Aptavani-2
195
Understanding worldly happiness and misery
The Lord 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) within 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 (graha) 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, Gnani too has them, but He remains the
‘seer’ and the ‘knower’ of shata and ashata vedaniya; He