruelty, ease and suffering. Now there is an equanimity present.
I do not know why these creatures act. So in this I cannot offer you certainty. However I can offer you certainty in knowing the nature of existence itself. That it is always seeking expansion and self knowing. That is carries out the exact shape and form of the intent influencing it. Who is to say that human actions are not reflected in the animal world? What have we learnt about our own relationship to harming another from this. If it has taught us anything about being more compassionate, more inclusive, more loving, more accepting -then it has served its purpose perhaps.
You have also learnt that you are full of compassion, care and concern for those who are suffering. So in that sense your response is a great teacher, just as the Bonobos themselves. With love and humility, Jeddah
