THE HEALING OF SUFFERING

introductory notes: (1) At the time Silo gave this speech, the Argentine military dictatorship then in power had forbidden all public gatherings in cities and urban areas. When asking where he would be allowed to speak, Silo was told to "go talk to the stones." Consequently, a desolate spot known as Punta de Vacas, high in the Andes on the border between Chile and Argentina, was chosen as the site for Silo's speech. Early on the morning of May 4, the authorities set up checkpoints on all roads leading to the site. There were machine-gun posts, military vehicles, and armed men stationed along the road, and everyone was required to show identification papers in order to pass through the checkpoints, which led to conflicts with some members o f the international press. Against the magnificent backdrop of the snow-covered Andes, Silo began speaking to an audience thus limited to some two hundred people. The day was cold and bright. By about noon, it was all over.

"If you have come to hear a man because you think that he will communicate wisdom, you have mistaken your way, because true wisdom is not communicated by books or impassioned speeches - true wisdom is found in the depths of your consciousness, just as true love is found in the depths of your heart.

If you have come at the urging of slanderers and hypocrites to hear this man so that what you hear today may later be used in arguments against him, you have mistaken the way, because this man has not come here to ask anything of you, or to use you, because he does not need you.

You are listening to a man who does not know the laws that rule the Universe, who is not privy to the laws of History, who is ignorant of the relationships that govern the peoples of the world. This man addresses himself to your consciousness, far from the cities and their sick ambitions. Over the cities, where each day is a struggle, a hope cut short by death, where love is followed by hate, where foregiveness is followed by revenge, over the cities of the rich and the poor, over the immense fields of humanity, a mantle of suffering and sorrow has fallen.

You suffer when pain bites your body. You suffer when hunger invades your body. But you suffer not only from immediate pain in your body or from hunger in your body, you suffer also from the consequences of diseases that befall your body.

We must distinguish between two types of suffering. There is one type of suffering that occurs as a result of sickness, and that suffering can be pushed ba ck by the advance of science, just as hunger can be pushed back by the reign of justice. There is another kind of suffering that does not depend on the sickness of your body but yet derives from that sickness: if you are disabled, if you cannot see, if you cannot hear, you suffer. But though that suffering derives from your body, or from the sicknesses of your body, such suffering is of your mind.

There is, however, another kind of suffering, which neither the advance of science nor the advance of justice c an push back. That type of suffering, which is a suffering strictly of your mind, recedes before faith, before joy in life, before love. You must realize that such suffering is always rooted in the violence that exists in your own consciousness. You suffer because you fear losing what you have, or because of what you have already lost, or because of what you desperately long to reach. You suffer because you lack. Or because you feel fear in general... These, then, are the great enemies of humankind: fear of sickness, fear of poverty, fear of death, fear of loneliness. All these are sufferings that are in your mind; all of them reveal an inner violence, a violence that is inside you, the violence that is in your mind. Notice how that violence always stems from desire. The more violent a person is, the more gross, the more base are that person's desires.

I would like to tell you a story that took place a long time ago.

Once there was a traveller who had to make a long journey. He yoked his animal to a cart and began his journey to a distant destination, which he had to reach within a certain span of time. He called the animal Need and the cart he called Desire ; he called one wheel Pleasure and the other one Suffering . Sometimes our traveller took the right fork in the road and sometimes the left, yet always he kept onward toward his destination. The faster the cart traveled, the faster the wheels of Pleasure and Suffering turned, connected as they were to the same axle and carrying as they did the cart of Desire. Since the journey was long, our traveller at length grew bored. So he decided to decorate his cart, and he began to adorn it with all manner of beautiful things. But the more he loaded down the cart of Desire with decorations, the heavier it became for Need to pull. On the curves and steep hills of the road, the poor animal grew exhausted and was unable to pull the cart called Desire. And where the road was sandy the wheels of Pleasure and Suffering would bog down.

One day our traveller grew desperate, because the road was long and he was still very far from his destination. That night, he decided to meditate on the problem, and as he was doing so he heard the neighing of his old friend, Need. Understanding the message, very early the next morning he beg an to lighten the cart of its burden - stripping it of all its fine adornments - and then he set off toward his destination with the animal Need pulling the cart at a brisk trot. Still, he had lost much time, time that was now irrecoverable. The next night our traveller again sat down to meditate, and he realized - thanks to another message from his old friend - that now he had to undertake a task that was doubly difficult, because it meant his letting-go. At daybreak, he abandoned the cart of Desire. It is true that when he did so, he no longer possessed the wheel called Pleasure, but then he also became free of the wheel called Suffering. And so, abandoning the cart, he rode astride the animal called Need and galloped off across the green fields until he reached hi s destiny.

See how desire can corner you, see how desire can trap you. But notice that there are desires of different weights. There are desires that are more base, and there are desires that are more elevated. Elevate desire, overcome desire, purify desire. In doing so, surely you will have to sacrifice the wheel of Pleasure, but you will also become free of the wheel of Suffering.

Violence in a person, driven by desire, does not just lie like a sickness upon the consciousness of that person - it acts in the world of other people, it is exercised on others. And do not think that when I talk of violence I am speaking only about the armed act of war, in which one faction of men destroys another. That is one form of physical violence. But there is also economic violence. Economic violence is the violence through which you exploit other people; economic violence occurs when you steal from another person, when you are no longer a brother or sister to others, but become a bird of prey upon other people. There is also racial violence. Do you think that you are not engaging in violence when you persecute a person who is not of your same race, do you think that you are not engaging in violence when you defame that person for being of a race different from your own? And there is religious violence: do you think that you are not engaging in violence when you refuse work, or close your doors to a person, or fire that person because that person does not share your religious beliefs? Do you think that it is not violence when you use defamation to build a wall around other people, excluding them from your society because they do not share your religious beliefs - isolating them within their families, isolating them with their loved ones because they do not share your religious beliefs?

There are other forms of violence which are imposed by Philistine morality. You wish to impose your way of life upon another person; you wish to impose your vocation upon another. But who has told you that you are an example that must be followed? Who has told you that you can impose a way of life because it pleases you? What makes your way of life a model, what makes it a pattern that you have the right to impose on others? This, then, is another form of violence.

You can only end the violence in yourself and others and the world around you through inner faith and inner meditation. Many apparent ways out are actually false doors, false solutions, that cannot end the violence. This world is on the verge of exploding and there is no clear way to end the violence! Do not seek solutions that are false. There is no politics that can solve this mad urge for violence. There is no political party or movement on the planet that can end the violence. No false doors will lead us out of the violence in the world... I have been told that all over the world young people are following false paths to escape the violence and inner suffering. They turn to drugs as a solution. Do not seek false doors to end the violence.

My brother, my sister - keep simple commandments, as simple as these rocks and this snow and this sun that bless us. Carry peace within you and carry it to others. My brother, my sister - back in history is a human being showing the face of suffering. Look at that face of suffering... but remember that it is necessary to move forward, and it is necessary to learn to laugh, and it is necessary to learn to love.

To you, my brother and sister, I throw this hope, this hope of joy, this hope of love, so that you may elevate your heart and elevate your spirit, and so that you do not forget to elevate your body."