I wish to make something clear to you which I have found to be so very helpful. I know reading may be not your favoured way of learning - so I will take every effort to make this as plain and clear as possible. We will be talking about an understanding that completely sets aside our usual emotional upsets with ourselves, others and the world. This understanding, though extremely simple, answers every situation that you find yourself in. To be frank, without this understanding, happiness is not possible.

In life there will always be some uncomfortable or unpleasant experiences (physical pain, old age, the actions of others, uncomfortable circumstances, mosquito bites). However, we can have a way of living which is devoid of any emotional pain that can go along with them.

What I will talk to you about first by way of introduction is the nature of unhappiness. First of all put your hand against the wall and push hard against it. You will notice that the more you push against it the more it pushes back. Now, mentally, we can push against our present experience.

Our experience is made up of three main things:

* our experience of ourselves,

* our experience of others,

* our experience of our current circumstances.

Nothing is outside our experience, and it should be noted that it is always our experience we are having.

We have no control over what thoughts and feelings come up in the mind, what other people do or what is happening in our environment. This is true, but that does not mean our experience of such things can’t be transformed. The important thing here is what it is that can effect a transformation of our experience so it is devoid of emotional pain.

Our experience of ourselves

So Unhappy One, let’s just look at emotional pain (whether it be loneliness, self- hatred and frustration, anxiety or any of the many forms of sorrow that we human beings are prone to) in terms of ourselves.

The first thing to notice is that, in every experience of emotional pain there is this object - the particular emotional pain - that is experienced as happening to us. We are in a situation where we are experiencing unhappiness and we are wanting it to go away. So there is both the pain and a ‘wanter’ who wants it to go away. You never have any kind of mental suffering without this set-up involving the pain and the wanter. The wanter considers the emotional pain to be a problem s/he can’t help but push against it in an effort to get rid of it.

Our experience of others

Every time we have an upset with other people (annoyance, anger frustration or irritation) we are in the same boat as with ourselves. People are acting in a way we don’t like. There is always the experience of their behaviour and the wanter who wants something different from what is happening, and just as we blame our emotional pain on our emotions, we blame our anger and hatred on the actions of other people. If we think that others are causing our pain, we can’t help but be angry toward them. So too, if we think our emotions, which we have no control over, are causing our unhappiness, we can’t help but feel helpless.

Our experience of current circumstances

Lastly we have unhappiness in terms of the conditions that we find ourselves within. We may feel we are stuck in a job we hate, or that we don’t have enough money. I am talking about any unhappiness about our life circumstances. When we have this kind of unhappiness there is again the circumstance we are unhappy about, and the wanter who wants to get rid of the unwanted circumstance.

So, when we have emotional pain of any kind, we are always finding fault with our inner states, other people or circumstances. This is natural, because if these things are causing our pain, we can’t help but find fault with them. We believe that if these things that are making us unhappy were not present we would be happy. We struggle against them in an effort to be rid of them. This struggle with things that we believe make us unhappy, always brings us into friction with our experience. The make-up of this friction is the wanter (wanting something else), in opposition with what we wish to get rid of. Even if we get rid of one thing, another thing will come into its place.

Unhappy One, how much chance do you think there is in getting rid of everything that you believe is making you unhappy? Now my Vedanta teacher has the view that people and events never cause our unhappiness, they simply reveal an unhappiness that is already within us. This means the problem lies with us. We are not to blame for it, but our way of living is behind all our emotional suffering.

Normally, people’s lives are built around fault finding non-accommodation of ourselves, others and circumstances. Instead we are continually fault-finding and non-accommodating. This is not just an attitude. This has become a way of living in this world. This way of living always involves emotional suffering and disturbance. The important thing here is it is our way of living that is at fault, not our selves, other people or circumstances. (So the blame lies with no one; it simply lies with a wrong understanding.) It is so fortunate that it is our way of living that is the problem because we have direct choice over that.

Remember the Beatles’ song, ‘All you need is love’? Well, it is true. Most people in our culture think that love is something you can do; that it is sex or it is a feeling, or it is to do with romance and even in some cases feelings about your favourite soap. There are all sorts of ideas associated with it.

