The brass labels on the pavement

A teenage girl argued that if you do not complain about the good parts of life you should not complain about the bad. Her father could not answer her. The swami could.

By Sovandarapor (James) Kong · 2026-08-21 · Nondual

Chapter 17 of 18 in Ninety minutes with a swami

A man told Swami Sarvapriyananda about an argument his teenage daughter had made. Life has suffering and enjoyment in it. You do not complain about the enjoyment, so take the suffering when it comes. Why all this fuss about why suffering exists and how to overcome it. The father said he had not known what to say to her.

The swami's reply was first that she is a child and has not seen suffering, and that one should pray she does not. And then the part I did not expect, given that everything up to this point had been building a case that suffering is survivable. You cannot say that to parents who have lost a child. You cannot tell them that they accepted the happiness without question and must now accept the loss without question. He had been walking around Amsterdam and kept coming across the small brass labels set into the pavement outside houses, the ones that record that a Jewish couple lived here, were taken from this house, and were murdered on such a date at such a place. You cannot stand on one of those and say do not complain. Suffering, he said twice, is a serious question. You cannot tell the sick or the oppressed that it is fine.

I wanted this piece in the run because without it the others are too smooth. A philosophy that reaches bliss without passing through a pavement in Amsterdam is not one I would trust, and he knows that.

He then tells a Ramakrishna story with the same shape. Someone asked Ramakrishna why, if God exists, there is so much suffering, the innocent, the helpless, the animals. He gave the standard answer first. It is the play of God, lila, what can we do. The questioner was not satisfied. It may be play for God. It is death for us. What kind of play is that. And Ramakrishna gave his real answer, which was a question. And who are you.

The swami reads that as the non-dual instruction in its shortest form. Find out who you are, and what you find is that the thing manifesting as this world and this suffering is you, in depth. It does not make the pavement labels less true. He does not claim it does.

I am not going to pretend this resolves for me. The daughter's argument is bad and the swami is right that it is bad. The answer he puts in its place is not an argument at all, it is a direction to look. I can report that I do not find it glib, which is not the same as finding it sufficient.