My Vedanta teacher has a different view on this. To her love is: non-faultfinding accommodation. 

This is not a mental attitude. It is a way of living in which emotional pain does not exist. Most of my life I have had a way of living based on faultfinding non-accommodation and have suffered greatly as a result. Faultfinding non-accommodation ensures a life of continual emotional pain. When we are emotionally upset, we can’t see clearly and we always act in ways that are not in our best interests.

When you are in love (often a state of non-faultfinding accommodation) there is no emotional pain because the wanter is not present, even if the want is. I may want a cup of coffee, but if there is only tea I don’t get upset. There is no friction or conflict. This does not mean you don’t do what you can to make things better, but that even when things are not to your liking, you don’t suffer from unhappiness.

Something must be understood from the beginning. It is easy to read the words ‘love is non-faultfinding accommodation’ and think you have understood. In the West there is a strong tendency to take the understanding to mean knowing what the words mean. In Vedanta, understanding is not meant in this sense. Rather, in the Vedantic sense when I understand what love is, then I am what I know and so can’t help but live what I know. Understanding in the former sense (thinking that I know what love is because I understand the meaning of the words) means that how I am living and what I understand are two different things.

To make it clearer, faultfinding non-accommodation is the normal mode of being in the world for human beings. It is a way of living which is based on my notions about myself, other people and the world. We know no other way of living because another way of living is outside our understanding. Using our own understanding, it is just not possible to try to go beyond our own understanding. That’s why we need a teaching that is not derived from our own psychology and, because of this, can shed an objective light on the factors of our daily living.

Unhappy One, can you see that we are enclosed within our own understanding, even when we think we are expanding our understanding? We may read new books and have different experiences, but we are in fact seeing all these new things from the same standpoint, as with all our previous experiences and books. Our ideas may change and our experiences may change, but we are still enclosed within in our own understanding.

In this way of living, when we read the words ‘faultfinding non-accommodation’ we can’t help but think about it as something to be done, as opposed to something to be seen or understood and hence lived. It is not possible to do love but it is quite possible to be in love. However this being in love is the fruit of understanding. If we see clearly what love is, we find ourselves being love. It is not the operation of the mind upon the mind. If it is, there will be a wanter trying to be loving because they find fault with how they are, how others are or how circumstances are, and trying to use ‘love’ as a device to handle it. In Vedanta this trying to be anything is called becoming and is not considered the way out of emotional suffering. We are talking about love which is non fault finding accommodation and so it completely embraces us as we are, others as they are and circumstances as they are. It is completely devoid of any friction or trying (same thing: if we are trying, we are in friction).

Being in harmony with What Is, includes being in harmony with anger, sadness, confusion, pain, loneliness, frustration, hatred, malice, anxiety, the stupid actions of ourselves and others, uncomfortable circumstances. Responsiveness coming from love is entirely different to reaction which spring from our desires and aversions. Response is not possible without love, in the sense I am talking about it. It is only in love that we have a relatively clear and objective mind, free from the burden of emotional pain (fear, hostility and depression) and at the same time have a responsiveness which meets everything in the best possible way.

Unhappy One, understanding in the Vedanta sense takes you to being what is understood. Rather than action on your part, it is understanding what love is, that is what takes you to itself.

For the last 18 months, Bede has been studying with Swamini Atmaprakasanda. He lives in Sydney, Australia. He has for many years had a misunderstanding about Hindu culture and spirituality; he thought it was primitive and dismissed it as such. Now the arrogance is replaced by gratitude because this culture has preserved a teaching called Vedanta, which is found to be extraordinary in depth and extremely practical in resolving the issues of suffering that afflict us all as human beings.

Bede participates in regular Skype classes with Swamini Atmaprakasananda and is currently organising her public talks that will take place during her visit to Sydney in the beginning of July of this year. What he finds is that Swamini makes a very old and ancient teaching come alive and relevant to our everyday life. Bede’s contact details are mobile: 0425 332 828, and email is This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .